A Gifted Interlude: My Third Job in Georgia

  When last we left my rocky career path, I was working at WKRW, the radio station owned by the couple that helped found the community theatre I participated in, The Pumphouse Players.

As detailed in last week's blog, WKRW in Cartersville, this was an interesting position but not one that was financially lucrative for myself or the owners. In addition, there were some harrowing experiences within my marriage, above and beyond money considerations, that made it difficult for me to stay.

One of those was a miscarriage. Anyone who thinks that is not a significant life event - well, you're wrong. It was devasting to Retta and me. It led to anguish and depression.

I needed to get out and have something more solid we could rely on.

Retta was a special education teacher with the Bartow County Schools. She had a great rapport with her staff and administrators.  

When an opening came up for a teacher in their Gifted program, I used those connections to help me get the job. This was sometime in the early Fall of 1980. I was replacing somebody who left unexpectedly.

I was excited. I never thought I would get a chance to teach again,  And having networked connections saved me the embarrassment of cold interviews.

The position was for an itinerant teacher, traveling between several schools and teaching different groups of gifted students, ranging from Kindergarten to Eighth Grade.  

Like the first time I taught, I started out like gangbusters. They let me organize a Presidential debate and mock Electoral College convention. It crossed the whole system, and every gifted student participated. The director of the Gifted Program and Special Education Director were very impressed.  

After that, I was significantly less impressive to them. I tried, but there was no actual assigned curriculum, and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. So I did the best I could.

The students seemed to like me. We did a good number of games that involved thinking and strategic skills.  

In the Spring, the Special Educator Director said I wouldn't be back the next year because I didn't have the proper courses to remain certified. I don't know how they didn't know this as soon as they hired me, but c'est la vie. I told him I could get the coursework over the summer if he would give me a chance. He reluctantly agreed.

I can't remember where I got the coursework. It was not a school close by. It might have been West Georgia. I'm just not sure. It took a lot of travel, that's all I remember.

I did several things to try to make it work. I donated many children's books to their libraries, using them as books that the Gifted kids could read and take out. I'm not sure that would go over today, what with all the careful censorship and control taking place. Kids might accidentally learn slavery is terrible or something.

I created a fantasy game for the middle school students, dungeon and dragon style games for them to explore mazes and mythology and utilize their thinking and creative skills. This was interesting because I had never played Dungeons and Dragons before. It was my spin on what I thought it was like.

We created TV schedules with program descriptions, and then other classes would pick which ones they wanted to watch. Then they would refine their schedule to improve their ratings for the next time.

I did not just have them play games willy-nilly. There were points and standings, depending on how well the kids did. And that is where I got in trouble.

A parent complained, and the Gifted Program Director reamed me for it. I learned my lesson. No more competitions.

The Gifted Program Director took more rigid control over what the students did. For example, she thought it was a great idea to have kids contribute a square to a quilt, one depicting Bartow County history.   Not every kid thought this was the best idea on Earth, and I certainly had no skill. Nevertheless, I learned cross-stitch and depicted part of a county power plant.

The final straw for the Directors involved a student coming over from a different school system. He was in a gifted program at his prior school, and they put him in one of my classes. He was a behavior problem, but I gradually learned to work with him.

They decided they wanted to test him. However, they assured the parent this was for internal purposes only, and they would keep him in the program regardless of the results.

They lied. He fell short in their testing, and they decided to boot him from the program. To add to the anguish, he was black. The only black student in the county's Gifted Program.

When the parent challenged it, they wanted me to lie and say that we did not assure the parent that the child would stay in the program. I refused to lie about it.

Early in the Spring, the Special Education Director decided I would not be back for the next school year. This time, there was no talking my way out of it.

It is a point of pride that I stuck with the job for the next couple of months and did the best that I could. I hate rejection. I can't stand it when I know people don't like me. Staying there was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But I saw it through.

I had tried to be a teacher twice, and I had struck out twice. I was not going to get a third swing of the bat. It was over.

I was lost. I was depressed. I had some serious thinking to do.

I did not want to disrupt the flow of the story, but I think it important to note that we did try again after the miscarriage, and proud to have our son, Gregory Rountree Strait, born October 23, 1981.

Cass City Fading Blues

My first real job, beyond after-school and summer jobs, was as a teacher at Cass City High School.

