It has long been my experience that kids can smell a phony – not to mention abject fear – standing in front of them in a classroom, especially kids who sit at the back of it. A cohort of exceptionally bright eighteen-year-old kids have particularly good noses, I’ve also learned. In part, because they are so bright they also tend to be kind, empathetic, not terribly interested in robbing a young teacher of her dignity. The worst they do is roll their eyes, loll in their seats and stare out the window, resigning themselves to having to tolerate yet another dreary year of high school.
In 1982, I was assigned to teach such a class in Toronto at a massive three-story high school that housed roughly 1500 students, give or take a few, and which had most extensive gifted program in the Ontario. I got the job the Friday before the Labour Day weekend, and spent the next three days frantically concocting lesson plans before showing up, clutching said plans in shaky hands that Tuesday in September. I had just turned 24, which meant I was only five years older than some of my students, and because the school ran on a full year timetable, September to June, it meant three terms, three sets of exams, and spending the next ten months staring at the same thirty faces in the same classrooms. I was sure it meant nearly two hundred days of terrible teaching experiences awaited me, and nearly two hundred hours of boredom for them.
Or so I thought on that first, fear-filled day. I ended my opening address to my ‘gifted’ homeroom grade 13 class by sternly informing them, in my best teacher voice, albeit one in danger of being strangled by a constricted throat and tripped up by a tongue desperately in need of some saliva: …so don’t forget. I’m the boss. From the back of the room, I heard the tsk. So what does that make us? The workers? My mouth must have gaped open. I’m sure my cheeks blanched. I know my brain froze the minute I heard the retort. I think I just stared back – suddenly rendered speechless, embarrassed beyond belief. So much for establishing my authority in the classroom.
What a rookie mistake. In addition to being mortified, I immediately scrambled to make up with them – especially the girl who had asked the cheeky question, Sue F. a perfectly lovely girl with a deceptively sweet face and a will of iron. It took some time to be forgiven, but eventually we reached détente. I confess I continued stepping in muck over the coming months in my other classes, too, often with somewhat less than brilliant boys who, while never mean seemed to get a kick out of messing around with me from time to time, metaphorically speaking that is. Often as not, they were hockey, rugby or football players.
Further confounding the situation, I found myself so attracted to one of them, a handsome devil named Simon who was team captain that I blushed furiously whenever we made eye contact. I’m pretty sure he had a little crush on me, too, but I was a newly-wed for heaven’s sake! What was happening to me?! The solution I arrived at was to engage him in conversations and ask questions about his girlfriend – a perfectly gorgeous girl with a big 80s hairdo, whom I nicknamed Miss Texas, which pleased him enormously – and tease him about being a ‘good’ boyfriend. Anything to keep that rosy flush from spreading across my face. His farewell comment at the end of the school year, written to me under his front row center team picture in the yearbook, was perfectly charming. I was flattered to read he would miss me, relieved to hear him refer to us as friends, and happy to learn that he would be bringing Miss Texas to graduation where I could finally meet her. I looked forward to it.
