Reflections on my contributions to education

For all intents and purposes, I’ve at long last finished with my stint at student-teaching. I’m now enjoying a well-deserved holiday in South Carolina – insert your own snide comments here – before another week of ‘observations’ (i.e. I show up at school, watch 1 class, spend 4 hours in Starbucks, then go back to watch another class) and various other tasks. I can hardly believe I’m done – it’s been a long and arduous few months, and I’m amazed I got through it one piece.

I have to admit that I’m torn between wanting to divulge everything I went through or keeping schtum about it: a few ‘lucky’ friends have been recipients of my tirades and travails. Though I’ve had my up and down moments, this could either turn into a utter bore-fest – as opposed to the rest of the always riveting mini magnum opuses on these very pages – or a schmaltzy Mitch Albom-esque piece of drivel that has everyone inspired to become teachers and rescue the youth of America from the clutches of ignorance and indolence.

As a compromise, I’ll leave out the nasty and the cringeworthy, and instead mention only a few things I observed or learnt about public education, as well as myself. Not to delve too much into my teaching philosophies, but I’ve always believed that teaching is a two-way operation. In other words, the learning process never stops: I have just as much to learn from my students as they do from me. You already know that my students know all about my various escapades in the third world, as well as my friend Dr Wasabi Islam’s dumping habits. I wonder if they actually learnt anything of use.

Here’s what I’ve learnt:

• students are very trusting and way too open with their teachers. The little turds never tired of asking me to use the bathroom or to get a drink of water from the ‘bubbler’ – a New England term that I only just learnt recently. (According to my father, a bubbler is what happens when you lit rip in the bathtub. When I informed my students of this, they immediately committed it to memory.) Anyway, I repeatedly told my students they could only excuse themselves if it was really an emergency. Of course, it always was, and I certainly didn’t want to risk them pissing or soiling themselves. But was it really necessary for ----- to call me over, ask me to lean down so she could whisper that she had to use the bathroom because she was having her period and it was a mess ‘down there’ and she really, really had to go asap? For the love of God, kid, just bloody well go! These are things that I really don’t need to know.

• that you can never trust students when it comes to their opinions on your fashion. Every day, without fail, I got ridiculed and abused for my fashion sense. Bear in mind here that I will never claim to be a fashionista of any sort. However, I must say this: I feel pretty confident about my smart fashion sense, meaning I like and trust what I wear to work. Though I can’t compete with Dr Wasabi Islam’s exceptional collection of ties, I can boast of a decent enough range, and a couple of fairly nice dress shirts, along with a sports coat or two. And then there are my stripy socks, which tend to get far more favourable than negative reviews. And besides – I sometimes got positive comments from my colleagues (i.e. my peers), which I’ll accept more than from the students. Last week, however, was spirit week, which meant, among other things, that each day had a dressing-up theme. For sports accessories day, I wore my Ukraine top and scarf, which befuddled most; I was the only one amongst 2000+ people wearing something other than Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots or Bruins paraphernalia. For fashion disaster day – the students told me that I could just dress normally for this – I went all out and wore an excessively baggy peachy-orange shirt (which actually did fit me when I was a wee bit heavier a few years ago), a shiny pink tie, a pair of mustard yellow, burnt orange and turd brown striped socks, as well as a dark beige trousers that didn’t match with anything I was wearing.

And what did my students say? That I actually matched and looked nice! I can’t win.

• that they are either distrustful of ‘foreign elements’, downright xenophobic or genuinely mortified that I don’t know Manchester inside and out. Three examples:

o Manchester is about 20 minutes away from Massachusetts, and just under an hour to Boston. Not only have well over half of them not been to Massachusetts, but almost all of those who haven’t thought it bizarre that I was even asking them. It’s as if they’re asking themselves, ‘why the hell should anyone want to go to Massachusetts?’

o when I mention that I like ‘football’ and even called it that, there were quite a few murmurs of disapproval. First, anyone who fails to call it soccer is immediately not be trusted. Second, anyone who likes such an effete worldwide ‘sport’ is not to be trusted. And third, anyone who doesn’t like [ice] hockey is not to be trusted. I had one student who was born in Germany: thank goodness for him that I had someone on my side, though even he grew tired of trying to defend me.

o when I told them that I didn’t know a certain coffeeshop on Elm Street – Manchester’s main city centre thoroughfare – I was met with incredulous gasps and looks of utter disdain. I may be mistaken here, but they might have even been talking about Dunkin Donuts.

