EDUCATION: they say one bad apple spoils the bunch CHRIS O’ROURKE
It was the summer before my first semester teaching college. I was on a train from Providence to Philly, sitting in the café car, which was in the older style, more conducive to conversations occurring spontaneously between commuters. This doesn’t happen much anymore for two reasons – technology and distance. At least that’s what I’ve been told by relatives who work for the railroad and hate modern technology. The ride through New England was as picturesque as any Rockwell painting. Just outside Stamford, I saw an old fisherman with his arms around a young boy looking into the horizon as they stood on a run-down pier. The train pulled into New York as the sun was setting. As we waited in the station, a tall gentleman asked me if anyone was sitting at my table. I only had another hour on the train so I could tolerate the lack of leg space under the table. Usually, I would just lie to the person and hoped they would move on.
The man was tall. He was thin too, not gaunt looking, but thin enough for his age. He dressed simply and well. Basically, his suit and tie looked new. Maybe he shopped at the same Target as me? I never found out. His face was friendly and clean shaven, he couldn’t grow a real beard if he tried. His hair was brown and combed to the left. He had the hair of an elementary school principal. The one thing that stuck out from his attire was the watch. He wore a calculator watch and I saw this watch from out under his cuff as he extended his right arm while he spoke on the phone.
The reason I noticed so much about this gentleman is that I just completed BBC’s Sherlock Holmes series. Holmes in one episode blurts out, “You see, but you do not observe!” I thought I would make this a hobby of mine on the train ride home. I was a little drunk so the accuracy of my observation is not entirely accurate.
“Can I see your watch?” I asked.
“Oh, this? Yeah, sure.” He handed me the calculator watch. It had Indiglo. It was breakthrough stuff in the early 90s. A blue glow would light the background of your watch when you hit a button— unlike watches in the 80s, which, if they came with a light, would only light a small portion of the background. I mentioned this to the man, pointing out that the watch wasn’t authentically retro. His reply to this information, head lowered- defeated, was “I know.”
“What’s your name?”
“Chris.”
“My name is Peter. Nice to meet you.”
“What do you do? Where you headed, I mean.”
“Oh, I’m on my way to D.C. Just finished up a conference in New York.”
“What for?”
“I’m in politics.”
“What do you mean? What’s politics? Are you a clerk? Fundraising?”
“Yeah. The last one. I was raising money. My organization was up in New York for a big fundraiser over the weekend. We’re a grassroots organization.”
“Oh. So the watch? What’s that about? It doesn’t really go with your whole thing.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s a reminder. It reminds me what I’m working for.”
“What?”
“The watch, the suit, I needed a watch to go with the suit. But the suit isn’t totally what I’m about. So I wanted a watch that would remind me that I’m working for the people. I got into this organization to work for the people. And the calculator watch reminds me about the people. What do you do?”
“I’m in education. Teacher. A teacher for hire.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s nothing. I just say teacher for hire as a joke cause I’m not certified. I teach at a community college.”
“I used to teach.”
The man paused. He was listening with a look of utter intent during our conversation and now he turned away. He placed his right hand over his mouth. The calculator watch appeared again from under the cuff of his pristine white shirt. At this moment there was only about a few other passengers in the car with us. It was unusually quiet for the route between New York to D.C., or in my case, Trenton. The man sat and looked across the aisle in the direction of the window opposite from us.
“How long you’ve been teaching?”
“Well, I’ve never really taught before, I’ve only subbed. I start in a couple of weeks. It will be good. I think—”
The man interrupted me. “I taught, and I taught for a long while. I was a good teacher. The best in my district and then when I went to the college level, I was even better.”
I didn’t know how to react to the man’s claim of being a great teacher. I was compelled to ask more. “Do you have any advice?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything.”
The man shifted his body to where his shoulders were now more square with mine. “Ok. I can tell you a lot of about teaching. More than you really need to know. But one thing I know is important, probably the most important thing, is understanding the human animal that is the modern student. Some people will try to talk to you about relating to the kids. That’s out the door. Don’t do that. Don’t try and relate to them. Once you graduated you were already out of touch with whatever level of schooling you just graduated from. You’ll lose ‘em if you try to do that.”
At this point I was finishing off my double of Jack and Pepsi. It was mostly melted ice.
He continued, “Now, making them think you’re trying to relate to them is a psychological technique that takes years of experience, a style of manipulation that you just can’t learn on one train ride. Forget that for your first year. Keep it simple.”
This was more than I wanted.
“‘Know the classroom’ is one I hear a lot and I’ve seen it online a bunch. This actually is a valuable skill. It will help you take the class by storm. See, let me just cut to the chase— what you need to do is have total and utter control over your classroom. I come from a long line of Irish cops. My grandfather beat his father, my father beat me, and we are all a bunch of control freaks. Crowd control has kind of been a thing in our family. I have pictures of my great-grandfather in riot gear from the 20’s. My dad passed the gear onto me after he died. But the point is, the modern student is one that must be controlled. Got me?”
