Happily, Less Full of Phil

This year provided one of the best last-day-of-school experiences I have ever had; certainly the best in the four-years since my mid-life career change placed me in front of various New Orleans high school classrooms.

The fact that I am slated to start the next school year in the same place I ended the previous one is a celebratory first. Being recognized for the accomplishments of my students via their test scores, developing a strong set of professional relationships at a place I really enjoy working and being part of a team-oriented environment all puts a decidedly different spin on reviewing the past year and looking ahead to the next. Add in the fact that I did most of what I did this year on the fly, being hired a month into the school year at a ‘turn around’ school, and there is a lot of personal and professional satisfaction to be had.

But there is another, doesn’t-show-up-in-the-grade-book stat that points to a successful year: I’m running low on my supply of Phil Dacey’s old poetry journals.

Phil Dacey

Phil is a poet, and a pretty darn good one  http://www.philipdacey.com/ . I first met Phil in the fall of 2003; he was one of my professors in the writing program at Southwest Minnesota State University, and I had the immense good fortune of catching him in his last year before retiring after over thirty years of teaching. As a forty-four year old ‘non-trad’ in a top-notch college writing program, I had a different take on things than my peers, and a different appreciation for some of the different verbal proclivities of some of my professors – Phil included. I was often the only student in the room chuckling at an obscure aside.

I spent my first semester back in school after a fourteen-year layoff in Phil’s very intense poetics class, where we spent the semester working our way through an 810 page volume entitled Poems for the Millennium; the University of California book of modern & postmodern poetry. A book and a class like that can either ignite or squelch a love of poetry. In Phil’s hands, we got to explore. And love. (Well, mostly love) poetry of all kinds.

Phil’s plan for retirement was to move from the plains of southwestern Minnesota to the confines of a New York City apartment. This required divesting himself of a massive collection of books, journals and other poetic paraphernalia amassed over a forty-plus year stretch as a student and teacher, and his preferred method of disposal of these goodies was hallway distribution to anybody who wanted them.

An added, tactile bonus to my first year at SMSU.

It became a routine of many of us: swing by Phil’s office to see what he placed in boxes or simply stacked outside of his office door under a Magic Marker-scrawled ‘Help yourself’ sign. While I snatched a few hard-cover books from my daily office drive-bys, I concentrated mostly on the myriad of poetry journals Phil was releasing from dusty shelf captivity and back into the wild.

I fancy myself a poet, and to be hanging out with and learning from poets like Phil and other SMSU notables every day was an experience that I was soaking in and enjoying to the hilt. The fact that I was also expanding my library exponentially on a weekly basis was just frosting on the cake – though a source of dismay to my wife, who was not a fan of my pack-rat tendencies in general.

But there was a method to my madness. As Phil and his fellow poet-profs reminded us regularly, if you’re going to write poetry, you need to read a lot of poetry. So I did.

To say Phil’s collection of journals was eclectic was an understatement. There were mainstream and underground selections, slick, university press journals and crudely mimeographed, hand stapled tomes and everything in between. Some were very high-brow, many were themed-endeavors of some sort, a lot were outright weird. Many of them were sent or given to Phil for review and were autographed with personal notes; many of them also had Phil’s notations covering much of the margins. (One thing I don’t think I ever told Phil was that I learned as much about his evolution as a writer and evaluator by reading his commentaries on the work of others as I did from actually reading his poetry.)

Most of these journals dated from the 1970’s and 80’s – apparently Phil’s heyday for such poetry publications, both in terms of volume and breadth of styles and topics. While there were a number of slick, professional looking entries (mostly from prestigious university presses) most of them were modest budget and fairly small and thin; thirty, forty pages or so in length, most about the size of a Reader’s Digest.

By the time the ‘03-‘04 school year and Phil’s career as an official teacher had come to a close, I had amassed a sizeable chunk of his journal horde – a couple hundred volumes, tightly filling three copier-paper boxes.

Phil retired and I went on to graduate in 2006 with a B.A. in literature and creative writing and an impressive personal library of books my professors had written augmented with a whole lot of interesting poetry journals prominent and obscure.

Fast forward to 2008. I moved with my wife and two sons to New Orleans to step into a new life as an English teacher in one of the worst public school systems in America, while at the same time  my wife was transitioning to become a special education teacher. While we left behind corporate careers and shed much of our stuff, I made sure my library (including aforementioned poetry journals) came with me – for professional as well as personal reasons.

While I had visions of some sort of initiating some sort of inner-city-Dead Poet’s Society-love-of-words epiphany for my students, courtesy of my personal love of poetry and my rather broad collection of non-mainstream poetical works, it has yet to materialize.

At least, the way I envisioned it.

Over the past four years, beginning with my first-year-of-teaching, aged 13-to-17, New Orleans ward-loyal, gang-banging, ankle-bracelet-wearing eighth graders, through last year’s 8th, 11th and 12th grade New Orleans East charter school wannabe toughs, to this year’s batch of struggling west bank (some well over age) sophomores and juniors, those journals have been trotted out at least a few times each semester, whenever poetry rears its mischievous head on our curriculum.

They get us out of the standard textbook’s American Literary Canon and mainstream stabs at diversity, and sets us off on some very different planes. (Oh sure, I still give them a dose of Whitman and Dickinson, and I love Frost so they get a bit of him, too, but we go off on some…definite roads less traveled.) It’s funny what kids will connect with.

Poetry overall is exasperating for my students. They are frequently confused with poetry in general, as the idea of interpretations varying widely from person to person frustrates them; they seek concrete yes/no answers, and poetry – good poetry- doesn’t often offer that singular certainty.

To top it off, in Mr. Lucker’s class, wildly different poetic interpretations (as long as they have some rational basis) are celebrated, further adding to my student’s consternation. Whether they are more frustrated with differing viewpoints, or my embrace of multiple viewpoints…I haven’t figured that out yet. I can tell you that my students test scores have been pretty good, and that when it comes to reading comprehension, my students score quite well. I attribute some of that to our reading a lot of poetry.

I don’t pander to the (often) lower common denominators of basic metaphor and simile examples in the textbooks. Phil’s old poetry journals help me go further than that. I like getting out those journals into my students hands – they’re different. They are compact, and for the most part, don’t look like the typical turn-off-their-interest book, especially once the students open them – often the most difficult part of the equation.

But my stash of old journals is shrinking.

I noticed as I packed up my room last week that I am down to my last copier-paper box of Phil’s poetry journals – and not a quite full box, at that. Over the past four years, many of them have disappeared into the bookbags of my students; many of them under some sort of subterfuge (I’m not sure I could ever accuse a kid of ‘stealing’ poetry, so I let ‘em go) and many go to kids asking if they could keep a particular journal, or specific poem. (Instead of letting a kid who asks to ‘tear out one poem’ from a journal, I tell them ‘just take the whole book.’) A few of the journals have basically disintegrated from classroom use and abuse, but for the most part, they have simply found their way into a student’s hands and head. Where they end up…?

I think Phil would be okay with that.

Making poetry accessible was, and I would think still is, important to Phil. Nowadays, it’s important to me, too. So even though my supply of poetry journals is running low, I figure the box I have left should get me through the next school year. It’s been fun while it lasted, and hopefully some of those kids got something out of whatever little volume they took from my class.

It is not what I had planned when I began collecting Phil’s old journals, but then again, what poet ever plans a really good poem?

Schoolyear Homestretch: They Know Not of What They Speak. Or Write.

The discussion in my predominately black, tenth grade classroom was focused on racism.

We have been working our way through the book A Lesson Before Dying, a wonderful 1994 Pulitzer nominee about a rural Louisiana black man sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit. Set in 1947, the story pre-dates the Civil Rights days of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King (the only such benchmarks my students really know) by a decade, and chronicles the effort to see that the accused man dies with a sense of dignity.

Racism is a dominant theme of the story, and a concept that many of even my brightest students tend to incorrectly think is something in the past or, more sadly, not a huge part of their present.

During the discussion on where racism really ‘comes’ from, a black student stated firmly that racism is generally learned from one’s parents – ‘Even black racism.’ This idea was met with murmurs and nods of approval from those that are inclined to jump so forcefully into a discussion like that, but I wanted to point out that that might be a little over-simplified, noting that what parents think or believe doesn’t always transfer to a child and asking my students to think of things they disagree with their parents about. I told my students that I know of plenty of kids who aren’t racist even though their parents seem to be.

This idea was greeted with a few moments of silent indifference until one of the few white kids in the class chimed in proudly with an affirmation of my concept. “I’ve got proof of that, Mr. Lucker!” the kid said earnestly. “I’m supposed to be a fifth-generation KKK Klansman…

….but I’m NOT!”

“That’s…..good, Darren.* Thank you for, umm…sharing that.”

The class stared at me, a few with quizzical looks that I can only assume were a reaction to whatever facial expression I had as I stared at Darren* for a moment. Aside from a few nods of agreement, nobody had a thing to say in response, and at first I was more surprised by the lack of reaction than I was the initial comment.

But I’m not. Just another day in the front of my classroom.

My students have a propensity for being obstinate – like most teenagers – but they will dig in their heels ferociously and adamantly defend their version when their take on a turn of phrase is challenged. Two examples from this year stand out.

The first was a sophomore who wrote about an essay commenting on her sister’s positive attitude, and the inspiration the sister provides her younger siblings, including Brenda*, my student. She lauded, in worthy prose, her sister’s ‘self of steam.’

Even with provided context, I still had to read it a few times to understand what ‘self of steam’ meant for Brenda.

