Overview:
“The First Class” follows a nervous student teacher whose chaotic first attempt at teaching becomes an enduring lesson about vulnerability, perseverance, and the powerful impact of a mentor’s encouragement.
My parents dropped me at the YMCA in Oshawa. I paused at the doorway of a mansion that once belonged to the founders of General Motors in Canada. I felt like some wayward teen to whisked away into the depths of the musty residence. With its crystal chandeliers and circling staircase, it must have once been elegant. I felt like some “bad” girl in a sepia-toned movie.
In reality, I was a student teacher.
Our practice teaching assignments had been posted, our names aligned with schools whose names, St. Mary’s, Oakwood, or Summerview revealed no information to the students, or the communities into which we would be hurled like too rapidly formed snowballs. Those first assignments before Christmas were only two weeks long; three longer ones would follow. I pondered these sojourns might magically transform us into professional teachers.
Beside my name, I read O’Neill Collegiate. O’Neill sounded Irish, although I doubted Oshawa boasted a large Irish population; I had no reason for this assumption. In any case, the only O’Neill I knew was Eugene O”Neil and his saga of the dysfunctional alcoholic family who spat words at one another in “Long Day’s Journey into Night”.
Someone from the cluster of would- be teachers slipped me a phone number, shouting over the din that she was from Oshawa. I pocketed it, thinking, maybe I would call. We were allotted a stipend of $50.00 a week to cover costs and given a list of guest homes.
My “teachables” were Art and English, mainly because I liked to draw and read. Once I had stumbled into art history, it had become my mission to see the originals of thousands of slides flashed on the screen, in darkened lecture halls. I was mesmerized by sumptuous details and intrigued by bizarre stories that surrounded the painters.
I pursued art in Europe, a girl from Toronto, who easily chose the wrong direction when two roads presented themselves. I lived in my head, preferring the intoxicating beauty of things and the lure of the strange to the cold touch of people.
At university, I flitted and flirted and flung myself about, unconcerned about much more than satisfying my own passions. Too many late evenings and late essays precluded a future in art history. Did anyone really care that I spent nights in third-class trains, tracking down lost etchings by the blind Goya? Did tipping my head backward for hours in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel render me a scholar? My grades deemed me only a voyeur, a tourist in the realm of art, not a serious graduate student. But in the end, the future of girls usually fell under the headings of nurse (I had no science) or teacher (I did have a B.A. in Arts). So, I applied.
At the faculty of education, I doodled during classes on John Dewey, and slept open-eyed through policies and procedures and practical tips on classroom management. Often I imagined myself back in Provence or Heidelberg, unraveling some hidden clue, an artistic gumfoot, hot on the trail of some artist’s technique.
Only in my English instruction classes was I alert. My professor instructed how poems and novels sparked paths of adventure into words, format, or hidden stories. Words evoked pictures in my head as I imagined images captured in the cadences of beautifully narrated stories.
I taught my first practice lesson to my peers on “The Naming of Parts”. When I drew the flower in the poem, “Japonica,” on the blackboard, I was inside the story of a recruit who wanders- in his head- outdoors on a spring day rather than listen to his commander name the parts of a gun. I must have been passionate or at least diverting, because thirty eyes smiled in approval, caught in my presentation, which made meaning for them, connecting them with their own experiences, sustaining their interest to probe the recruit’s psyche through discussion and discourse: that was only terminated by the bell at the end of class time.
For me, it was an invigorating class, as we were my listeners, driven by the joy that comes when learning excites personally, extending beyond the self to join the collective.
In Oshawa, I called the number passed to me. Previously a face in a class, I soon realized we shared more than just the teachable of English- we were both neurotic, our fingers constantly combing through our hair. I could already see some bare patches on her scalp as she twisted and untwisted bits of hair. My own hair, I assured myself, was still thick, so no one knew my guilty secret. Yet I, too, yanked out those miscreant strands. We laughed about our obsessive natures, wondering if teaching would be a panacea, finally making us fit with the rest of our smoothly coiffed classmates who seemed so certain of their fate as teachers. I pondered if we would always be like the recruit in my teaching poem, dreaming of escape, or finding ours in the classroom.
When morning arrived at my first practice teaching assignment, I arrived at O’Neill to teach art. My associate teacher seemed young, anywhere from 25 to 40, I thought. He was smiling, laid back, and said, “You can watch me for a few days and get a sense of the class. When you are ready, you could teach a lesson.” My knees knocked together as I grinned foolishly.
Liam Johnson shared the students’ space naturally and with ease. It was apparent the kids liked him. If the teacher is like Liam, learning really occurs as problem-solving becomes explicit and an intriguing game that kids clamor to play. Stretching your brain in innovative ways feels so good. I experienced that the day I taught “The Naming of Parts”.
