Banner Photo: Alicia with Grandma Smith.

In the fall of 1978 I was a licensed teacher, so what now, teach? I did this because my wife and I wanted summers off together; really, was this why I was here, or did I do it for the challenge of another degree? Whatever the reason this wasn't the right field for me, but here I was conforming to the will of the woman in my life, "By dang you'll be this or that, whatever I want." I've heard women say this before, "You take the man and make him into what you want," or women are the driving force behind the man, and Beth if you are reading this, sorry, this is how I see it I didn't know what I wanted, but I wanted to make a living. The thing I like was art, and I had long ago on my recovery bed decided I didn't want to be an art teacher, I wanted to paint, but not teach it. God knows I didn't have the will to teach kids, but I made myself believe I did. It was a status symbol. "What do you do?" They'd ask me, "I teach and I preach?" They'd think, poor soul, he's a giver. I wanted to preach, but I didn't want to teach. First, all day you lower your vocabulary to the grade you are teaching, and next you're spending what off time you have talking to other teachers.

I did a good job of teaching elementary classes, but no one set me up for the politics of teaching. Yes, teaching is a political system, and the gods know I wasn't a politician like my Momma. My point of view was that teaching was my responsibility. The school provided the curriculum with my students getting them ready to handle the next grade level, the next level of learning the basics, and it was a big responsibility. The biggest problem with our education system is the time off in the summer months, it's like overlapping leaves on a table where one third of a leaf covers the one before, and all thirteen years go like this from K-12. The first quarter of school was trying to reteach them the things they forgot in the previous grade. You get a good flow going, and then it is Christmas break, and another start at the beginning of the second semester, and on it goes into college, use it or lose it. I was losing myself. I wasn't built to teach kids, and I didn't have the patience. Beth would tell me you're an excellent teacher, but I was demanding, I wasn't the teacher everyone loved to love. I settled in, and I taught at several schools for six and a half years, until I was fired. Yep, I was canned.

During open season on teachers (called Open Duck Season) in Missouri, they either fired you or they keep you. Basically, every none-tenured teacher can be fired without cause or reason during this season, and after seven years of service you attain tenure and can't be fired without stated cause. If you're fired out of the season, it means they've broken my contract, and because of this they lost, and had to pay the remainder of my contract. It wasn't good enough they fired me, they fired my wife Beth with an infant daughter, and they concocted this reason. They made up a certain tale and pushed for her removal. They had to rehire her, but I was out. Here I was with just one job, as a town co-minister. In 1986, my life fell apart, and I was fired for the second time in my life, but I'm getting ahead of myself; lets backtrack to the interim years, between 1978 and 1986.

My first job out of graduate school was a tiny school. Beth didn't like big city schools, so that was out of the question, and we scurried around to find a school that would both take us. It would be south of Gilman City and I spent one year where I teach as best I can, kindergarten for half day and math and shop for the other half. I like kindergarten back in the eighties before kindergarten became a "prep-school." Here were fresh slates, brains ready to be trained, little people you could mold, and hopefully they were potty-trained before they came to us, but thirteen-year olds, and math class was not for me Yikes, with want-a-be high schoolers, but we did okay, because I was learning math as I taught it, and yeah, college teaching math did little to help me out with this. My left brain was destroyed in the accident and I didn't like math even before that, and Grandmother, also a lifelong teacher, had a hard time with it, as well. But we managed, the math class and me. I really liked the job teaching shop, one student in this small school, and the one outdoor building. They wanted me to teach metal working as well, where's I had zero experience. I refused. They sent them anyway, and I could only imagine the liabilities if one of the student metal workers got hurt on my watch, because I was unqualified. This was the life of small school education, you don't have the funds to hire enough teachers, because you don't have enough students for the class to justify the expenditures. I was not rehired. This was not working out. Another school hired me for my discipline of students, and they needed me for a particularly rough class. This class had run their previous teacher out of the classroom, stripped down naked, painted their bodies, and one student set fire to his desk. The teacher didn't return; a sub handled them for the rest of the year, and then I came in.