Discussing her paper with her, I was met with a puzzled look as I tried to explain that what she meant was her sister had a lot of ‘self-esteem’ – even going so far as to having her look up ‘esteem’ in the dictionary. Still, she contemplated, paused, looked at her paper and the dictionary, then looked up at me standing over her and said, distinctly, and with a definite correcting me tone of voice:”Yeah, it’s her SELF. OF. STEAM, Mr. Lucker…how good she feels about herself.”

And the young woman’s ‘self of steam’ stayed that way in the final draft.

Maybe that’s what my students mean when they say, “Mr. Lucker…you’re blowin’ me!”

But I’m not.

The other top curious turn of phrase also came from a sophomore girl, who noted that when talking about literary point-of-view, it is not third-person-limited and third-person omniscient you need to understand, but rather ‘third- person limited and third person ammunition’ point-of-view.

She too, was left un-swayed by logic, or the class handout on her desk we had been reviewing and discussing, or the textbook on her desk, all focusing on ‘third-person-omniscient’ narration.

Carlene* was steadfast in explaining ‘third-person-ammunition’ point-of-view – which she actually did quite well.  If you overlook the fact that ‘omniscient’ and ‘ammunition’ are not synonymous. If you do that.

Even in New Orleans, I’m not sure ‘third-person-ammunition’ is a viable legal defense.

And finally…

I had a good chuckle to wrap up the last full week of the year with Ms. W, our school’s lead librarian. (The librarians love me because I bring all my classes there at the start of the semester to teach them about the library; apparently I’m the only English teacher who does that. Plus, I actually assign book reports – hence the initial library-orientation visit. They then know where to go to find the books for their book reports.)

Seems a student came in to the library on Friday to return a book that he had checked out in October and found only now while cleaning out his locker. Aside from any pangs of guilt over depriving some other poor student of a book, return of said tome also probably removed a financial hold from the kid’s record. Fortunately, the fines cease when the fine amount reaches the cost of the book; $16 in this case.

As Ms.W clicked away in the computer showing the book as returned and getting the kid’s holds removed, she said the running dialogue continued as follows:

“Well, at least I hope you enjoyed the book.”

Some of us have already ‘checked out’ for the year

“Eh. It was o.k. Mr. Lucker made us read a book.”

“But you liked it.”

“It was alright. Mr. Lucker made us read a book.”

All she could do relating the story to me was laugh about the kid’s ongoing ‘Mr. Lucker made us read a book.’ I shook my head and said ‘So, I suppose I should wear that as a badge of honor?

She continued laughing as she headed for the door, “Why not, Mr. Lucker? Why not?”

All this time I thought I was teaching English, not eastern philosophy. But I guess if the mantra “Mr. Lucker made us read a book” is the primary result of the year, maybe that will enhance someone’s self-of…Eh. You know what I mean.

Characters who helped shape mine (#3 in a series) The Drama Teacher

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

As You Like It Act 2, scene 7

Like a traveling minstrel of Shakespeare’s day, my adult life has found me front-and-center on all sorts of stages in a long-scrambled accounting of locales and situations; small towns, big cities, rural and urban.

I’ve been the star attraction and the stagehand, watched from the wings and took some center stage bows, brought up the lights and brought down the house. Sometimes I’ve been the guy quietly sweeping up the stage after everyone else has gone home.

I started out with twelve years in broadcasting, spent a decade working in the hotel business then moved into social services, then training. I finally got my college degree, and now find myself at midlife as a high school English teacher working with at risk youth.

A real traveling production; five states and counting.

Shakespeare’s seven ages? I’ve opened and closed most of those shows multiple times. In stage parlance, I have been master of the revival.

The first curtain went up about three-and-a-half decades ago.

Like a first love, I remember very distinctly the first real stage I actually set foot on: the worn, lacquered boards of an intimate thirty-by-twenty foot stage in room 204 of Denver South High School, home of the drama department and headed in my day by Mr. J. Joe Craft.

Mr. Craft (‘J. Joe’) was one of my favorite teachers and arguably the one who had the most profound, tangible effects on my life; to say I go back to what I learned on that stage in Mr. Craft’s classroom and under his direction on a regular basis is not just a nostalgic turn on my part.

There were the fundamentals that you’d expect from a high school drama class; voice and diction basics, stage directions, the vernacular of the theatre, that sort of thing. There were also the byproducts of all that: self-confidence and self-awareness, the ability to deal with overcoming fears, dealing with rejection. (Auditioning and not getting a role, rejections from publishers, students who fail your class – been there, done that. I learned how to deal with all of it via Mr. Craft.)

It was there that I also experienced Shakespeare for the first time; Mr. Craft had studied for a time at Stratford-upon-Avon, and just sitting on those metal folding chairs as he stood on that classroom stage in rattling off a soliloquy from Hamlet or Midsummer Night’s Dream in his booming baritone is still fresh in my mind. It really came back to me a few years ago, as I had a small role in a Shakespeare in the park production of Merchant of Venice in rural, southwestern Minnesota.

Stage learning was not confined to our drama room. South was known throughout the city for its year-long slate of full-scale theatrical productions; a drama in the fall and a musical in the spring being our hallmarks. We all had the chance to partake in everything involved with a production from stage building to marketing and ticket sales; everyone had their shot from the hangers-on to the divas.

Being a part of a drama department, putting on a play or show of any kind, is a great environment for learning how to successfully collaborate with others. Mr. Craft’s insistence that everybody have a hand in every aspect of putting a production together that taught me how to function as part of a team; that is also where I learned how to put together and lead a team, and how to give meaningful but tactful redirection when needed. Skills I have continually refined and used successfully through the years in both my personal and professional lives. Abilities I began cultivating under the direction of Mr. Craft.

One very specific example of how I put what I learned in room 204 into practice: Mr. Craft taught me how to coach job seekers.

One of the biggest issues for young or new actors is the idea of emoting; being on stage means you have to play things a little larger-than-life, or it doesn’t translate well to the audience from up on stage. You need to be a little over the top, not hold back. One of Mr. Craft’s reminder mantras to young actors was, “Just when you think you’re pushing things too far is where you are just starting to get to where you should be.”

In other words, just when you think you have gone wayyyy overboard, anyone watching you is just starting to get a feel for you putting out any kind of emotion or observable, believable characterization. The trick comes in pushing yourself over the threshold from wooden to passionate, but still conveying honesty and believability in your performance.

Hence my success in coaching job seekers.

About a decade ago I found myself working as case manager and trainer for the Minnesota Department of Economic Security in Minneapolis. As a classroom trainer, I taught weekly four-and-a-half hour classroom sessions in how to find a new job; Creative Job Search. I also taught classes in networking, resume writing and Internet job search, and devised and led a class on Skills Identification.

I saw the job search process as putting together a show; you needed a script to follow, and some lines to learn. Under some good direction, it was easy to go out on stage and ‘knock ‘em dead.’

As a trainer, these were tough crowds to play to; most of them had a chip on their shoulder because of their situations. They had been laid-off, fired or merged out of a job, and all they knew about finding a new one was checking the want ads. Aside from the valuable information I was having to convey and the old-style mindsets I had to change, I needed to keep the enthusiasm level relentlessly positive and keep the class looking ahead, not back. Plus, in any given week I was likely to have minimum-wage line workers and six-figure executives sharing table space in my classroom; those eight-to-twelve-thirty sessions could be draining.

Roll playing the networking aspects of the job search process with attendees, going over the same ideas, critiquing and then cajoling a better result out of them was a piece of cake – because I had done it all in play rehearsal under Mr. Craft.

Along with the group classroom instruction, I also had a case load of about 125 job seekers that I assisted with resume and other logistical advice, help in getting them additional training or certification, that sort of thing. But the most complex part of my job was playing the role of director of a little dramatic production called interview practice.

Interviewing for a job is one of the most stressful things in life, a terrifying proposition for many. A big part of being an employment counselor was to coach my clients in how to conduct their part of an interview, and that meant role playing (with me as the director/hiring manager) in a one-on-one production in my cubical or one of our conference rooms. Countless times when coaching my clients I could literally hear Mr. Crafts voice in the back of my head; “Just when you think you’re pushing things too far is where you are just starting to get to where you should be.”

I always went into an interview coaching session trying to push my clients to a ‘Brando’ – a ten on a personal, varied-with-the-client, 1-to-10 scale – figuring if I could get most of them to a six or seven, they would be in good shape. I settled for a lot of fours and fives, but that still put most of them light-years ahead of where they started

All the worlds a stage; my clients had a pretty good track record of good reviews – interviewing successes.

Drama was my favorite class in high school. Five days a week exploring everything from Greek drama to Shakespeare to the American canon to more contemporary stage fare was great. Getting to act out scenes on that thirty-by-twenty foot stage was eye-opening and liberating. We learned how to expand our boundaries and how to handle failure. We also got to direct one-act plays, learning in the process how to lead and manage, coach and coax the best out of people who aren’t always sure they can do something.

Those are all wonderful things to have a solid grasp of as you head on into the adult world.

At the end of our junior year, Mr. Craft left South to lead the theatre department at Denver’s new Career Education Center, a magnet school featuring hands on training in a wide range of disciplines ranging from theatre and dance to E.M.T. training. It had a vocational focus which included its own store and café; very cutting edge in 1976.

I spent the mornings of my senior year there as part of Mr. Craft’s Children’s Theatre Class. I was one of three students from South in the class, and none of us had been anything more than bit players or chorus members, but in a class of twelve students from seven different schools, we all got our shot as we took a production of Little Red Riding Hood on the road to a few schools, produced and videotaped a Tonight Show satire that we wrote ourselves, and capped the year with a full-fledged production of The Wise Men of Chelm, at the Denver Jewish Community Center’s prestigious Schwayder Theatre.

