Falling into a Box

by Ginger Keller Gannaway

I never dreamed of being a teacher. In 1965, at age nine, reading was my favorite pastime, and I wanted to be a writer. After seeing Funny Girl in 1968, I wanted to be an actress. As I endured my high school years, my cerebral palsied limitations (a mostly useless left hand and a limping leg) I changed my dreams of being on stage with Barbra Streisand to being her best friend. In college I decided writing was my best option, so I majored in journalism. I switched to creative writing when I realized there was a typing requirement for the compulsory news reporting class. After I spent one thrilling semester as a Creative Writing major Dad said, “English major? You need to switch to Education. Get a job as a teacher.” Since he paid for my education, I followed his demand.

So I endured Statistics, Fundamentals of Education, and Testing Measurements. My eyes glazed over as I watched male professors wearing dark suits and frowns explain a female-dominated profession. I struggled to solve basic math problems as I yearned for poetry and short stories. My student teacher semester was my one worthwhile education class because the supervising teacher was a white-haired angel named Dr. Hair whose sage opinions included “Everyone deserves a year living in New York City.”

Dr. Hair made guiding fifteen-year-olds through literary analysis as natural as eating popcorn at the movies. She gave me the perfect balance of praise and pressure. I guided reluctant teens through recognition of the eight parts of speech and  examples of figurative language. I thought I could be a strong teacher who handled any educational challenge that came my way—until my first day of teaching at Anderson Junior High.

The school was in a small south Louisiana town set literally “on the wrong side of the tracks.” On my first day of work, the principal handed me a wooden paddle – “for discipline.” The English Department chair did not tell me how happy she was to have me at Anderson Junior High when she gave me a key to my classroom. Nor did she ever smile.

In theory the schools in Louisiana parishes in 1978 were integrated; in reality Anderson was 90 percent black, and its faculty included only four white teachers. Most other teachers ignored me, maybe because my pale face looked as soft as my disciplinary skills, and they believed I wouldn’t stay there long enough for them to bother learning my name. Their assumptions were as right-on as fried catfish specials on Fridays in our predominantly Catholic state.

My miscalculations began when I missed the obvious warning sign connected to a teaching job starting in January: a teacher had quit in December! My first day of teaching a class without Dr. Hair nearby was as bad as stepping barefoot into a bed of fire ants. The seventh graders had run off their last teacher the week before Christmas break; in January they took one look at the remnants of my bad perm and my plaid wool skirt with its matching vest and recognized new teacher inexperience.

I’d gotten to school early enough to write the day’s agenda on the blackboard below the day’s date and next to my name in white powdery cursive. The front of the room was cluttered with heavy cardboard boxes filled with that semester’s new grammar workbooks. My department chair, who had looked at and spoken to me as little as possible the day before, said, “Distribute these,” after she concluded our thirteen-minute new teacher orientation.

I straightened the rows of battered wooden desks and the stack of my “Welcome to Seventh Grade Language Arts!” packets. I reviewed the names of the 172 students I would meet that day, and I went over the index cards for my first-day-of-school welcome speech. I said a fast Hail Mary and made the sign of the cross when the first bell rang.

In seconds the halls filled with the noise and energy of thirteen-to-sixteen-year-olds. Our school district did not practice “social promotion,” and a few boys with facial hair sat in seats next to boys whose feet did not touch the floor. I mispronounced at least five names that day, but the students did not hold it against me when I changed the roster’s “Edward” to “Eddie” or made pronunciation notations on “Janie” (a short A beginning and a long E at the end). I think they were still uncertain about where I stood on the spectrum of clueless teachers.

The first time I turned my back on the class to list the “Being Verbs” on the board, I heard a four-second belch and watched a wad of paper flying toward the waste basket near the front door. It missed its mark. After I repeated “Be, am, are, is, was, were, being, and been,” I picked up the wadded paper and dropped it in the trash in movements both smooth and confident. I raised my eyebrows when I realized the paper ball was my welcome packet but remembered Dr. Hair’s advice: “Give students your respect and as much eye contact as possible.” Several kids were smirking, and five occupied desks that had nothing on them, so there was no way I knew which student had tossed the welcome packet my way. I suspected a tall black-haired boy with slits for eyes.

I paced in front of the class and moved to my packet’s next bullet point.

“Who knows what an adverb is?” I said and prayed for an answer. The girl in the front row who had answered every other question that period raised her hand. “Let’s give someone else a chance to answer, Trina,” I said as I looked toward the slit-eyed boy. He leaned back in his seat and folded his arms. I decided to call on someone from my seating chart. “Whitney?” I said. “Could you read the definition of an adverb?” I nodded as she complied. Then, walking closer to the middle row of students, I said “Adverbs give verbs and adjectives more flavor.”  I scanned the seating chart: “David, can you use the adverb ‘quickly’ in a sentence?” 

