Chapter Forty-Five: A Mime, A Wrestler, A Soldier, A Sailor and an Officer

Chapter 45: A Mime, A Wrestler, A Soldier, A Sailor and an Officer

I start 2003 much the way I started at Prospect last May, with a flurry of hiring – six new teachers to be exact.

I went into Christmas Break knowing I’d have to hire three teachers: the two Title One positions and another I’d budgeted for based on enrollment projections. I was actually pretty excited about hiring those three teachers since the “vacation” provided me the time to focus on reading resumes and interviewing without the daily stress of running the school. I found three candidates I felt very positive about. I used the interview tip provided by my mentor, Rex. He told me it’s not the specific questions or answers that are key, it is more the sense you get as you converse – do you feel a bond, chemistry? For this approach, I have to use the other side of my brain, but I think get it. When I think back to my interview with “Doctor” she aced all my questions and had all the qualifications and then some, but when we spoke, she sort of “creeped me out.” I remember feeling annoyed and irritated by her. My discussions with my three new candidates are just the opposite. After conducting enough phone interviews to wildly exceed my mobile minutes for the month, I find them: two black women and one white man, all veterans, two Army and one Navy. I so enjoy talking with them I don’t want the interviews to end and I sense they feel the same.

One of them is Frank, but he wants to be called Theo. He is an experienced and recently retired math teacher from Scranton, Pennsylvania, an Army veteran with experience teaching urban poor students. He sounds tough but with a compassion for children – when he talks about his former students and his grandson (who he and his wife are raising) Theo’s voice lights up. Theo isn’t as creative as former math teacher, Noreen, but he seems far more honest and trustworthy. I can encourage and develop creativity in a teacher. I don’t know how to teach honesty and morality.

Dana has a Master’s Degree in English and grew up in Jamaica. She and her husband are both retired Navy and they are now raising four school age children here in Lakeboro. Dana is bursting with wonderful, creative ideas for our Title One reading program. She is familiar with children’s literature and is passionate about working with at-risk children. My cell phone battery almost dies we talk so long.

Valerie was an Army brat who grew up to become an Officer. A single parent raising a kindergarten-aged son, she loves mathematics and science. Valerie would rather work with poor, challenging middle school students than with “typical” children. She is a computer whiz, no nonsense with a sense of humor. I want her for my Title One math teacher.

I was patting myself on the back for finding, recruiting and hiring Theo, Dana and Valerie, though my self-congratulatory moments were tainted by the end-of-Christmas Break departure of Daphne. But I rallied with two “back up” resumes: The Mime and The Wrestler. Neither The Mime nor The Wrestler gave me that same warm feeling I got with Theo, Dana and Valerie, but at least I didn’t get that skin crawling feeling I got when I spoke with Doctor. The Mime is a bit too effervescent and emotional which sort of annoys me while The Wrestler is laconic, shy or just really quiet which sort of unnerves me. I will count on Jordan and Sam to give me feedback and their preference for working with The Mime, The Wrestler or neither.

I feel like the hiring situation is under control, but at Prospect there is ALWAYS another shoe waiting to drop.

It is 7:10 am. I am driving to work and answering cell phone calls. Teacher Yvonne calls to tell me she is sick and won’t be in today. Stephanie, the orientation leader calls next. She was in the hospital over Christmas Break having a kidney stone removed, but they couldn’t get it so now she has a shunt and she starts to give me more details about having to urinate into a strainer to “pan” for the elusive kidney stone, but I stop listening for fear of losing my recently consumed yogurt. Then I become suspicious, I have learned that when employees call in sick and give me TMI (too much information) they are often lying. It crosses my mind that Stephanie may be taking a sick day not due to physical pain, but for emotional pain regarding the departure of Rufus, her new “love-of-her-life.” I read in the morning paper that Rufus’s Army reserve unit just got called up and will be heading to Kuwait today. No time to ponder, the cell phone rings again. Before I can stop her, my PE teacher, Billie launches into a long and very disgusting story about her dog. Yesterday her dog had some wound that was “squirting blood” so, Billie explains, she put a sanitary napkin on the wound but she wanted to keep checking it and like a perverse child picking a scab, Billie kept unwrapping the sanitary napkin from the wound and every time she did the blood would start to “squirt” again. So last night she took the dog to the vet and he cauterized the wound and bandaged it (presumably not with a sanitary napkin) but Billie decided to “check it” before work today (naturally) and guess what, it started to squirt blood so Billie is taking the dog back to the vet and she’ll be late today. I am too busy gagging to ask her for an ETA. But wait, one more phone call to round out the morning. Ruth, the cafeteria manager, has a dear friend who is dying somewhere near Miami. She calls to tell me she is driving south right now to care for her. I hang up and walk in the office where Lynne greets me with a fax that just arrived. I nod absently, strategizing how to configure my team to cover all these absences, but Lynne insists I read the fax immediately.