That year was memorable in many ways; not the least of which was getting to be on stage as Shimmer-Eli, the enchanted tailor who buys an unruly goat in Chelm, and mastering the Yiddish dialect for our interpretation of the stories of Shalom Aleichem (his many Chelm stories were the basis for his classic Fiddler on the Roof) for a largely Jewish audience, including my father.

The Schwayder was a far cry from room 204.

There was a trick Mr. Craft showed us to make my goat: a thick, hemp rope was slightly unwound so straightened coat hangers could be pushed into the center of it to give it form. The resulting mutant-pipecleaner was then bent into a collar and leash, and I was believably able to lead around (and also be lead by) an invisible goat for the entire play. The bobbing nature of the hanger-reinforced rope made it seem like I really did have a goat on a leash. I have used the same rope/hanger technique successfully through the intervening years to portray various animals in Christmas pageants and Cub Scout skits.

There was also the aluminum foil, masking tape and rubber cement mask making techniques Mr. Craft taught us to transform me into Little Red’s nemesis wolf I have used a number of times since, in everything from church programs to radio promotional events. As I now live in New Orleans, I have to think that somewhere along the line I’ll be using foil, tape and rubber cement for some sort of Mardi Gras facial adornment.

New Orleans is where what I learned from Mr. Craft comes full circle.

My wife and I came here to teach in 2008, part of a program that recruited people from the business world to come into the classroom as the city struggled, post-Katrina, to rebuild one of the worst public school systems in America; a system that was abysmal before being obliterated by a hurricane. It is an ongoing, daily challenge, as we deal with kids from poverty, single-parent and no-parent homes and a litany of other issues. Most of my tenth and eleventh grade English students are at least two-to-three years behind grade level in reading. Some are motivated, most are not. Some have a need and desire to express themselves, but have no idea how.

I try to get them to write…every day. I use the same “Just when you think you’re pushing things too far is where you are just starting to get to where you should be” with my students when it comes to my students writing. The results aren’t where I would like them to be – yet.

But I am a patient guy. You have to be, as I learned long ago, a show takes a while to go from rehearsal from being ready for opening night, and that it rarely goes totally according to the script at hand.

I have been thinking a lot about Mr. Craft lately as I have spent the last three weeks working with my inner-city sophomores on getting through Julius Caesar. Not the easiest of reads, but Julius Caesar is in our textbook and highlighted and encouraged in our state curriculum. Shakespeare in general is a hard sell for these kids, but oftentimes street-smart kids from the environments that we are working with can connect on some level to Caesar’s concepts of loyalty and betrayal, and certainly the violence and mayhem of the play should ring true here in the murder capital of America.

We’re getting there, very slowly.

Once again, much as with my job seekers, my audience here is oftentimes angry, resentful, and fearful. ‘Why-am-I-here-and-what-relevance-has-this-got-to-my-life?’ attitudes abound. In a way it seems that I have been in rehearsal for the last three decades for this three-week stretch.

I have also been thinking about Mr. Craft as we begin to wind down the school year, and look ahead to fall. I have had a good year, and for the first time in my four-years here, it appears that I will be back at the same school, but teaching what? A month or so ago, our administration had us fill out forms about our intentions for next year, and what we might like to teach. My school is trying to remake itself, and would like to offer more electives. The form asked if we were certified for any specialty, or if we would be willing to get certified. One of the things the school would like to offer is a drama class of some sort, and I could add the drama certification to my license simply by passing a national certification test.

I listed ‘drama’ as one of the electives I would indeed be willing and eagerly able to teach.
If the timing is just right, and they decide to go that route, maybe I’ll get the part.

As I write this, Mr. Craft is about to celebrate the 28th anniversary of the Denver Public Schools Shakespeare Festival that he founded in 1984 and continues to direct. According to the press release from the DPS, ‘About 5,000 costumed students from more than 75 DPS schools will perform’ at the day-long event this coming Friday, May 11, 2012.
( http://communications.dpsk12.org/announcements/scenes-and-sonnets-to-be-performed-at-dps-28th-annual-shakespeare-festival )

Meanwhile, my fifty-three New Orleans tenth graders and I will continue to work our way through the last acts of Julius Caesar. It isn’t a festival and nobody will hear them reading the lines, but I hope some of it will resonate with some of them on some level.

So here I sit, thirty-five years removed from my last classroom or stage session with J. Joe, and I am still using what I learned from him on a regular basis. The curtain always goes up, the show never closes. Life is like that; you play to whatever audience happens to be in the seats.

As it should be. The show must, of course,  go on. I learned that from Mr. J. Joe Craft.

 

Digging in the Dirt Pile of Memories

The other day I was standing on the front porch with my sixteen year old son Will, waiting for his family car pool ride to school, sophomore year now in the homestretch. I was on spring break from my school and was savoring the opportunity for a little morning one-on-one we don’t normally have; younger son Sam and wife Amy were already off to their respective schools.

Mug of coffee in hand, I watched Will sitting on the porch swing, organizing his contemporary teenager-self: loaded, full-size backpack, small, nylon pull-string backpack, insulated cooler lunch bag, personal electronic device (with ear buds dangling from his neck) and cellphone. His school I.D. badge and flash drives dangled on lanyards beneath his beatnik-hearkening goatee. He was texting his girlfriend and I could see him smiling beneath the brim of his ever-present grey baseball cap.

Leaning against the porch post and looking down the block I motioned to the big pile of dirt two lots down; another new home for the neighborhood as the post-Katrina revitalization continues. I jokingly mentioned that the big pile of dirt made me want to “Get some old Tonka trucks and go play in the dirt for a few hours.”

Will finished his text and glanced at the dirt pile. “Do you remember that crane we had in our yard back in Marshall? That thing was so cool.”

I nodded, remembering the homemade wood-and-steel contraption: a small, square, carpet-remnant covered seat attached to a couple of wooden runners hat made it look like a really small sled – except for the two-foot long arm with a two-levered metal crane bucket attached to it. One lever made the crane arm extend, the other made it curve inward like a hand and wrist, which allowed the actual digging to occur. A kid could sit on the thing, dig a hole, swivel around (360 degrees, even!) dig another hole, then another. Homemade and won by Will’s uncle Ted at a church raffle after his own sons were past sandbox stage, we placed it in the sandbox beneath the ‘crow’s nest’ of the big, wooden playset we had built in our backyard when we moved to Marshall, Minnesota – when Will was seven.

Will gleefully dug a few holes in his day with that thing, as did three-years-younger brother Sam. We more than got Ted’s dollar raffle ticket worth out of it.

“You remember that thing, huh? Uncle Ted won that in a church raffle, if I remember correctly.”

“That’s where we got that? From Uncle Ted?”

“I think so.” I nodded, taking a sip of my coffee. Just then, Will got a text from his girlfriend Lien. Without looking up from his cellphone, fingers flying on the tiny keyboard, he added, “That thing was so cool.”

I nodded, and got to thinking…

A few years before the crane, some friends of ours found a swing set being dismantled and put on the curb by neighbors. With their help and a borrowed pickup truck we got it, took it apart and brought it to our yard in south Minneapolis.

Nothing fancy, just two plastic swings on chains, a short sheet-metal slide, a plastic glider and a swinging trapeze. Four-and-a-half year old Will was fascinated by the prospect of the pile of spot-rusted metal actually morphing into a swing set. He would pick up the yellow seats and then stare at the pile of tubing with a quizzical look on his face. But a few dollars’ worth of new nuts, bolts, bushings and three hours of re-assembly later, there it was.

The shiny new hardware stood out more than the rusty old ones, highlighting its age and hand-me-down nature. No matter. It became Will’s pride and joy, the thing that he most looked forward to coming home to. Even after full summer daycare days in the park, with the big swing sets, Will wanted to come home to “his playground.” On Saturdays, Will would take his lunch outside and eat it while sitting on his favorite swing (the one next to the trapeze.) It became a focal point for Will’s friends on the block, and became a trusty companion when they weren’t around. It was also a refuge on those days when the world got a little gloomy, and many were the nights it barely got to rest while dinner was consumed.

Came our first snow, and I hadn’t removed the swings yet. It didn’t much matter. Our parka-clad boy brushed off the seats and got in a few minutes of action before dinner, and another ten or so after, till it just got too dark. The cool air accentuated every creak of the metal, chains and “S” hooks that made it all work. Spring eventually returned and become summer again and Will continued swinging away until we moved, leaving the swing set out on the curb for someone else to claim as their own – which they did within a day.

Once we moved, Will had his big, wooden playset and his gift-crane…

“Here come the Worthylakes.”

Will’s carpool had swung into view from around the corner, and in a few quick seconds he, seemingly in one, fluid motion and without getting tangled in multiple lanyards, effortlessly threw on both backpacks (lunch bag clipped to the big one with a carabiner) adjusted his cap, stuffed his PSP into his pocket, threw his arm (with hand still clutching cellphone) around my neck, gave me a hug and said “Love you dad” before bounding down to the steps and out to the S.U.V. at the curb.

“Love you, bud. See you this afternoon.”

“Bye.” He threw the farewell over his shoulder, hopped into the backseat, gave me a quick wave as they drove off.

I took another sip of coffee and went inside, lacking any old Tonka Trucks ® and figuring I had had my dirt pile enjoyment for the day anyway.

Boring is in the Eye of the Beholder, or: ‘Forgive him, for he knows not what he says’.

Favorite shirt. Good night to wear it.

During his sermon the other night at church, our pastor, Eric, made quite an observation. He said “Baseball is boring” and he said it with me sitting in the audience. It was good I was on hand to help set him on the straight-and-narrow path of what isn’t boring (baseball) fortunately, I was on hand and (I don’t believe in ‘coincidence’) I was wearing my favorite baseball-print shirt, so I had the street-cred when setting him and a few others straight.

