20 years, a quarter of a good long life. That's how long, as of today, I have been teaching, in some capacity or another, English, such as I know it. I have had breaks here and there, other jobs I can't remember or chose not to, but it's been 20 years since I started with adult ESL classes in Pacoima, CA. I had no business taking that job, no training in dealing with limited English speakers, no working knowledge of Spanish and no real sense of what the fuck I was supposed to be doing, but it didn't matter. The "school", whose name I have long since forgotten for good reason, was a diploma mill that thrived on scamming the migrant population into taking 6 hour a day immersion classes in English and paying for it with Pell Grants from the U.S. Government. The guy who ran the school new it was bullshit. He was hiring fresh college grads, paying us to read sentences in English to people who were illiterate in Spanish, a Harold Ramis scene from Stripes. I worked a double shift, teaching 12 hours a day, 5 days a week for $12 an hour. Fortunately, I knew how to drink.
My second gig was better, teaching freshman English at Wayne State University in Detroit. I was 25, and many of my students were older than me. My first classes were in Old Main hall, which had not been refurbished since it was built in the late 19th century. Come November, it got cold in the shit hole of a room I was in, the broken windows letting in blasts of the coming cold that I would learn could, in fact, get much fucking worse. Still, I had fun. In the winter semester (that's what they call the spring semester in the cold hell that is Michigan) I taught two classes and picked up two sections of writing at the Center for Creative Studies, a nearby art college, meaning I was working full time while taking PhD classes. The first day of the semester, the ambient temperature was 10 below zero with wind gusts blowing 30 to 40 below. My eyelashes froze shut walking down the street and, in an attempt to thaw with my fingers, I inadvertently put my car keys in my mouth as I walked down the street--they froze to my tongue. So I walked down the street, unable to see, with my keys dangling from my mouth. God hated me, but he had his reasons.
My first wife and I left Detroit after 3 years, and I can honestly say I missed it. I had friends there, the kind you don't replace. We moved to Mountain View, CA where I took a day job in a local post production facility dubbing tapes. At night, I drove across the bay to Fremont's Ohlone College where I taught Freshman Comp to students who, I am wholly convinced, have yet to graduate from college. We only lasted a year in Mountain View, with no support from friends or family, deciding to move back to L.A. where we had both. We lived with my mother-in-law and I took a job in a post production house in West L.A., "working" on my dissertation at night.
Broadcast Standards was the worst place I ever worked. My boss was a tyrant and his wife, who was the second half of the two headed monster, wasn't much better. My first wife got pregnant again, by me she says, and I thought it was time to shift gears. I heard that LAUSD would hire people with degrees and give them credentials while they worked in the district, so I leapt. I took a job at Jefferson High School on Hooper and MLK in South Central L.A.. I had been in the Army and thought I could handle it. I was right, but LAUSD had a way of wearing on you. My first week of class, I had a student drop his pants to the floor and walk around showing his package to everyone in the room. He left, but things didn't get much better. I took one day off of work when my younger son was born and in my absence a student stood on my desk and tagged the blackboard behind it. When I asked what happened the next day, the kids told me the sub couldn't handle it and walked out. I left that job after 3 years during which time: two of my students were shot, one was stabbed through the eye and two were rapped (on campus). I loved the students at Jefferson. I took them to Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro for a field trip. It was 10 miles away, but most had never been. I took them to the Zoo, to the Autrey Museum, to the library downtown and each time there eyes got bigger, their world broader. I would have stayed but for the death and the rape and the sadness. I still feel guilty for leaving, but I did.
A decade ago, I came to Peninsula High School and settled in. My first wife left me in November of my first year, so it wasn't all easy going. Still, I survived, made some of the best friends I have ever had, or will have and grew to love the school. Now, 10 years later, I find myself in front of a new group of American Literature students again and I have to get it up again. The job is great, despite the budget cuts, the petty annoyances, the over zealous parents, all of it. I stood today in front of 181 new and excited kids, who are depending on us to educate them, make their lives better and we will. I have the best job in the world. 20 years of slogging through bureaucratic bullshit, pecuniary difficulties, self-doubt and brief, but shinning, successes have not yet made me too tired to want September to come--for which I am truly grateful.
