In the spring of 1987, at the end of my first year of teaching, I went to the Pleasant Valley High staff barbecue, partly to be semi-sociable (I have always been an avowed anti-social-ist, though Lisa finds it "amazing" and "scary" how relatively non-misanthropic I’ve become), and partly in celebration of what was perceived on the PeeVee campus as a victory (of then principal Bob Bonds [and thus, us]) over the district, but mostly to say good-bye to Frankie Hunter. My yearbook advisor at Chumash High, my senior-year Independent Study teacher there (where she gave me a classic every other week to read and about which to write), my first assistant principal, a woman who pushed for my hiring (to lengths of which I am continuing to hear more stories even to this day), my credential renewal advisor (overseeing my state-mandated 150 hours of professional growth activities every five years), and my mentor, Frankie had just been named the new principal back at my alma mater, Chumash. This was her last function at PeeVee. So I thought I should be there.
Frankie was a chain-smoker. She made no bones about that fact. Until the district outlawed any smoking anywhere on a school campus in 1993, if you came into her office, you had better be prepared to breathe fire and smoke. I didn’t know it then, but she had already had one bout with cancer. This explained her hair, which was cropped much shorter than it ever was when she was teaching; I never thought to question, I just thought it was a new look. Every year, during the Cancer Society’s national "Smoke Out," Frankie was sponsored by at least two dozen members of the staff. It never worked. She kept puffing away. Needless to say, I was happy the BBQ was outside.
Today, though, for the first time, I saw Frankie with a drink in her hand as well, a can of beer. It didn’t phase me, but it was different. She was a smoker, that was her vice. Lund--mentor two--now, he was a drinker; this I knew even when I was his student. But I had never seen Frankie with a beer before. Of course, it made me more comfortable holding my own (for which at least a dozen members of the faculty jokingly asked for my i.d., looking at me with incredulity when I showed it to them... only twenty-four, and by far the youngest member of the staff).
Terry and I must have shared fifteen minutes of quiet time together that afternoon, finishing our round and starting another. Tongues loosened. She said that she was proud of me, that she knew that I was a Young Turk, the wave of the future, that I was the right choice as the new 2 Honors teacher. I told her that she had been a major influence on my deciding to go into teaching. She asked why. I told her that it was the fact that she never was afraid to try something new.
I reminded her how she taught Shakespeare to us in my senior year. Not the usual canon, not Hamlet, mind you, but Richard III. Then she had us do research on the historical Richard, and present group projects on how aspects of the Shakespearean Richard were distortions of the historical Richard (she had always been a Plantagenet apologist... she gave me a book on Richard before she left Oxy... I have it to this day). She always fostered a healthy sense of skepticism.
She smiled at my story. She said that if it was risk-taking that I liked about her, then I hadn’t seen anything yet. I asked her what she meant, and she only cryptically stated that she had "plans" that would "shake up" some thinking at Chumash. I laughed out loud. I "cheer"-ed her on. I told her that I was going to miss her at PeeVee, but that one day, I would work under her principalship at my alma mater.
She and I have never been "huggy." But she reached out and touched my arm, and whispered, "Someday..."
And she lit up another cigarette.
No comments:
Post a Comment