“Baseball is boring” he said. This from a man who sometimes plans ahead to watch…basketball.

Basketball. Is. Boring. Basketball is played on uniform wooden courts; painted rectangles augmented with a couple of painted arcs and two free-throw lines. Basketball consists of a bunch of people in shorts and ugly tank-tops jogging up-and-down the length and confines of aforementioned rectangular wood where they do the same thing over and over and over. They go down the floor, throw a large, leather ball into an orange steel hoop, retrieve said ball, go back the other direction, throw the ball into the orange steel hoop at the other end, retrieve said ball, go back down to where they just were, throw the ball back into the orange steel hoop… etcetera, etcetera, etcetera ad nauseum.

Unless of course their attempt to get the bloated leather ball into the orange steel hoop fails, in which case the other team grabs the ball and heads back to the other end of the court, to try to throw the ball back into their-end orange steel hoop, where the other team again retrieves the ball, then goes back down to where they just were, throws the ball back into the orange steel hoop again….

Curly was never boring.

Or not.

The only real variable here is getting the ball into the hoop or missing the hoop – in which case the trip back down the court to where they just were is expedited because a rebound of a missed shot at an orange steel hoop is quicker than having to start all over again every time someone makes a shot into the orange steel hoop requiring everyone to stop and retrieve the ball and then begin another trip back down (up? across?) the shiny rectangular floor.One key caveat here: all ‘basketball is boring’ talk needs to include ‘except for the Harlem Globetrotters.’

Baseball is not played on a court. And aside from the infield diamond portion, a baseball field is not symmetrical and is not artificially confined to painted parameters; baseball action can (literally and figuratively) cross the line at any time, hence part of its unboringness.

Tennis is yet another, similar, boring sporting example of Freudian repression.

On yet another sort of rectangular, painted line court (this one usually green, but sometimes made of red clay – pottery class, anyone?) an individual or a ‘team’ of just two uses a round racquet with a handle to strike a small, fuzzy ball over a net, where the individual or team on the other end of the court/other side of the net uses his/her/their racquet(s) to hit the ball back over the net, where the other individual/team uses its/their racquet(s) to hit the little fuzzy ball back over the net, where the other individual/team uses its/their racquet(s) to hit said fuzzy ball back over the net to the other individual/team….unless the fuzzy little ball hits outside of the painted limits of the playing surface or hits the net it is supposed to go over.

In basketball, ‘nothing but net’ is a good thing; in tennis, ‘nothing but net’ is a bad thing. Nets come in handy in a fishing boat (not boring). Baseball has no net, unless you count the screen behind home plate that keeps spectators safe from foul balls.

At least they don't keep their blinkers on.

Even more boring than basketball or tennis is NASCAR racing. People race cars around a usually/mostly symmetrical track where, at 200 miles per hour, they drive straight for a few seconds, then start a wide, gradual left turn that culminates in going straight again for just a few seconds before they start another wide, gradual left turn that culminates in going straight again for just another few seconds before they start another wide, gradual left hand turn…

And they sometimes do this 200 times or more in a single race!

Baseball players are also noted for making mostly left hand turns, but there is a fair amount of variety in how they do it and when – plus a lot of suspense as to when they do it and strategy to how they do it – unless somebody has just hit a home run, in which case they get to circle bases laid out in a diamond formation to the cheers of the crowd.

NASCAR is high blood pressure-inducing road rage; baseball is a leisurely drive through a friendly town where people stop and wave to you when you are at a stop sign (base).

Baseball is boring? Basketball, tennis and NASCAR have all the spontaneity and unpredictability of properly operating windshield wipers.

Unless, of course, you are an inherently violent person hoping for a ‘worst case’ scenario and bodily injury. But aside from a Three Stooges short, when was the last time you saw someone actually flip over the net during a tennis match?

After the service I was explaining to Pastor Eric and a small crowd of fellow congregants the error of his ‘baseball is boring’ ways. (For the record, we all agreed to keep football out of the equation, as we all agreed football is good. Hockey wasn’t brought up, and as I currently live in New Orleans; ‘puckishness’ only comes up during Mardi Gras. Hockey is good, too.)

In Eric’s defense and still grasping to the suspect agreement of ‘baseball is boring’, our youth pastor, Erik-with-a-K, proffered up this desperate pleading for the ‘baseball is boring, basketball isn’t’ argument: “But…basketball has the slam-dunk!”

Visual object lessons are always valuable tools – especially in church.

I grabbed a nearby trash can and an empty cookie package and coffee cup from the coffee area, walked back to the assembled throng, and placed the trash can on the floor in front of me, then with both hands, slam-dunked the cookie package and cup  into the garbage.

“Yeah” I noted dryly, “That’s exciting.” as the crowd laughed, some nodding in agreement, and the pendulum lid of the garbage can slowly swung to a stop

Definitely NOT boring

In a vain, last-ditch effort to salvage his original argument, Pastor Eric (with a ‘c’) added a plaintive, “Baseball on T.V.is boring! It’s like watching bowling on t.v.!”

Sometimes desperation makes people say strange things.

Somebody in the crowd offered up that ‘In baseball, all you need to do is wait for the ball to be hit and then go to where it is and catch it’ – which couldn’t be further from the truth. As I explained to Eric-with-a-C and Erik-with-a-K, et al, baseball is a thinking person’s game; you always have to be looking ahead a few steps, taking into account all of the variables that could occur with every single pitch.

Anticipating where the ball may or may not be hit on any given pitch is a graceful and delicate art form based on the varietal factors -not the least of which of who is doing the pitching and who is doing the hitting. You also need (on every single pitch) be cognizant of what sort of pitch may be thrown, what kind of hitter is at the plate, what sort of pitch the catcher calls for, what sort of pitch the hitter might be looking for, Don’t forget to take into account how many balls and strikes the hitters has as the pitch is made; is he two strikes in the hole or is the pitcher about to walk him with a fourth ball, or is it the first pitch of the at bat? Who else is on base? How many outs are there? All of these factors and more need to be taken into account, and they all change from pitch-to-pitch, thus negating any of the ‘you just react when the ball is hit’ malarkey.

"Oops. We left a basketball game on in the patient's room."

And that all happens before the pitch is even thrown or hit. The options increase exponentially from there.  Every pitch in baseball is an ‘if this/then that’ flow chart; basketball, tennis and NASCAR are flat-lines on an EKG monitor. I hope that helps set the record straight.  Good thing I was on hand to preach the baseball gospel.

Now as long as in future homilies Eric doesn’t come up with something crazy like ‘blog reading is boring’.

Then we’d have to have an even more serious post-sermon discussion.

Risk, Reward and Rational Explanations

I come from a long line of risk-takers. Though maybe ‘long’ is stretching it a bit.

I am a second-generation American; all four of my grandparents were immigrants who left behind native their lands to make a better life in America. My mother’s parents came here from different parts of Norway in the 1920’s, met and married while living in New York City before moving on to Minneapolis , where my grandfather’s cousin ran a hospital and offered my grandfather a job. Leaving behind whatever they had in Norway was bold enough; packing up and heading to the great prairie from New York City during the height of the Great Depression was something else entirely.

Risk takers, one-and-all.

My father’s parents were a Russian Jews who left just after the turn of the twentieth century and also landed in New York. While the information on my father’s side of genealogical ledger is spotty, history alone tells me that being a Jew in Russia in the decades leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution was not an easy lot. Getting out of said situation was no easy chore, either.

Though what they each left behind was deemed, for whatever reasons, to be inadequate, it still takes a lot of gumption to leave behind everything you know and love to move somewhere thousands of miles away to a strange land.

Risk and reward. Seems simple, but when the reward part is a whole lot of uncertainty…not so much?

So, given some historical context, my wife and I packing up two kids, a dog, and every other aspect of life and moving from small town life on the southwestern Minnesota prairie to New Orleans has a kind of ‘makes perfect sense’ feel to it.

Same holds true for our move to the small town (population about 13,000) of Marshall, Minnesota, six years prior to that. Add in the fact that our move from Minneapolis to Marshall was not only a culture shift, but also a major career move for my wife, and the risk taking aspect looms large to some. Just as both of us chucking the corporate life mid-career to move into the classroom as teachers, helping to rebuild one of the worst public education systems in America was something of a risk.

Sometimes I think that the nonchalant way in which we relate our tale is unnerving to a lot of people.

Old friends of mine are visiting from Minnesota, and at dinner the other night they were asking about our motivations in moving here, and as usual we dutifully recounted the story of wanting to do more with our lives, answering our perceived calling, the trials and tribulations of dealing with teaching kids in poverty, etcetera. This has become a commonplace conversation, as over the past four years we have had a steady stream of visitors from our ‘past lives’ who have found their way to New Orleans for a visit, or just stopped by on their way to somewhere else. (If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear for some people it’s a sort of cartoon mountain-top guru pilgrimage simply to ask us why we are here and how we could pack up and move to a strange place the way we did.)

Our answers frequently seem to leave people confused by its simplicity – like there has to be more to it. After some recent, close together visits from various folks, I am starting to understand that a little better, and I think I know the answer.

We come from a long line of risk takers.

Whenever we relate our story, we include the faith aspect; how we have followed what we felt G-d was calling us to do, and through prayer and reflection, we simply acted on that. Our various church families in Minneapolis, Marshall and now, New Orleans, all know the story, but even many of those that can easily see the faith aspect at work in our decision-making and execution can get hung up on the ‘how’ we could make these moves. What frequently unnerves people is the ‘well we just did it’ aspect of the entire escapade. Maybe it’s because we tell the story fairly frequently,

I come from a long line of risk-takers. So does my wife – her line being a generation longer than mine on one side, two generations longer on the other.