Given the current talk of teacher shortages, it is hard to remember that in the late 70s, there was an oversupply of teachers. This was particularly true of social studies teachers, whom I had more than one person tell me were "A dime a dozen."

I started at the University of Michigan as Pre-Law. My dorm room faced the Law School, and I dreamed of being a lawyer someday, if not Perry Mason, at least Clarence Darrow.

Things did not go that way. I had a girlfriend whose father passed, and I was concerned about how she would pay for her schooling. I thought the School of Education would get me out earning money sooner if she needed help.

Well, it wasn't long before she broke up with me. Heartsickness and inertia kept me on the same course. I also found out how poor an advocate I was when I took college Debate and was beaten by two football players (and, yes, I know that football players can be academic achievers - however, these two did not fall into that category).  

My student teaching went well, assisting with Social Studies and US History at Willow Run High School. The town had many Southerners who had come up starting in World War II to work at the Willow Run munitions plant. Many of the students still spoke with a heavy Southern accent.

I constructed a big game around the Horatio Alger myth (that all it took to be rich was pluck and hard work). Students took on different roles and tried to improve their economic and social condition. Those already rich had plenty of advantages, and the deck was stacked against the poor. I'm not sure this game would fly today, what with the great WHITEwashing of American History that is going on.

After graduating, I tried to blanket the Michigan school systems with letters and resumes. It's not like today - each letter had to be hand-typed on my old Smith-Corona. My typing skills were poor, and my error rate was high, so this took some time.

I got a few interviews, but the primary question was always the same - "What'dya coach?"  There was a tremendous prejudice that social studies teachers needed to coach athletics to justify one's existence.

Finally, only a few weeks before the school year began, I was interviewed by Cass City. They had a position open, but not for Social Studies. It was to teach English and Speech, two subjects I had minored in. They also wanted a Debate coach. I did not explain my dismal history with Debate but bluffed my way about how good I could do.

I got the job.

I thought I had no pictures from this time, but last week, while looking for other photos, I stumbled across this album I had forgotten about that had some grotesquely faded photos from that time.

The picture above shows me at my desk. I don't remember who the student was. If you can see the board, what was written was "Intellectual Dodge Ball." That sounds like something I would try to pull off.

The student pictured above was part of our Debate Team. His name was Tim, and he was a very brilliant student.

We had little resources to pull for debate prep, mostly Newsweek and Time. This was WAY before the internet. Other schools had many more resources, like our neighboring competitor, Caro.

We made up for the lack of resources with sheer bravado and intellect. Our affirmative team had one good solid case to defend backward and forward, displaying extreme confidence. The negative team oozed Willaim Buckley's disdain level and sharpened lines of attacks against all pro cases. The topic that year? Universal health care.

The Debate team received their highest placement ever, 3rd in the state in their class division.

I believe this faded picture from days gone by is the Debate team in a prep session. I am seated near the back.

I taught 9th grade modified English. This was a class for non-college-bound students. They didn't like school, and they didn't want to be there. They represented quite a discipline challenge. I had some students sneak out a window the first week or so. Gradually, though, I developed a system of rewards that motivated them more than grades. Soon, I had students achieving more than they ever had. One student told me it was the first class she had ever gotten an A in, and she finally believed she was smart enough to achieve.  

When the school principal sat in my class in the Fall, he told me it was the best hour of teaching he'd ever seen.

By March, I was told I would not be rehired.

What happened?

I will never fully know, but consider the following -

1) Discipline was never easy for me. It was a struggle. But the Principal reviewed me a third time and said my discipline was much improved. Even so, they had no intention of reversing their decision.

2) In one of my efforts to improve discipline, I tried to get under the control of a student whose parent was on the School Board. Look, my father was my School Principal at Bridgeport. The idea of favoritism stuck in my craw. Suffice to say, even though I thought I got the student under control, he must have reached out to his father.   It wasn't until later that I found out that the student had gotten other teachers fired who dared to challenge him.

3) During the Spring of that year, the teachers of Cass City went on strike. One of the issues was hiring first-year teachers and then firing them before they got tenure in order to keep wages low.

The bottom line was that I felt defeated and scummy. My teaching career was over before it really began.

And that's the beginning of how I wound up in Georgia.