Desperate, I read Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol for the first time in December 1972. I had just replaced — I’ll call her Mrs. Cratchit because I don’t remember her name — who had been driven into early retirement by the 44 6th graders sitting before me.
That’s right, 44. It was a Catholic school. My Catholic first-grade class had 60.
I say sitting, although that sounds like a regular classroom with a teacher in control. It was nothing like that.
Sister Nancy, the Principal who hired me, was also desperate. Mrs. Cratchit, to save her sanity, had decided not to return after Thanksgiving break. I would learn later that this group was the subject of several evening meetings with parents. Sister thought a man might bring order to the chaos.
I was 23 and had just earned a teaching certificate. With a few education classes, a student teaching semester, and a few months monitoring study halls at a local high school under my belt, I was a babe in the woods.
With a penis.
About to be thrown into the fire.
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The penis part was relevant not only to Sister Nancy but to that young man. I quit every night, and I mean EVERY night, for the rest of that school year because I thought I was in over my head with no hope.
It wasn’t just the unruly kids. My academic major was Sociology — wasn’t it everyone’s in the early 1970s? But I had a self-contained class, meaning I taught everything.
I’ll leave math for another day. English was hard enough — there’s a reason I’ve hired Grammarly! Rooting around my classroom closet, I found copies of The Christmas Carol.
I bet you didn’t know there are exactly 44 characters in this Dickens classic. Of course not, but we read it out loud and acted out a few scenes. I also ordered the 1938 Alistair version from the local Education Agency, which is still my favorite.
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Only in hindsight do I see that I was slowly figuring out this teaching gig. I’ve linked below a story about another nun who helped me figure things out.
At the moment, it mainly was chaos. And what it means to stick with something very hard without knowing exactly how it will end.
In May 1973, I handed out 44 report cards. Then, I went to Sister Nancy’s office and signed a contract for the following year.
I had become a teacher.
And had taken a step toward becoming a man.
To that kid, the experience suggested the possibility of redemption — an internal resource he has carried with him for fifty years.