My wife’s great, and great-great-grandparents were Swedish immigrants. Whatever situations they, too, were leaving behind, the whole late 1800’s immigrant-to-America scenario is risk-taking personified.

For the record, though both sides of my wife’s family and my mother’s families all hail from Scandinavia, there is no record of any Laplander blood in any of the lines, so our people are not nomads by nature; a pretty sedentary lot, all in all. Based on the little info I have on my father’s side of the family, the same seems to hold true, though as Jews, the diaspora aspect would seem to put them in the ‘nomads by nature’ category.

If this seems like some sort of prelude to another move on our part, it isn’t. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I felt so…sedentary.

Still, there is more to this whole risk-taking thing than packing a steamer trunk and hitting the open sea. My whole existence is owed to some rather grand limb-stepping aside from that already mentioned. For example…

My dad marrying my mom. Dad was 17 years her senior. He was also divorced with a son and a step son – not conventional sell to a young bride’s family in the late 1950’s, but they made it work, and work pretty well. My mom’s father (Gramps) and my father were extremely close – so much so that many times someone meeting my family assumed that they were a father/son not father-in-law/son-in-law combo.

They made it work well for 28 years, until my father’s death from cancer. Unless people knew the backstory, most of those years were pretty typical work-and-raise-a-family years with little if any obvious risk-taking. Except…

When I was ten, my parents up and decided that we would move from Minneapolis to Denver. Just because. They had been to Denver on their honeymoon in 1958, and in the summer of ’69 we had driven out there on vacation, with Gramps in tow. We returned to Minneapolis, I went to the lake for a few weeks, and then they came there to pick me up and said, “We are moving to Colorado!”

“Umm… okay?”

They had no jobs waiting there, and in fact, were both willing to leave behind long-standing jobs, family and friends for nothing more than perceived opportunity in a new place with a (then) booming economy. It worked out well; my father ended up doing roughly the same thing he had been doing in Minneapolis, but for a lot more money. My mom found a better, more lucrative career than what she had in Minneapolis. Me? I spent the next eight years in Denver, graduating from South High School with a diploma, a solid knowledge on how to live life, and a wonderful cadre of friends – many of whom remain, to this day, an important part of my life.

Risk takers. Reward earners.

Following high school, I moved back to Minneapolis, spent a year living with Gramps and going to Brown Institute to become a radio announcer, which I accomplished, and then took a job at a little radio station in rural Missouri, heeding the advice my father gave me: “Take a job wherever it’s offered even if its someplace you never wanted to go. Experience something new.”

Small town radio was an interesting experience for this city kid – so much so that I repeated the adventure in Iowa, then moved on to stations in various points in Minnesota, before I got out of the radio biz and moved back to Minneapolis, where I moved into the hotel business, then into social service and adult training and development, which eventually led me to teaching in one of the worst school systems in America, which I love doing.

Risk/reward. Seems pretty simple.

My wife started her journey in a small town in northern Minnesota, moved to Minneapolis/St. Paul to attend college, became a social worker. Worked on an adolescent treatment unit, ran a teen center for high-risk youth, then moved into the corporate world and became a human resource executive. Along the way, she took the huge risk of marrying a divorced guy with a seven-year old daughter and a bunch of other baggage. (You want to talk ‘risk’? Ask her about ‘risk.) Corporate H.R. gave way to administering special education finances for a school district, and now she teaches special ed kids every day. She, too, loves her job.

So the whole pack-up-and-leave-your-homeland-go-west-go-further-west, go south-go-north-go back- further-south thing has, generationally, worked out pretty well.

Our ‘Family Kerouac’ routine is not without circumstantial provocation or family precedent; we are not quite that spontaneous. I believe there is a life cycle to almost every situation. One of my favorite bible passages is Ecclesiastes 3:1, ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.’

So, with a little bit of context, our rather convoluted life story makes perfect, logical sense.

Why are we now living in New Orleans? Why did we chuck the corporate world and become teachers? Just how much of a stretch is it, really, from leaving behind Russian pogroms to distancing ourselves from corporate downsizings and other shenanigans? From leaving a culture where you have next to nothing because you are not the first-born, or because you are a female, to come to America and leaving a culture you know and are comfortable with to live in a place like New Orleans, where people speak a different language, live a different lifestyle?

You see, we come from a long line of risk takers…

To a Tee

The opening of a new baseball season is always a time for renewal and remembrance for baseball fans; the hope and freshness of a new year coupled with fond memories of seasons past. Baseball is prominent in Lucker family lore: my wife and I come from families of ardent baseball fans. We met in the summer of 1991 and our dating life was intertwined with the World Series run and championship of our hometown Minnesota Twins. The following summer we were married, had a baseball-themed reception, took 60 relatives and wedding party members to a Twins game the day after the wedding,  then followed our heroes on the road to Chicago and Milwaukee as a baseball honeymoon. We will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of all that this summer.

But some of our greatest shared baseball memories don’t coming from sitting in the seats, they come from our time on the field as t-ball coaches for our sons. Amy and I spent four years as co-coaches for various teams our sons Will and Sam played on, emphasizing fun and love of baseball over competition, and loved it all.  We introduced not only our kids, but a number of others in south Minneapolis and Marshall, Minnesota, to pre-game bunny-hopping and conga-lining-around-the-bases warmups, to every-kid-wraps-up-practice-with-a-homerun, innovative team cheers and so much more.

With eldest son Will now a sixteen year old high school sophomore and the opening of another baseball season here, it seems a good time to revisit some of those good times with the young boys and girls of summer (well, spring), 2002. A decade has passed.

The place was Sibley Park, in south Minneapolis. The time was post 9/11 2002.  It was the summer of the Bobbleheads, the greatest group of young ballplayers to ever cross the chalk lines. No names have been changed because nobody’s innocence is threatened – only enhanced. What follows the chronicle of the magical season, as recorded and distributed at the time , from April through early June, in the Baseball Diaries.

04/30/02

Dear Diary:

Well as the legendary Jack Morris said just before pitching 11 shutout innings in game seven of the 1991 World Series, “In the words of the immortal Marvin Gaye, let’s get it on!”

The above, I believe, is the Bartlett’s Quotations version of a double play.

Greetings. It is that time of year again, when pseudo-normal middle class urbanites such as us dive into the nebulous netherworld known as youth sports. Yes, Amy and Mark are once again co-coaching tee-ball at Sibley Park. Once more we venture forth into uncharted aggregate, crossing that thin chalk line that separates the brave from the foolhardy, the seemingly normal from the fanatical. So far we’re fairly safe as no grandparents have shown up.

This year’s dual-Lucker coached juggernaut is known as the Bobbleheads. The name stems from last years tee-ball experience, where at least once per game one of the assembled parental or grandparental units would comment that “With the kids running around in those big, oversized batting helmets, they all look like bobble-heads!” First practice was tonight, and it went well. We caught some throws, we even caught a couple of batted balls, and not one kid ran to third base instead of third. We also kept the swarming of fielders to hit balls fairly low, and registered just one “double wicket.” (A hit ball that cleanly makes it through two sets of infielder’s legs, ala croquet, while also eluding their gloves.) The team cheer was a big hit, too.

Our SIBAC BOBBLEHEADS shirts should arrive tomorrow, just in time for our opening game against Hiawatha Park. We will try and refrain from extending our hands to the other team at home plate while uttering the phrase, “Hiawatha! We’re the Bobbleheads.” We’ll try hard not to do that.

It’s always “A great day to play two!”

Goodnight, Diary.

05/02/02

Dear Diary:

Well, we celebrated a successful season opener on all fronts. The Bobbleheads had a rip-roaring grand time at their Wednesday night opener over at Hiawatha Park. It appears that our reputation is growing as we had three new kids sign on last week, and we got a little surprise when we met our Hiawatha opponents.

When their coach introduced himself to me he said he had never coached tee-ball before. He was a veteran of cubs, midgets and for the last few years, four pitch. He described himself to me as “really in the dark about how tee-ball works.” Not to fear I told him, just follow our lead. The Hiawatha kids were already a little taken aback at our calisthenic routines, but the parents and other crowd members seemed to enjoy it. The game itself was…an experience.

There wasn’t time to explain step-by-step what we were going to be doing, so we had to wing it. We were the visitors, and batted first so I was up at home plate. This made it convenient to simply yell out everything to everyone as loudly as I could. The first inning consisted of me yelling out instructions like “OK, coach Dan at first base! Reeeememberrrrr every kid who gets to first gets a high-five!” Followed by “Coach Bruce! Remember that evvvvvery kid who gets to third gets a high-five!” As I was at the helm at home, I took care of home plate-high fives.

By the time Hiawatha batted in the bottom of the first, their coaches pretty much had it down. Every kid getting to first got a high-five, every kid getting to third got a high-five, every kid getting home got a high-five. Every kid got multiple, well deserved, high fives. All in all a pretty smooth game in front of a large and boisterous crowd. (Hiawatha is a busy park next to a lake.) After they batted one of the Hiawatha kids asked what the score was. I announced/yelled out that after one inning of play, we were of course, tied “a bunch…to a bunch!” All concerned seemed satisfied with that answer.

Add in our conga-line base running warm up, five (count ‘em, five) different renditions of the “Gooooo Bobbleheadssssss!” cheer and game ending glove slaps, and I think you’ll find that tee-ball at Hiawatha is gonna start looking a bit different in the weeks ahead.

Spreading the word is what we’re all about. Its tee-ball gospel, the Bobblehead way!

Til the next time then, blazing new trails - the Bobblehead Way…

Regards,

Us

05/16/02

Dear Diary:

With glorious sunshine and temps in the 70’s, weather the likes of which we haven’t seen for the past couple of weeks, spring returned today to the Twin Cities. It enabled the Sibley Park Bobbleheads to make their home-opener even brighter.