In the interests of fairness, I ought to point out that, on the whole, my students were all very lovely and I got on well with just about all of them. One class even threw me a surprise ice-cream party and got me a card which they all signed. The best and most inspiring comment had to have been ‘Shit, teacher, you the dope!’ I think that’s a good thing. (The most disturbing might have been the 14 year old asking whether I’d be her facebook friend and then signing off with an ‘x’ – this isn’t Ukraine, sweetheart!)

Most disturbing moment by far: a student, not even one of my own, asking one of my students if HE could have my phone number. When I told my student that that was wrong on so many levels, her response was ‘it’s okay, he’s almost 18’.

Thank goodness I’m done with that place.

My burgeoning career as a soft-porn writer, part II

Part I of this came last summer in Uzbekistan, where I was molested by a young Uzbek woman in the back of a taxi. http://darnellpedzo.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html Whenever I used to ‘fantasise’ about these types of situations, I never envisaged it would happen in the back of an Uzbek taxi. What happened just the other day was a bit more true-to-life, as far as these types of things go.

I was out for a jog along a not-so-busy road on a muggy Sunday afternoon in South Carolina, a few miles down the road from Myrtle Beach. Being the kind-hearted soul that I am, I stopped on a couple of occasions to assist turtles who had strayed a bit too far onto the road. One of the little guys was being particularly stubborn and I was getting exasperated. Somewhat suddenly, a lithe young blonde number in a short red dress slowed her flashy red sports car to a halt to enquire as to what I was doing. I casually asked whether she knew of any tricks to help shoo turtles to back to the side of the road, when she got out and did the same thing I’d so unsuccessfully been attempting, stomping her feet and making gentle cooing noises. If anything risqué or raunchy was going to happen, here was my chance.

But did I take the bait? Of course not. I merely joined in and actually said things like ‘c’mon, little man, go back to where you came from, there’s nothing to see here’. She actually chuckled at this. Between her gesticulations and my cajoling, the little turtle eventually did make a move in the right direction, unlike me. In my defence, this woman was wearing some ridiculously oversized sunglasses. And yes, that’s the best defence I’ve got.

Isn’t this the kind of cliché thing that happens in cheesy porn films? (not that I’d know or anything). I’m tempted to insert a number of various puns here, but will mercifully refrain.

(I blew it, I bet she told herself as she drove off…)

On the beach

Whilst relaxing on the beach, I noticed, from a distance, what appeared to be a couple caked in mud. One of my guilty pleasures, and here’s where all pretence of my manliness goes down the tube, is beauty products, especially cucumber/apricot exfoliating scrubs and mud masks. Those on facebook will no doubt recall the picture of me caked in Dead Sea mud. I can think of few things more appealing than the idea of covering myself from head to toe in mud. (While I’m at, shall I mention what an emotional, sensitive soul I am?) So naturally I was thrilled to bits when I thought that the picturesque beaches of South Carolina had mud baths to offer. I sauntered over in the direction of the couple to enquire as to the whereabouts of this precious mud. You can see where this one’s going…

Imagine my embarrassment as I got closer to them, only to realise that it wasn’t mud they were covered in, but merely skin.

Yes, they were black. That is all.

And I’m not entirely sure why I’m sharing this.

On the golf course

You know you’re going doolally when this is your inner monologue whilst golfing in the early morning hours with your father. I’ve never been much of a fan of the ‘that’s what she said’ post-comment riposte. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever used this line, I’m proud to say. Except for this morning, when it repeatedly popped into my head. Surely the golf course is the most natural place for this thing to happen? But it just felt wrong in so many ways – this is my old man after all!

• ‘Damn it, I was getting it in the holes early on and I can’t any more.’
• ‘Jesus, why the hell can’t I get it near the hole’ (let alone in!)
• ‘C’mon, get in the damn hole!’
• ‘Christ, these damn holes are all over the place’

I should also point out that my dear old man is a good church-going Catholic. Oh, if only he knew how I were incriminating him now…

Now this is good

In a sign of just how old I am, it was only mid-way through my first year at university (1994-5) that internet was introduced on campus. This was a major revolutionary moment. I now had one more excuse not to get any work done.