Slit-Eye snorted, and a thin boy looking lost in what was undoubtedly an older sibling’s pale blue sweater said, “Which one?” I then realized there were two Davids in that class. I chose  “David Fontenot.” The slit-eyed David was ready for me, even as Trina raised her hand and wiggled her splayed fingers.

“Stupid bell can’t ring quickly enough to get us out of here,” David F. said.

Most kids laughed, and a girl with bangs that covered the top half of her eyes clapped and smiled at David. I smiled, too, and said, “I totally agree!”

I then ruined my tiny victory by saying, “Good job, David. Our packet also tells us that adverbs can modify adjectives. Can someone give me a sentence using an adverb that describes an adjective?” By this time, eager Trina had given up on me. Looking over my seating chart I saw a name I loved. “Chloe,” I said. “Will you give us a sentence with an adverb describing the adjective ‘happy’?”

From the back of the room the girl with extravagant bangs aimed her chin at me.  “Adjective?” she said in a husky voice loaded with disdain.

“Trina, please define adjective for us.” 

 With a voice like a defeated postal worker, my former ally said, “Adjectives describe nouns and answer the questions what kind, how many, and which one.”

“Chloe, will you give us a sentence with an adverb describing the adjective ‘happy’? Common adverbs are ‘very’ and ‘too’ as in ‘too much.” I gave her the appropriate wait time to answer. Chloe folded her arms and glared at me still grinning.

I took a deep breath. “Anyone have a sentence with an adverb that modifies ‘happy’?” I said as the ticking of the large round school clock seemed to slow down time. I decided to write some examples on the blackboard. I took three steps backwards forgetting about the cardboard boxes of workbooks. My right heel hit the corner of one that was open and half empty, and my left foot turned sideways as I half-fell, half-sat into the box. My only bit of luck was that my plaid skirt was maxi length and I didn’t “bomb” the class with a view of my underwear.

After two seconds of surprise the class erupted into laughter that unified them against the enemy, the outsider, the one they viewed as a temporary teacher. To get out of the box gracefully, I would have needed a helping hand, but no seventh grader would put a teacher ahead of her reputation—not even Trina. As I spread my feet farther apart, I used my good right hand to grab the metal leg of my desk. My first attempt to pull my butt off of a pile of Houghton Mifflin’s Workbooks for the Fundamentals of Grammar and Writing failed to end my humiliation. I needed to push off with my feet and rock backwards a couple of times to get enough momentum to fall forward onto my knees. The laughter gained strength as if a seasoned comic had followed a dynamite joke with the gag that killed it. Staggering, I ripped out a few inches of my skirt’s hem with my right shoe. I took a long breath as I bent down to retrieve my papers and caught my department chair’s tired eyes looking through my door’s narrow window, probably dreading the search for my replacement so soon.

I mustered a close-lipped smile. “That’s enough,” I said and walked towards a girl laughing and slapping her desk with opened palms and I repeated, “Enough!” The girl stopped the slapping and most kids stopped laughing. I had never before wished I could evaporate into a mist and make everyone in the room forget the last several minutes. The laughter paused, and I felt twenty-seven pairs of eyes focused on me. I cleared my throat and looked at the tops of  their heads. I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, Chloe said, “Bet you ain’t too happy to be here now, Ms. Keller.” 

Despite the fact that she used my name and not the traditional “Hey, miss”; despite her using the adverb “too” correctly with the adjective “happy”; and despite my ability to keep from crying in front of those seventh graders, I could feel nothing but fear in my gut and shame in my soul. How could I ever be a teacher? Why had I not begged my mother to convince my dad to let me major in creative writing? When would be too soon to call in sick to work? What if I quit my job at Anderson and moved back in with my parents? 

I did not hate my students that day. I did not blame the principal, my department chair, or Chloe for my disastrous first day. I accepted that day’s failure and used my 22-year old optimism to get me through that spring semester.

I didn’t realize then that there would be thirty-seven years of teaching ahead of me— instructing junior high students, college freshmen, kindergarteners, and high school seniors. I would become as comfortable in front of a classroom of teens as a crawfish is in a flooded rice field. I would even miss teaching when I became a student teacher field supervisor after I retired from full time teaching. Before this first teaching job, I’d never believed teaching would be my profession. I fell into it like I fell into that box of workbooks.

Sometimes, if we’re lucky enough, we improve our talents and learn to like what we do. And maybe we land in a box built just for us.