I was slow to respond. Partially because I didn’t know what to say to this man who initially appeared so reserved and mostly because the alcohol had made me tired.
He continued, “When you want to rule a classroom, you’ve got to be able to identify all of the characters in the class. Your first year you’ve got to be like the head detective, like a real Sherlock. You’ve got to know them before they know you, and you’ve got to begin manipulating the shit out of them. Come up with names for them if you want, but get a hold of that classroom at any cost. Like on your first day. Get to know the classroom so show up about two hours early. Know how the blinds work. Where the chalk is. How to turn on the Smart Board. You probably won’t use much classroom technology the first day. Get to know them. Play a game or something that allows you to get as much information from them as possible. Find out things they don’t like and are possibly afraid of. Students will give you a lot of information on the first day. Most of them will be nervous. When you walk into the classroom identify the quiet kid and make sure you can separate him in your mind from the hot popular girls and the shy kid.”
“Isn’t the shy kid the same as the quiet kid?” I asked.
“No, the quiet kid has something to hide. The shy kid has something he wants to say but hasn’t got the confidence to say it. You can work him good. You don’t really have to worry about the shy kids as giving you any shit. The quiet kid I would always be a little more careful about. You can have a real Columbine on your hands there or Patty Hearst kind of situation.”
“What? He wants to be kidnapped?” I took another sip from my drink, it was going down faster than I cared for.
“No. But he wants to join in on things with you, like mocking the shy kid or making fun of the adult learner. The adult learners can be real problems at the college level cause they’re insecure about being back in school. They’ll go to the Dean on you so hopefully you don’t have any your first semester. Also, try to have sex with one of the hot popular girls because that will create tension between them, and there’ll always be two cause they travel in pairs. And the tension will help you …”
“I’m only in my first semester at the college.”
“Yeah, but you’ll see a lot of high school shit carries over especially in the first year. Those girls will think they’re still hot and popular. Don’t worry about the awkward dorks either. They’re so awkward and dorky that they’ll want you to like them. So they’re easy to control! Who else?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. You’re kind of going here.”
“If you don’t want the advice I can shut up.”
“No, keep going.”
“Keep going? That’s what I thought. You’ll have your jocks, even at a community college, you’ll have your jocks for sure. You’ll have to sacrifice the self-esteem of the dorky kids and nerdy chicks to win over the jocks. The jocks will love you if you dislike the same dorks as them and rip on the object of their sexual frustration for the next year which will be the attractive nerdy girl. Nerdy girl learned in high school not to like the jocks and now she’ll be coming into her own that first year of college. The jocks haven’t figured out why they hate her yet and it’s because they want to fuck her but they’re still operating on some weird high school dictum to hate all nerd - male or female. It’s weird. The shit really hasn’t changed since the 80s.”
“Who else do we have?”
“I really don’t know. I’m a little lost.”
“Oh, right, the angry kid. Angry kid and quiet kid could be the same student. It depends. They might switch roles throughout as well. Angry kid is usually filled up with a lot of ideas about college from his family. These students usually come from a conservative background politically or they’re Christians. They’re filled with stories of mythological liberalism or they just don’t like anyone else and they don’t know why, just that ‘everything will be different.’ Angry kid you just have to manage. Handle him and give him a passing grade if not higher. Or, if you’re going to fail him make sure he doesn’t know where your office is. Also, try to get the Dean on your side at some point before the semester ends, if she’s a fat Dean try to use food to win her over by midterm, I had this Dean once who was into fetish wear and I found out by looking at his computer when I was waiting in his office. And don’t forget how you dress and …”
The man went on and on. He talked about Arizona and his days as a teacher for juveniles in a remote desert town. He listed the reasons a teacher should carry a retractable baton at all times. He told stories of working in the inner city and a student pulling a knife on him. How he said to the kid, It’s always the knife with you wops, and then beat the kid in front of his classmates. The man wouldn’t stop talking. He just built more and more momentum from his own speech.
It was frightening me a little. He went on about games that teachers can play to pit three students against one. He had a nickname for this game that I forget now.
At my stop the man became silent. I didn’t know why, I was so engrossed by the utterly useless and horrible advice he was giving me I had lost track of time. He turned away from me and gestured toward the window. It was my stop. I grabbed my laptop bag, computer, and other things and rushed off the train. I tried to thank the man and looked back as I stumbled off the car. I got around to the window and tried to wave at the man from the platform but he had already turned and was facing the other direction.
When he’s not grading student essays, Chris O’Rourke is writing short stories and performing stand-up in the Philadelphia area. Other projects include: starting a surveillance company with his ex-cop dad. Follow him on Twitter.
**Photography Notes: Film stills and movie posters shown throughout this piece belong to the following (in chronological order): Teachers, Election, Half Nelson, Dangerous Minds, Class of 1984, Bad Teacher, The Breakfast Club, and American Teacher.
