Mendel Letters 100 — Teacher Man Again
After I was laid-off in September 1975, I called the Central Office of the New York City Board of Education the last week of August and the first week of January to find out if my “list” for hiring had been “unfrozen.” I was on both a middle school and high school list but the answer was always the same, “Sorry, no.” When I called just before Labor Day in September 1978, I was told no again. By that point I resigned myself to driving a bus for another year and maybe forever. Labor Day was Monday. On Wednesday I got a call that my high school list was unfrozen and I should report to Charles Evans Hughes High School in Manhattan the next day for an interview. YES! YES! YES! I scheduled a morning meeting with the Social Studies Department chair because I didn’t have to report to the bus depot until 2 PM on Thursday.
The social studies chair wanted to know if I could teach 9th grade non-western history and economics and if I could start the next day. I said “of course, of course” to the classes although I didn’t have much of a background in either subject. I had waited a long time and I wasn’t turning anything down. The start date was a problem because I wanted to leave transit on good terms; you never know what is going to happen so I had to give notice. I met with the East New York Depot Chief and we worked out that because I had vacation time coming I only had to work through Sunday. On Monday morning I was Teacher Man again.
Things at Hughes were not smooth sailing and it took me most of my first year to figure out how to become even a partially effective teacher. During my prep periods I watched people who I respected teaching by looking through the window in the back doorway. I learned two especially helpful things from them — relationship and structure. If you have a positive relationship with your students and your classes are structured so that students know what to expect, ninety percent of the problems don’t happen and problems that do arise can be handled.
At Hughes I came up with an idea to combine my teaching with my activism. In my economic classes we looked at the difference between national, state, and local government responsibilities and budgets. I also invited speakers to discuss local current events issues including a city council member, a taxicab union organizer, and the assistant director of the community center. The result was formation of a student club, the Forum Club, and the club’s Save Our School’s campaign.
Students in my economics class prepared presentations with charts showing how much money New York City schools were requesting for their budgets and how much the Board of Education and the City’s Board of Estimate were allocating, which was progressively less. Students from my classes who were members of the Forum Club then signed up to speak at public hearings to present their reports. Our most successful campaign was in 1982 when with support from the teachers’ union students in the Forum Club organized a rally in front of City Hall attended by an estimated 4,000 high school students from across the city. After the rally student representatives went into City Hall to address the Board of Estimate budget hearing. One of the speakers didn’t say a word, he just starting to play the saxophone. When he finished a committee member asked him why he decided to perform. He explained that the instrument belonged to the school and if music programs were eliminated in the budget he would not be able to play anymore. The rally, the testimony, and the saxophone solo made the newspapers and the Board of Estimate voted to restore music education to the school budget. In celebration, the Hughes Marching Band came to Brooklyn by subway and performed in the United Community Centers East New York Street Fair parade.
Unfortunately Hughes was not a functioning school, one reason there was a vacancy and I was hired. I became involved with the union chapter but most of what we suggested was ignored and during my third year at Hughes the Board of Education announced that the school would be closed. At least by this time I had enough seniority that I would not face lay-off. Instead I was be assigned to another high school and the saga of Teacher Man would continue.
Your son
Hard copies of these typed letters were discovered in an old camp trunk in the basement storage facility of one of the few buildings that remain standing in this Brooklyn neighborhood. The building is quite decrepit and is scheduled for demolition. The letters were found in November 2048 by a teenager who believes they were written by his great-grandfather. The letters are addressed to Mendel, the letter writer’s father, who appears to have been dead for at least six years when his son, whose name we are unsure of, started to write him. The son appears very agitated in some of the letters. With permission from the family, we are publishing them on the date they were written, only 28 years later.
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