After squeezing in a practice between showers and then missing a game last week due to a deluge, it was good to be back on the Sibley aggregate basking in the glow of our fans and the sun. Resplendent in our fire-engine red shirts with SIBAC (Sibley Athletic Club) BOBBLEHEADS splayed in dazzling white across the chests we took on our brethren, the SIBAC TWINS.

Katie the park director was on hand getting us set up, and she informed us that the Twins were missing both their regular coaches for the night. She also said that their fill-in, Coach Chris, wasn’t well versed in tee-ball. Not to worry, I told her. We were ready to “Spread the gospel of Sibley Tee-Ball” just as we did a few weeks back at Hiawatha.

After filling in Coach Chris and his parental volunteers on the basics, I went back to our third base bench to address our parents. I explained that like in our first game, we were going to have to lead by example as our opponents were once again inexperienced both on the field and on the bench. I told them why I would again be yelling for both teams to hear me. Just so they knew the score, I had prefaced my remarks with “Lest you guys think I’m some sort of raving ego maniac…”

Play ball!

We batted first, doing wonderfully. Batting fifth tonight was Bailey, a ruddy kindergartner with reddish blond hair and freckles. He’s got game, and seems to enjoy the whole experience. As I was helping Bailey get settled in the batters box, I heard a chant break out from our bench: “Bay-LEE! Bay-LEE! Bay-LEE!” As I turned around to look, every parent gave me a shrug and an “I-didn’t start it” look. Seems that one of the kids did, and it took hold pretty quick. Bailey looked at me, blushed, rolled his eyes and said “Ohhhh man!” He then singled to short. The Twins just seemed puzzled by it all.

The rest of the inning went well until it was brought to my attention that I had overlooked young Joey, and that he hadn’t batted. As we were already taking the field I informed all concerned that we would just bat Joey at the beginning and the end of the second inning, and everybody was cool with that. Joey is a quiet kid. He is also the youngest and smallest kid on the team, but he can play. When the top of the second rolled around, Joey was seeking out a helmet and a bat, and I stage whispered to the kids on the bench that what they did for Bailey might be kinda cool to do for Joey. By the time Joey and I got to the batters box, the third base side of the field had erupted in the chant of “JOE-ey! JOE-ey! JOE-ey!” Looking somewhat BMOC-ish, Joey grinned at me and said “Oh boy!” before rapping a single to third.

That was all the encouragement the Bobbleheads needed. The rest of the inning was peppered with spontaneous chants for every kid from when they walked to the tee, til they hit the ball.
“SE-bast-YUN! SE-bast-YUN!”
“Han-NAH! Han-NAH!”
“MAHL-lee! MAHL-lee!”
“Ray-CHEL! Ray-CHEL!”
“Bay-LEE! Bay-LEE!”
There was a slight pause as our number six hitter came to the plate, as the lack of rhythm in “Wiiiiiiiil! Wiiiiiiiil!” sort of threw them for a loop, but they recovered nicely for “ANGE-gel!” “KEIR-nan!,” “Ti-ah-ZA!” and “JOE-ey!” one more time.

All in all, Diary, it was a great night. We played well, looked great, sounded awesome. The kids were happy, the adults seemed impressed. And we helped the SIBAC Twins learn a few things. Like pre-game calisthenics are a must, especially frog hopping and the group run of the bases. Wrapping up each inning with a home run is cool, too. It took them awhile to remember to give high fives at first and third, but they finally got that down pretty well. They still seemed puzzled when we applauded them at the beginning and the end of the game, and they need some work on their game-end glove slapping. They also had to be re-assembled quickly for the traditional high-five line of congrats after the game, but they did quickly come up with their own cheer. Now Diary, I know I am biased, but to be honest with you, “Tee-ball rules!” just doesn’t have quite the same panache as “Gooooooo Bobbleheads!”

Bobbleheads rock. Wait, I take that back. We bobble!

Goodnight Diary.

05/23/02

Dear Diary:

Please pardon the indulgence.

I’ve been thinking a lot about shirts this spring. The new Bobbleheads tee-shirts, bright red with bold white lettering across the chests; the wide eyes of recognition when the kids got them – “Hey! They even have numbers on the back!” I remember thinking briefly that that wouldn’t be such a bad shirt to have for a grown up.

Apparently, I am not alone.

At least a couple of parents have inquired about getting one, and we have even had a couple of Baseball Diary readers who have expressed an interest. Then on Tuesday night I walked into the park building to check out a tee and some bases, and was confronted by Sarah of the park staff. “Hey coach! We hear you guys are going to order big Bobbleheads shirts! I want one!” Turns out other park staff does too, including Katie the Park Manager. “Everybody loves ‘em,” she told me. “What can I say? You guys picked a really cool name!” Dale the park equipment guy called St. Mane sporting goods, and if we have enough interest we can get the shirts for the big kids at about eleven-bucks a pop. Bobblehead mania; coming soon to a torso near you.

Goodnight, Diary.

05/29/02

Dear Diary:

Sometimes life just happens, and we’re the better for it. Such was tonight’s Bobbleheads adventure.

Our scheduled opponents from Corcoran Park never showed up. Their coach had called Katie the Park Director yesterday telling her that this might happen, and she had cautioned me last night at practice. Having been forewarned, I arrived at Sibley #5 tonight with two alternatives to keep our charges occupied and to give them a suitable challenge as well.

5:45 arrived and no Corcoraners to be found. I announced to the assembled eight kids and nineteen moms, dads, grandparents and friends that as we were apparently opponent-less, but that I had come armed with plans B & C, just in case this had happened. Plan B was to take whatever Corcoran kids showed up, mix ‘em with ours and split into two teams. Now as our eight were the only ones on hand, 4-on-4 didn’t seem like a real enthralling idea, so after discussing it with fill-in coach (and team dad) Tom and getting his thumbs up, I proposed plan C:

The Bobbleheads versus their parents.

To their credit, the moms and dads were game; nobody had to be coerced, and most seemed genuinely enthused by the idea. The Bobbleheads themselves seemed mostly bemused by the prospect. All of them save young Keirnan, who ambled up to me after the announcement that plan “C” was a go and said, “Coach, don’t you have a plan ‘D’?!”

Coach Tom and I had decided that the Bobbleheads would let the parents bat first, and we took our spots in the field. It seemed that most of the kids were trying not to laugh at the parents coming up to bat, which was hard because some of them looked pretty funny squeezed into those smallish batting helmets. In all three moms, four dads, and one grandma batted – in a few instances escorted on their jaunts around the bases by younger Bobblehead siblings. Much whooping and hollering was heard from the parent’s bench, so we knew they were really into it.

It occurred to me midway through the top of the first that the ages of five, six and seven were good ones for watching parents (try to) play tee-ball. The looks of pride on the faces of each Bobblehead as his or her mom or dad (or grandma) hit the ball, ran to a base or thrust out arms in exultation upon reaching a base were the equal of any similar looks those same parents have had for their kids over the past month.

I spent the night stationed as the third base coach for Bobbleheads on offense and on defense, where I was privileged to overhear some of the great asides of the night.

Such as Rachel’s “Oh there’s my dad, he’s gonna do something goofy.” And showing mild disappointment when he didn’t. There was Keirnan’s repeated plea “Can’t you find a plan D?” Add in Joey’s mile wide grin when both his mom and his dad were on base simultaneously, Hannah’s incessant giggling, Bailey’s “Wow, my MOM!” when she got a hit, and Mali’s shear awe and pride at his grandmother gamely batting and running to first.

I personally declare plan ‘C’ a success. To use a phrase from our household, “Hey, we’re making memories here!”

So to a red-shirted kid, the Bobbleheads as beamed with pride as moms and dads hit and ran with aplomb, shook their heads in disbelief when they missed catches and throws in Three Stooges-like grandeur while in the field, and just generally hammed it up. No petulance about “parental embarrassment,” no kid telling mom or dad to get off the field, nobody getting mad. Just the shared sheer joy of watching moms and dads goof off a little.

Now that’s tee-ball the Bobblehead way.

Good night, Diary

Us

(PS: Just between you and me I really don’t think Keirnan wanted a “Plan D.”)

Thursday night, June 6. Late.

Dear Diary:

An era came to an end Thursday night. This probably goes against most any dictionary definition of the term era, but where the Bobbleheads are concerned, that’s kind of how this six-week season felt. This was one special group of kids and parents, Diary.

We said our goodbyes at the season-end potluck for the two tee-ball and two four-pitch teams from Sibley. Eight of our nine stalwarts showed up – and Bailey’s folks stopped by with a thank-you card and a gift certificate for the Coaches Lucker on their way home from the doctor where they had found out that Bailey had strep. They didn’t bring him in, but I went out to see the poor guy in his car seat. He was looking pretty rough until I gave him his participation ribbon and certificate and his sheet of Official Bobblehead Cards.

Bobblehead Cards are way cool, Diary. Rachel’s dad Dan had brought his digital camera to our last game, and he took action pictures of the squad. Then with the help of his trusty computer, he whipped up a great set of baseball cards – just like real ones, with team name, player names & numbers and great shots of the Bobbleheads in action. Then he printed them all up in glorious color and stuck ‘em in three-hole punched plastic sleeves like real card collectors use. Each kid got a set and man, you should’ve seen their faces!

Thanks, Rachel’s Dad!

I don’t know that I have ever been tempted to apply the word noble to a bunch of five, six and seven-year olds – but these guys certainly were that. Never had to scold anyone of them in six weeks of practice or games; never an admonition to stop something, never an altercation amongst the kids themselves. They came every week; they came to play every week. They showed joy in the game, glee in each other. And dang, Diary – they could play! They could all hit like crazy. Heck, everybody batted 1.000 with multiple home runs.