But in these innocent halcyon days, there were no browsers, only the university’s email web server. Still, this was exciting in and of itself. Suddenly we all, or at least I, had a means of communicating with all the cute girls around campus who didn’t go to fraternity parties, without humiliating ourselves by saying something stupid in the dining halls. Now we could save all the stupid stuff for email. And be accused of stalking in the process.

I could share many a cringeworthy story here, but I’ll merely regale you with one. Back in these days, one could ‘finger’ someone else. Before jumping to any conclusions – remember, I’m a failure of a soft-core porn writer – this is email speak for seeing who was online at any given moment. You could also see when someone had last been online (and thus wonder why they hadn’t responded to your email). This was the age when instant gratification and the immaturity that went along with it was all the rage.

Long story short: a girl from St Anselm College in New Hampshire fingered me and we got to chatting. In no time at all, I made plans to visit her and visit her I did for a weekend. Nothing significant happened, though I did have a very good time. And that was really that.

Anyway, a little while later, another girl, from another NH college, fingered me because she said she liked the sound of my last name (Pedzo, remember). Fair enough, I supposed. So we got to chatting and in no time at all…no, I didn’t go visit, but we had some epically long chats into the wee hours, and to this day I still regret submitting by poor roommate Brad to my late night shenanigans. He was a perfect gentleman about this, but his then girlfriend frequently got irritated with me. Hell, at least they had a sex life: here was me trying to get one!

Very early on in the game, she revealed a lot of personal, heavy stuff. And when I say early on in the game, I mean within a couple of days. And when I say heavy, I mean heavy. None of it bears repeating, but it was enough to make any normal, sober-minded man run a mile.

But did I run a mile? Did I, f***!

The chatting went on for a while. Mix tapes were exchanged – mine heavy on Britpop and the likes of Suede and Pulp, hers heavy on the girl power stuff like ‘I Will Survive’ and Liz Phair. Photos were exchanged. She wasn’t bad looking, and though she said she thought I was cute, she was far more interested in my pal Dave. Interested to the point where her hints got heavier and heavier and she kept making enquires about him. I took this all in stride, unsure of whether I wanted to actually meet this girl or not. But then we made plans to do so, at a Red Sox game on Mother’s Day. It was a date.

But not quite…she phoned me late the evening before to cancel, on the grounds that it was Mother’s Day. Lame excuse I thought, but I was nonplussed enough to shrug it off and instead went to the game with Brad, who didn’t mind being second-choice. And that was that, or so I thought.

Dave, my planned roommate for 2nd year, transferred to Penn, and so I had a nice double room to myself for the year. Not long after he had arrived at Penn, this girl got in touch with him. I don’t think photos or mix tapes were exchanged – I had of course shown Dave her photos – but they did chat a bit and she did tell him the same hot and heavy stuff in the early days. She really wanted to meet, but he resisted her advances and she eventually stopped making entreaties.

All this ended back in 1995, and that was that. Or so I thought.

So, what happened next?

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. I can be a bit slow at times – hell, most of the time rather: I’m surprised it took me as long as did to work this out. The most challenging part of my day, and I might be the only teacher who says this, is/was lunch hour, when I had to spend 48 minutes in the faculty lunch room, feigning interest in most unriveting inane, banal small talk. It was downright painful most of time, excruciatingly so every now and then. Part of the problem is me: I’m just an anti-social bastard who can’t be bothered. And I’ve got neither the time nor inclination (nor ability) to engage in mindless banter, especially of the sexual innuendo variety. A lot of the stuff I heard in there was shocking. And this is in a public high school, mind.

Perhaps you can see where this one is going, so I’ll cut right to the chase: the woman in the faculty room, the loud-mouthed, overly obnoxious, full of herself, has to be the centre of attention, always discussing her failure of a love life and why she can’t get dates, not-pleasant to look at, looks 10 years older than she really is…is her. Once I’d found out her full name and put two and two together, I realised who it was. I could then recall the earlier photographs and the resemblance was there. And immediately I wondered whether she knew who I was.

And I’m still stumped.

My question: do I say anything to her in my last week? In a way, if she’s known all along who I am, I kind of want her to know that I’ve only recently discovered her true identity. A part of me is pretty embarrassed though. I was thinking of sharing it with another teacher, but I’m not really on those kinds of terms with other teachers.

And so I’ll let this fester in my head for a while. And wonder to myself what could have been.

And thank my lucky stars that it wasn’t.