Yet, Liam was not really their friend, but more like a mentor. He spoke respectfully to students, and they, too, were respectful. He listened; he observed; he taught in a manner that demonstrated he enjoyed what he was doing. He never condescended or patronized, intuitive to the styles and needs of each individual. “No rowdy kids or classroom management problems here,” I jotted in my journal. Even at 19, I knew that Liam was someone who peppers your thoughts with choices, and you want to emulate him as a role model.
Eventually I would learn that teaching art is an easy sell . Kids actually choose art; they work at their own pace; they can be creative; art is an oasis and a relief from the hard seats from which they are not allowed to move in other prescribed classes, or the voices that drone on about subjects for which they care little.
I shadowed Liam until he inevitably posed the question, “Ready to teach?” Actually, I would have been quite content to watch him teach forever.
What could I murmur but “Yes”?
He paused. “The kids are ready to begin lino-cutting. You could spend about 20 minutes explaining the process to them.”Another silly smile.
I began my research on Wikipedia that informed me that…. “ a design is cut into the linoleum surface with a sharp knife…” I already knew this; I had dabbled in printmaking, and every grade school kid has made a Christmas card, but I wanted to be sure that I had not missed anything.
Indeed, I had carefully laid out thirty pieces of linoleum before leaving O’Neill the night before. And I knew that placing linoleum on the radiators would warm the leathery slabs and make the cutting easier. I worried, of course, that the students would cut towards themselves, and slice their skin, even severing an artery that would require doctors and stitching. I could hear the screech as an ambulance pulled up to the front door of the school. I shook my head, allowing the screams to dissipate.
Now for pedagogy. I wrote out the steps on little cards. I created diagrams. I found quaint examples in old art books in the musty McLaughlin library.
I approached the mirror in my bedroom and grimaced. So far at O’Neill I had only moved around the classroom, offering positive comments. To the students, I must have been a minor annoyance as they allowed me to admire their work, or nod at suggestions of superficial critique. I saw them laugh with Liam and enter into real conversations. I saw trust in their eyes and interchanges that looked meaningful.
I re-examined my reflection in the bedroom mirror and whispered, “Good morning class” , commencing my presentation to my bedroom of silence. I paused to ensure the imaginary students were paying attention. I spoke slowly, enunciating clearly, practicing in my best voice (which was nonetheless quaking). I thought and rethought my instructions, reviewing my notes, reorganizing my visuals, and deciding where to punctuate my planned talk.
I was soaked with perspiration.
When I arrived early, Liam was already in the class to welcome and encourage me, “ I’ve seen you with the kids. You will be fine.”
Absolutely. I would be fine.
“Good morning, “ I began, just as planned. I even paused at the right spot to turn my head right and left, greeting the students with welcoming smiles.
“Today, we will do …”
I continued to speak… and I heard my words, but my sentences seemed to pick up speed with every carefully rehearsed phrase. Like a train on the tracks that gathers momentum as it moves from the station, I heard my words accelerate as I began to rush through the steps, one through ten. My tongue, disregarding my brain, had a conductor of its own. My head, then my body, were mere attachments to a mouth that was hurling itself at breakneck speed, never pausing for periods and pauses. I stood outside of myself and watched the student teacher at the front of the class hold up visuals, words spewing faster and faster from her mouth.
In spite of my racing words, I still managed to demonstrate how to hold the knife, attach the various blades, draw the image, paint the negative parts with India ink, warm the lino, cut the lino, print the image.. .
But I was held captive by my tongue, that rambling purple snake I could not control. How had an alien invaded my mouth, taking my tongue as ransom for pretending to be a teacher? In horror, I performed robotic-like, a slave to the words that continued to race.
The faces of the students, not two feet away, their cool detachment turning to amazement. Incredulous at the teacher-impersonator whose words were propelled by some wicked spirit, they turned to one another, unsure of what to do. They remained glued to their seats, too dumbfounded to move. Perhaps they were awaiting a shapechange or transformation into something more terrible than a rambling student teacher.
I completed my lesson: in 3 ,not 20 minutes!
As if my spring had been totally unwound, I was now depleted and wordless: the train had not gone off track, only driven at breakneck speed to arrive back at the station, its cargo erratically cast off. Dejected, embarrassed, eyes focused straight ahead, tears barely contained, I made my way to the back of the room. Heads twisted; unblinking eyes followed me. There was silence. I wanted to flee.
Yet, students picked up their tools and started to work.
From a fog of tears, I saw Liam approach. Before he opened his mouth, I surmised my teaching career had ended. I was about to plead.
He said, “ You did very well today. “
I knew it was a lie, but it was what I needed to hear.