We will remember the way the girls played the field (so to speak.) Week in, week out Angel, Hannah and Rachel all made great plays defensively. Kiernan and Sebastian can also flash some mean leather. Bailey was everywhere, every game – smiling ear-to-ear every minute he was on the field. Will’s love of leading calisthenics was matched only by his ease at being distracted by crawling bugs and other stuff in the infield dirt. He misses a lot of plays, but he sees more of things and life than most. And you gotta love Joey and Mali, the two youngest, two littlest guys we had – and with two of the biggest hearts on any diamond, anywhere. It wasn’t lost on me that the name chanting for batters by their teammates from the bench started with a spontaneous, enthusiastic focus on Joey and Mali.

At the end of the pot luck we coaches each got to introduce our team and hand out their ribbons and certificates. I explained to the crowd our penchant for high-fives every time a kid got to first, third or home. We got in one last high-five as each kid came up to get their stuff and then we ended our team turn in the spotlight with one final group crouch leading up to a cacophonous “Goooooooooooo Bobbbbbbleheads!!!” I personally will admit to a couple of tears, and could rat out more than a few parents who were dabbing at their own eyes.

Funny what you’ll get from a bunch of tee-ball playing kids.

That’s it for now, Diary. See you next year.

Us

Epilogue? Save for my own son, I have no idea where any of these kids are now, but I’d like to think that somewhere, deep down inside each one of them, at least a little bit of the joy of being a Bobblehead still remains.

Play ball.

My diagnosis? ‘George Washington Syndrome.’ (Or: Cherry tree? Whats a cherry tree?)

“What this night really needs is a couple of good lies to be told.”
- Me, speaking to two teaching colleagues, 7:00 P.M. 03/26/12

We had parent-teacher conferences at school last Monday night, and six of mine showed up out of roughly 75 students. Not a great ratio, but better than many of my colleagues. Of the six, they all had legitimate concerns and none was disputing my interpretations of what was ailing their kids in my class. Only one of the six protested that her kid was doing ‘okay’ in her other classes, but also acknowledged that her daughter doesn’t like to do a lot of writing, so English is always a struggle.

I wasn’t getting ‘beat up’ by parents as can frequently happen in such situations. My guests were all rational and seemed to want to work together.

My only issue with my well-meaning parental visitors was that almost all of them shared personal information about their kids and/or family situations that, while helpful in explaining some things, also went wayyyyy over the line into TMI mode. As is frequently the case here in New Orleans, some folks have boundary issues. (This is not confined to parent teacher night: in making phone calls home just this week, I have learned way more than I ever should have about three family situations – information that had I ever ventured to ask about would probably get me fired.)

As usual, the biggest head scratchers came from the students themselves. Two of the parents who showed up in my class had their respective child in tow…both of whom surprised me with their lack of guile.

To wit:

Student #1:
Male. 11th grader.
Bright kid, a year from graduation. Spends most of English class joking with his girlfriend. When he writes, he writes well. Periodically participates in class discussions, knows the material yet usually bombs any quizzes. usually not a huge discipline issue for me.

Explained situation to mom (left out the girlfriend part, opting for the more generic and also true, ‘talks and messes around’ a lot). Mom looks at kid, asks, “Is that true?”

“Well, yeah.” Mom sits dumbfounded, looking at kid. I am watching from across the table. Mom says, “So, what Mr. Lucker is telling me is true. And you admit it.”

“Well, yeah.” kid says with a shrug

“May I ask why?” responds mom evenly.

“I don’t know.”

“You know all this stuff, right? You’ve never had problems with English before. What is the problem here?”

“I just don’t feel like doing it.” says kid, with a matter of fact shrug.

“You don’t feel like it? We all have things we ‘don’t feel like doing’ sometimes. You think your dad and me don’t feel that about our jobs ? But we do it because we have to. Your job is to be a student, even when you don’t feel like it.”

“This stuff doesn’t interest me.”

“But you need this to get through to your senior year. You know that.”

“Yeah, but it aint interesting. Nothing here is interesting.”

Mom proceeds to read kid the riot act on why he is in school, what he should be doing, why it escapes her how he can be doing the wrong thing and admits it, what privileges he is about to lose, etc. She then looks at me and shakes her head. “Mr. Lucker. I don’t know what to tell you outside of he will be doing better and if he doesn’t, you call me. “

“Yes, ma’am.” We say our goodbyes, she looks at her kid incredulously as they walk off down the hallway.

Along with that kid, and the parents who apparently confuse me with Dr. Phil, the pièce de résistance of the night was this kid:

Male. 10th grader.
Bright kid, has a history of good test scores. Spends most of English class talking or just staring into space. When he writes, he writes well. Rarely writes, and when he does, he frequently stops in mid-sentence, leaving thoughts unfinished. Embellishes every handout or paper that comes his way with names of his favorite basketball teams and drawings of their logos.

First part of our discussion concerned his behaviors as noted above. Kid did not disagree with my assessment, agreed that it was fairly accurate. Also shrugged when asked ‘why’ by mom. Mom was perplexed; kid is very bright, mom is a degreed professional, very involved, truly seems to ‘get it.’ Then came this exchange.

“Mr. Lucker, how did Oscar* do on his tests?”

“Poorly. Another big thing that cost him, grade wise, was not getting in his second book report. It was worth two test grades.” Which prompted her to turn and look at her son.

“You love to read. Why didn’t you turn in your book report?”

“Because I didn’t finish the book from the first book report.” I had forgotten that fact.

“True. He didn’t get that one turned in, either.” I remembered.

“Why didn’t you get that one turned in?”

“Mom, the book is 516 pages long. I couldn’t finish it.”

“Why” I asked, unable to hold back my curiosity, having required a simple, 200 page novel for said book report, “did you pick a 516 page book for your book report?”

“It was the only book in the library that looked interesting.”

“The only one in our school library that looked interesting?”

“Yes sir.”

“Was it a Harry Potter book?” I asked, puzzled, never having seen the kid with such a huge tome in his possession, and having not seen that many books of that size in our library – except for HP.

“No. It’s called ‘Caged’.”

“Wait a minute;  that the book that’s been sitting on your dresser for a month?” asked mom.

“It hasn’t been there a month.”

“Well, it was a two-week project, due two weeks ago…so a month sounds about right.” I interjected, in reference to book report two – book report one was a month before that.

“No, I got it for the first book report. And it’s overdue at the library. I owe money on that one, so I couldn’t get a second book.”

Mom looks on, dumbfounded, as I remind Oscar and explained to mom that anyone who didn’t have library privileges for whatever reason could always get a book from my classroom library, pointing to my large, very visible, lime-green bookshelf. Mom’s eyes narrowed.

“Why in heaven’s name would you pick a book that big and then miss two book reports?” She asked. Quite logically, I thought.

“I couldn’t finish it, mom. It’s 516 pages long!”

Mom looks at me, mouth agape.

“I don’t know what I can tell you, ma’am. Like I said, he could’ve gotten a book from me at any time…”

“But I already had a book, Mr. Lucker.”

“But you didn’t read it!” reminded his mother firmly, through clenched teeth.

“Because it was 516 pages long – I keep telling you that!” said Oscar, plaintively.

After a few seconds of strange silence, mom wraps up our session with a handshake. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Lucker. I don’t know what to tell you.” With that, mother and son walk out the door and down the hallway – silently.

Life proving once again that truth is stranger than fiction, as I wrapped up for the night I couldn’t help but wonder: as a writer and a teacher, do I in good conscience need to spend more time with my students focusing on the art of creative story telling?

Oh yeah – that whole truth-is-stranger thing.

The Legend of Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher

“Opening day of baseball season is like the first night of your honeymoon. Once that first pitch smacks into the glove, everything and anything is possible. Plus, you get to live it all over three, four, five times or more that day.”
-Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher

That most serendipitous and melodic harbinger of the end of winter -baseball spring training – continues its languid flow in Florida and Arizona. Sun-drenched crowds pack picturesque Grapefruit and Cactus League ballparks in an effort to get their initial glimpse of the year at their favorite teams, beloved players, highly anticipated newcomers; to soak in the sun and think of the possibilities of what the new season will bring.

Their first chance since fall to experience baseball…to talk baseball in something more than wistfully nostalgic tones for last year or unbridled optimism in the unseen for the year ahead.

Talking baseball takes on a fresh urgency this time of year.

I recently had a chance to talk baseball with a baseball legend. His business card reads, simply, ‘Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher.’

Now while Plato knows life and knows baseball, he does not see himself as a great thinker – more an observer of and ruminator on life and how it relates to all things baseball. I have quoted Mr. Plato frequently throughout the years in various forms, but more importantly, I have taken his wisdom and utilized it to full effect. The opportunity to sit down and speak with him face-to-face was not to be passed up.

Over beer and salted-in-the-shell ballpark peanuts at a neighborhood tavern, I talked with Mr. Plato about some of his views on baseball and life. What follows is a sampling of our conversation covering a broad array of topics baseball.

“Mr. Plato” I began, a bit nervously.

“Call me Home. But not ‘Homer’ – people should know that ‘Home’ isn’t ‘short’ for anything.”

“A two-to-six putout, as it were.” I replied cleverly.

“Leave the philosophizing to me, kid.”

“Sure thing. Anything else I should know about you?”

“Yeah. Don’t call me a ‘baseball card.’ I don’t do jokes or puns.” His tone had an impish quality.

Moving quickly on, I asked Home when he first knew he had a gift for offering perceptions. He leaned back in his chair, and in one smooth motion he reflexively pried open a fresh peanut shell with his thumb and rolled the two peanuts into the palm of his hand before popping it in his mouth; all the while never breaking our eye contact.