Beth and I had two children by 1983. For the 1983-84 school year, we're still co-ministering at the Methodist Church in Gilman City when we accepted the new school job. During our first year of employment there, we continued to drive back and forth from our home in Gilman City. We were employed for a total of four years there. I loved my churches, always right at home and ready to preach. I've written a couple of short stories about my churches but will not tell them here, as they are, well, private and it's a breach of protocol for a minister to kiss and tell. If you want to read any of them I will send you to my short stories, but I shouldn't have been a teacher, and by this time, Alicia, my middle child was one. The first year I drive back and forth to my school some forty miles away, Beth and I drive separately with who knows what hours that were never in sync. The first year I shared a ride with the shop teacher, who lives along the way. I picked him up, and he either drove the rest of the way or I did. I was told up front by the Superintendent I had my work cut out for me, and she gave me the background for this group of fourth graders. I was in shock, how am I going to handle a class like this, fire starters, and impromptu insurrectionists/nudists, and I just needed to be stern.

I walked into the classroom, and I didn't see anything unusual, not yet. In fact, I never really did, because they were just rambunctious children looking for a challenge, not any different from my class growing up. I gave all my student IQ tests at the beginning to see what I was dealing with. All my students tested normal, 85 to 115, and I never had anyone out of the norm, except for this time when I had a student who tested at 151, and it blew me away; so I retested, and the second IQ test result gave me the same results. I had a genius in my class. This boy's idea of fun was to read the dictionary from cover-to-cover. This school was more advanced than most small schools in the area; this one had special education, but not for the advanced students. No one in my class was less fortunate, but I had a prodigy. How was I going to keep him interested, and teach normal students? He really needed to be two or three grades ahead of this class, but my wife told me she was put a grade ahead, and she claimed it hurt her socially. Two years later she was put back to her normal grade, and she felt that was not the right thing to do, either. I left the gifted student alone. I let him do what he wanted, and provided what I could for him to learn. He was going to make an A no matter what, and until all schools in the area recognized advance students needed special care, we were not going to serve gifted students well. I failed him.

The Superintendent wore high heels, and you could hear her coming everywhere in the building. You just hoped it wasn't for you. We got along for the first two years, then the third year the school board released her from her contract, and hired a man, and a new principal. The second and third year I taught second grade, and did okay, I wasn't going to be nominated for teacher of the year, here we were with a new superintendent and new principal. The politics of it was getting along with the bosses. You see, I saw only my class as my concern, and not the school board or the superintendent's team. That did great for my previous superintendent, but it didn't go well for the second one. I spoke my mind; I said what I wanted and often, frankly it was not very tactful on my part. I annoyed the Board of Education. I had served my purpose of getting that out of control group of fourth graders on their way to fifth grade, and I believe they saw me as a leftover, like a hangnail, that you have to snip off, from the old administration. In my third year, the Superintendent accused me of misusing my sick days, and fired me. They remove my students and I return to an empty room. He follows me to my classroom and tells me to leave, I am beside myself and I shove him out of the room, then my neighbor, the head of the school board came to tell me to leave, so I left charged with insubordination. I was a reactionary.

The charge of insubordination was real, but the other charge of misusing my sick day was without justification, and was trumped up. I was at the doctor's office. I called my doctor to justify my claims. The doctor came on line, and she verified where I was; the Superintendent hung up on her. I was set up on an argument I had with the board on sick days the previous year about funeral attendance for family members. I thought they should extend to funeral days for siblings, but they did not. As long as the Superintendent who hired me was there, I was protected, but the moment she wasn't, it was clean up time. At the end of the day, my wife came home and told me they'd fired her, as well, on some trumped up charge; it was time to start over. I was devastated. I told my wife I was going back to work in a factory in my hometown area, which I did, while she remains fulfilling her duties as minister. The school had to rehire her because the charges, they know full well, wouldn't stand up in a court of law; however, I am the lone one out.

Continued...