I've absorbed some heavy hits in my life, but none can compare to the pain I feel today as I inform you, my beloved students, that effective immediately I am resigning from the English department at McCloskey Technical High School. This is entirely my choice. While I am a contoversial teacher, I was not "forced out" by the administration. I do hope, however, that the following lines will serve to clarify my decision.
If there's one piece of advice I can impart to you, it would be "act on your beliefs." I believe in a country where one out of four children is not on foodstamps, where 46% of the Bronx population is not dependent on foodstamps, and where nine out of ten minority children have not, at one time or another, relied on foodstamps. In short, I believe in America and I believe in foodstamps, but I do not believe in an America where foodstamps are prevalent to such a degree.
Like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela, I envision a better world. McCloskey Tech, as it is currently structured and run, is not that world. Many students come to McCloskey each morning with an insatiable hunger: a hunger for acceptance, for knowledge, and for the nutritious breakfast all the foodstamps in the world can't provide.
I began teaching when I learned of a teacher shortage in the inner city. Urban America issued a challenge and I responded with every fiber of my being, during every minute of my tenure here at McCloskey. But I am exhausted, my reserves of passion and imagination are spent. In attempting to meet the challenge of teaching, the profession has overly challenged me. The six weeks I've spent on the McCloskey faculty have taken a devastating toll.
None of this is your fault. My absence for the remainder of the school year is no reflection on you. But you are old enough now to watch me bear witness and to hear me speak power to truth as I confront the status quo.
Many of you showed minimal interest in the film I recently screened, "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest." But those of you who weren't talking, sleeping, drinking soda, smoking, or bringing each other to sexual climax may remember the scene in which McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) attempts to uproot a rectangular, marble bathroom fixture and hurl it through the window of the mental asylum where he is held captive. He fails (marble is a very heavy material, particularly when employed in an institutional setting) and the other inmates stare at him. "At least I tried," he tells them.
That is what I say to you today: "By God, I tried." To extend the metaphor, I am Jack Nicholson, you are the inmates, McCloskey is the mental ward, and the educational hierarchy here is the rectangular, marble bathroom fixture.
What do I mean by the "educational hierarchy"? I mean, specifically, my department chair, Dr. Edward Selvin. Allow me to explain something about the title "Dr." This prefix was originally intended for practioners of the art of medicine. Over time, those who earned Ph.D.'s in fields such as physics, chemical engineering, and astronomy began to refer to themselves as Dr. So-and-so. Edward Selvin holds a doctorate in education, but he is not a doctor. He is, in fact, a so-and-so. If you do only one thing to preserve my memory in the halls of McCloskey, please cease to refer to "Dr. Selvin." "Mr. Selvin" or "Ed" will do just fine.
You may think that I spent my time here fighting with you. Yes, we had our disagreements. You graffitied your books, the desks, our classroom, my text, and each other. In anger, I rashly called some of you indolent (lazy), apathetic (unfeeling), oppositional (obnoxious), and claimed you suffered from ennui. This last is a French word, but at least one of you should have been familiar with the other adjectives. Nontheless, my beef is not with you. It is with the theoretical rectangular, marble bathroom fixture: Edward Selvin.
I have won awards for my writing at the state level and was accepted into a prestigious seminar ("Literature of the Uncanny") my senior year of college. Thus when Mr. Selvin notified me that my lesson plans were "poorly written and incoherent," I was aghast (shocked). Do you know what was truly poorly written and incoherent? Mr. Selvin's evaluation of my lesson plans. I did not tell him then, but use this farewell now to alert him to the fact that "rummage" has two m's.
I corrected your essays, read your journals, and heard you crack wise in the halls. Quite simply, you burrowed into my heart. SJ, I'll never forget that Thursday afternoon when you told me of your uncle's death; Shaneequa, I hope you someday see Disneyworld; Leon, if you want to play for the Yankees, you can play for the Yankees; Tasha, a modelling career is within reach (but no more of those videos!); Tibbs, you're #1; Amber, you walk among dinosaurs (I'm sorry I won't be on next week's field trip to the Museum of Natural History).
To all of you I've known and cherished, peace. I will continue to fight the good fight and hope to effect societal change on a larger scale by enrolling in a screenwriting workshop in Tribeca for four days in January. You will live on in my screenplay (tentatively entitled "My Struggle"), which will be based on my time at McCloskey this fall. In the script, your names will be altered, but the dream will never die. You're all a part of me: the best part. Happy Halloween.