“Back in high school we were being coached on how to steal a base. A made a joke about ‘my mom told me I shouldn’t steal stuff’ and my teammates and the assistant coach laughed, but the coach wasn’t amused. It kind of just took off from there. I just modified mama’s advice a little bit to fit the situation.”

“Mama always told me, never lie and never steal…unless you can put yourself safely into scoring position with less than two outs and one of your big hitters coming up.”
- Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher

“Do you have kids?” I asked, figuring that much of Home’s advice needed a ready target, like a catcher framing the plate.

“I have nine.”

“What kind of advice do you give them?”

“Only the best kind.” he replied  with a grin and a wink.

“Ask any infielder; bad hops are a part of the game of life. Even the easiest looking play can be set awry by a stray clump of dirt. What counts is how you handle the bad hop. If you don’t catch it, stay calm, knock it down, pick it up. Stick with it; you can still make the play.”
- Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher

“Bad hops are indeed a part of life.” I agreed.

Plato nodded. “I always try to remind my kids that sometimes, even the best of situations can provide a challenge…”

“Everyone who has ever played the game has done it – lost a ball in the sun. Life is like that; even the best and brightest of days can sometimes blind you to what you need to do.”
-  Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher

“Sound advice.” I was jotting that down in my notebook; Home was on a roll.

“Being proactive is good, but you also need to know how to react when things go awry. There are always going to be bad hops and off-target throws coming at you; always expecting to have to react to the unexpected, then reacting expectedly to the unexpected, is what separates the all-stars from the guys who ride the bench.”
- Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher

“I’ve read that one before. I’ve tried to live it.”

The Old Philosopher seemed pleased. “That’s good.” He replied confidently,without ego, taking a healthy sip of his beer.

“What else can you tell me about how to live life?”

“You can argue with the umpire whenever you want, but you’ll rarely prevail – and you might get tossed from the game. Sometimes the victory comes in just letting him know you disagreed with his call in a respectful way. Stay in the game. Keep disagreements civil, and pick your battles wisely. The next time you step up to the plate, forget the last at bat ever happened.”
- Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher

“That’s good stuff, Home.”

“Thank you.” He cracked open two more shells simultaneously, rolling the four peanuts around in his hand, ala Captain Queeg - without the angst.

“When the game is on the line, you can be caught looking. Don’t rely on the umpire to decide the outcome, never take a called third strike for the last out of the game. Go down swinging.”
- Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher

“Another classic, Home.” I was soaking in not just the wisdom but the peanut shelling. “In all my years of ballpark peanut eating, I’ve never mastered the one-handed shelling like you have.” I ventured.

Home looked down at his hand, cocked an eyebrow as he threw the peanuts into his mouth. “It’s all in the grip” he said matter-of-factly. Just like throwing the perfect curve ball.”

Made perfect sense. I had never mastered the curve, either.

Home checked his watch; It was getting late. “Before we go, can I ask you about self-confidence?”

“Self confidence.” He took a breath, repeated the phrase slowly as a smile creased his face.

“There are two outs, and you have two strikes against you – what do you do? You step back, make eye contact with the pitcher, smile at him. Then give him a wink, a quick nod, smile again, step back in. Nothing so unnerves an opponent as your self-confidence. You’ve got him right where you want him.”
- Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher

Home paid the tab and we got up from our table, walking into the crisp, spring air. I could swear that in the distance, I was hearing a faint roaring of a crowd.

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Plato.”

“Home.” He reminded me gently. “You’re very welcome.” The old philosopher smiled, adjusting the brim of his vintage ‘55 Brooklyn Dodgers cap.

“Any last thoughts?” I asked knowingly.

“You know why is baseball played on a diamond? Like the stone, a baseball diamond needs to be cut just so to shine just so perfectly so. In both cases, it’s a sparkling thing of beauty when done just right, no matter what the setting is.”
- Home Plato, Baseball Philosopher

I nodded, we shook hands. I watched him walk away into the darkness, and I swear I could hear, from somewhere, the gentle lilt of a ballpark organ, a gruff voice hollering ‘Play ball!’ and cheers fading into the night.

Addition by subtraction

During the first week of February, I wrote about some of the classroom issues I was having in my New Orleans area high school classroom, and had a little scorecard of that week’s statistics.(The entire post can be reviewed here: http://poetluckerate.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/clear-view-from-the-front-of-the-class/)

What I reported back on February third was:
• 5 kids in/out of in-school suspension
• 1 young man earning 5 days out of school suspension
• 1 young woman transferring to alternative school. Hopefully.
• 6 teen moms/dads with baby and/or baby’s father/mother issues
• 12 sleepers; kids who fall asleep often enough in class that I have to wake them up (I am something of a human alarm clock some days, and my general admonition to awakened students, “If you want to take a nap, get a room at the Days Inn” is not well received.)
• 5 kids who are on daily check in/check out point-system behavioral plans that require daily updates of their written goals. (One girl earned only half of her available points on the one specific goal of ‘refraining from using profanity in classroom: sailors don’t blush in her presence, they check their thesauruses.)

Update!

In the five-plus weeks since then, I can report that the one young woman did transfer to an alternative school, and that while my half-dozen teen moms/dads still have teen mom/dad issues of varying degrees, the two that seemed the most frazzled by those issues have calmed considerably. I can also report that while most of my sleepers still try to sleep, I have refined my ‘wake up’ process to a quick rap of my clipboard on their desk (as close to their ear as possible) as I pass by with minimal interruption to class proceedings. I was down to two check-in/check-out students, but have now moved back up to four who are all on two-week stretches of CICO. (Love those ubiquitous acronyms!)

Oh, and Ms. Potty-mouth got herself expelled for a variety of transgression in and out of my classroom.

Along with two other kids from the same class period.

Oddly, none of the three expelled students had any particular negative interaction with one another, and simply found themselves on their own separate yet parallel paths to departure. Were I a math teacher, I would probably turn that experience into a word problem of some sort: “If three students each depart the classroom by expulsion over a six-day stretch…”

You will probably not be surprised to learn that that particular class period is running much more smoothly than it was a month ago. It aint the autobahn yet, but we’re calling AAA much less frequently.

In talking the numbers game with a fellow teacher at my school, I told her my favorite story of student departures from a classroom of mine. It came from the year I was a sub, and was at an inner-city New Orleans high school I had been at numerous times. This blog note from January, 2010:

“I was standing with another student in the doorway of a classroom of full of ninth graders, discussing that student’s behavior (which was worth bringing him to the doorway to discuss, but wasn’t anything that would have gotten him sent to the office or any such thing – an important note) when one of the school’s assistant principals walked by, and said “Everything O.K., Mr. Lucker?” To which I replied, “Nothing we can’t handle. We have it worked out.” when the student interrupted with his own, somewhat contradictory answer to the A.P’s inquiry: “This man is tryin’ to tell me things!”

The AP stopped, and the following ensued:

AP: (calmly) “Son, Mr. Lucker is your teacher…he is supposed to tell you things.”

STUDENT: “Uh, uhh! He can’t tell me nothing! He aint my teacher…Ms. Russells’ my teacher!”

AP: (more calmly) “Son, please come here.” (Finger motions kid across hall to where he is standing)

STUDENT 2: (Yelling from inside classroom) “You can’t get on him for sayin’ that – he’s right, this man aint our teacher! He can’t tell us nothin’!”

AP: (motions STUDENT 2 into hallway) “Son, come out here please.”

STUDENT 3: “Man, you can’t say nothing about that to them!”

AP: (less calmly) “Boy! Get out here!” (Finger motions student 3 to hallway)

STUDENT 4 (girl) “Oh, mister! You’re wrong for calling them out there. They didn’t do nothing! And Mr. Lucker ain’t our teacher!”

AP: (less calmly but still retaining his cool) “Young lady, please step out here.”

At this point, the assistant principal has four students along the wall across from my classroom, and a security guard at the far end of the hall comes down to investigate. He and I are standing in the doorway as the AP is telling these kids why they should be listening to me, when, out of our peripheral vision, we both see an English textbook go whizzing through the air.

The security guard immediately points at a young man, and says “Grab your things! You are going home!” To which the kid loudly protests: “Why am I going home? I wasn’t throwing that book at him (pointing at me) I was throwing it at HER!” as he points to a girl sitting in the corner, who sits shrugging her shoulders.

As the kid gathers up his belongings, the security guard shakes his head, looks at me, and says “Sometimes they just don’t know when not to say anything”.

Five students gone in one fell, 90 second swoop, and I hadn’t said a word. It is, to date, a personal record. The rest of the class ran pretty smoothly.”

What I didn’t say at the time was that in the aftermath of all that, some other staff at the school was marveling at my ability to clear a classroom of five trouble makers in one fell swoop, especially as a sub, and all I could do was humbly ascribe the events to self-directed learning I had very little to do with.

Fast forward two years, I am back in my own classroom, first year at my school, and I have developed a bit of a reputation for not accepting the status quo with some students.

One day a member of the counseling team stopped me as I was leaving campus to talk about the expulsions, marveling at the way I was able to rid my classroom of two very problematic students (This was a day before the third student got herself booted) and I could again take no real credit for the events, just benefit from them, which is what I told her.

She laughed heartily at my taking advantage of the right place/right time attitude and we went our respective ways, her congratulating me on my ‘getting them gone’ over her shoulder as she went to her car and I went to mine.

I related both stories to my colleague who quietly made this observation: “It’s all because you actually try to engage them in something constructive. A lot of teachers just ignore them until they go too far, then they just kick them out of class. You’re just doing your job.”

Who knew.

We just keep on truckin’. Or teachin’. Or something.