She was 29.
And a kindergarten teacher with and ass like a life raft and the most bizarre family that kept showing up in my home. I was a mondo slob, I'll admit, but I kept the mess totally restricted to my room. If I was gone on the weekend (and I tried like hell to be) and Ann had folks over, she'd take them on guided tours of my room.
On Hallowe'en she picked up some guy in a bar. He proposed over Thanksgiving. They got married in June, so she didn't have to kill herself after all, which, after enduring 7 months solid of wedding planning mostly carried out at full volume with her toad of a mother in my dining room, I felt was a shame. We don't stay in touch.
Meanwhile, Gaston County, recently ranked as fourth in the nation for per capita murders, was providing me with an education. Fall semester I taught mornings at a rural high school. Spring semester I taught mornings at a swanky suburban middle school. Throughout the year I spent my afternoons at Arlington Elementary -- the inner city nightmare.
Try to keep in mind that this is an elementary school I'm talking about as I give you a sampling of some of the problems: brother/sister incest, death from huffing kerosene, mother of a fifth grader younger than me (I was 23), the school locked down as two parents run around the grounds with guns trying to shoot each other and the math tutor was on crack yet nobody could manage to fire her. The deep, existential challenge there was: Good God, Almighty, what do these kids need to learn French for? Believe it or not, I actually did some good work there.
This is what I learned: I couldn't teach high school at that time -- there were boys in my class the same age (19) as the last guy I had dated. I couldn't teach elementary school -- I'm very anti-hugging and I tend to find it funny when small children cry. But middle school seemed to be juuuuuuust right.
Better than that quality insight, however, was the discovery of my new best friend, Anna, a 5th grade teacher at Arlington struggling through her first year as well. Not only did she provide me temporary respite from Ann throughout the year, but we became roommates as soon as Ann ditched me for a trailer in Alabama with her new groom (SO not kidding) and Anna's family adopted me for holidays as well.
Not only that, she's a hell of a role model as a teacher as well. I cite, among her many accomplishments, the fact that, during her second year of teaching at Arlington, when that craphole had been Taken Over By The State, and 60% of the teachers had been run out the door before Christmas, she not only was left alone, she was recognized for doing things right. Later, when she had moved on to a well-deserved nice school in Raleigh, she was one of the youngest teachers ever to get a student teacher, last year she got her National Board Certification and a teacher of the year award from the local Chamber of Commerce, and this year she's teacher of the year for her school, which puts her in the running for the district title, and so on.
And she's got this GLARE on her that you would not believe. Juvenile delinquents turn to dust and learn how to read in it's uncompromising beam.
Anyway, expect her to be mentioned again. At the end of my very trying year in a very depressing town (I refused to leave the house after dark, and I've walked through Paris at midnight by myself) I was thanked for all my inconsistent work by not having my contract renewed. Fortunately Anna, ever the lifesaver, had me hooked up with a new job.
Selling shoes.
posted by Holley Wilson Mayville @ 10:36 PM
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