The fax is from North Carolina, from a bank, from a man with the same last name as my sick teacher, Yvonne. Oh, it’s from Yvonne’s father’s office. The fax is Yvonne’s resignation. I am momentarily baffled. Less than an hour ago she called in sick but now she is faxing from North Carolina to say she quits?

I forget about strained urine and Kotex covered canines. Yvonne’s departure means I need to hire yet another teacher. I jump on it and set up an interview with a teacher candidate who tells me he was a principal at a charter school in Michigan but left because he “got bored.” As we talk I realize this guy isn’t passing the “Rex test”, but I am desperate for teachers so after he departs, I do a reference check. When I call one of his former supervisors, she tells me he was a slob and threw chalk at his students. I decide I’m not that desperate. Strangely, before I can call to tell him thanks but no thanks, he calls me to say he just got a better position and he must resign. How can he resign before I offer him the job?

Jordan and Chris tell me they like The Mime but that The Wrestler isn’t bad either. Fine, teacher shortage solved: I hire both The Mime and The Wrestler. The Mime will replace Daphne, The Wrestler will take Yvonne’s class. Neither one can hold a candle to Theo, Dana and Valerie, but they are both “certifiable” (possibly in every sense) and I do need teachers. I make another decision as I shuffle staff to cover for my absent employees: I decide it is imperative to have some substitute teachers I can call on when needed.

With teeth-gritting determination I take home the eight-page list of approved substitute teachers for Herald County public schools and start calling. I skip no one. I offer ten dollars more per day than the public schools. It makes no difference. No one wants to work with my student population. After going through all eight pages I have only three tentative “yeses.” They are coming in tomorrow.

The first sub candidate brings her husband to the interview. She says she was afraid to come on campus without him. This is not promising. After a brief interview in which it is clear she is not interested, she offers this advice: “you should find a big, strong man to substitute.”

The second potential sub is very upbeat and talks a tough game. I give her a quick orientation and a walkie-talkie and ask her to cover Buffy’s elementary class while Buffy takes orientation. Lynne bets she’ll only last until lunch. Lynne is wrong. She lasts just over an hour and leaves in tears saying she never heard such language “in all her born days.”

I find myself trying to convince the third substitute to quit before she starts. Her lip quivers and she says she can handle it. I put her in Buffy’s room and check on her every 30 minutes or so. She lasts until dismissal but at 4:00 she hands me the walkie-talkie, tells me she will never be back and wishes me luck.

Three strikes and no more batters on the roster. But I am not easily defeated. I shred the approved substitute list and call the local unemployment office. Substitutes don’t need to be certified or certifiable. The unemployment office has two candidates to send me, both already drug tested and background checked. One was a prison guard the other a probation officer.

The Prison Guard is a screamer. When she isn’t yelling at the students she is in my office shouting on the phone. She calls her lawyer and social worker and a judge and her x-husband spewing out details on her child support and custody arrangements. Lynne doesn’t have to eavesdrop, all the phone conversations are conducted at the same earsplitting volume. At the end of her first day The Prison Guard approaches Lynne to demand her pay. Lynne explains we have to send a voucher to Tampa and the pay will come in about two weeks. The Prison Guard loses any semblance of sanity and starts screaming at Lynne, at me, at strangers who walk in the office. Lynne offers to try to expedite payment and after several phone calls she tells The Prison Guard the check will arrive in two days, on Friday, by UPS. The Prison Guard continues to substitute teach the next two days. She is awful, but she is a warm body and with our current teacher shortage we need her. On Friday the UPS man drops off some parcels but no check. As the brown truck drives off and The Prison Guard realizes there is no check she takes off, on foot, waving her arms, chasing the truck screaming. It is a strange sight.

That was the last time we saw The Prison Guard. When her check arrives the following Monday, we mail it to her.

The other substitute from the employment office is too good to be true. Marci, the probation officer, has only completed two years of college so I can’t hire her as a teacher, but her rapport with the students combined with her enthusiasm, flexibility, creativity and tough demeanor make her one of my most valuable staff members. I hire her as a full-time substitute teacher. Her pay is low and the budget is stretched but it is such a relief to know when a teacher calls in sick I have a plan B. Of course when more than one teacher is absent I am still in a bind, but hiring Marci is one my smarter moves!

When cafeteria manager Ruth phones to say she will stay with her dying friend until the end, Lynne and Shasta pick up the slack and scramble to make sure our students have food to eat. Having to take on this responsibility in addition to their regular jobs is stressful. Empowered by my Marci experience, I make a call but this time not to the unemployment bureau, but to Kelly Temp services. They promise me a trained cafeteria worker within a week. They do and she is fantastic, in many ways she is better than Ruth. For example, I never hear Lenora say “nigger.”

Staff math: on one side of the equation I added Theo, Dana, Valerie, Marci and Lenora. On the other I have The Mime, The Wrestler and for a few days at least, The Prison Guard. When I add it up, I’m not sure, but I think I'm ahead.