Legacy

Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Twenty-five Years before the Assassination

I groaned at the sound of the alarm clock as it woke me from what had been a fitful night’s sleep. Today was the first day of school and my first day as a high school English teacher. I was excited, yet nervous as hell, and it felt like I’d hardly slept at all.

Just a few months before, I'd successfully defended my dissertation and had been awarded a doctorate in Education from New York University’s prestigious Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. I could hardly believe it — I was now Dr. Samuel Franklin Austin. I’d even beaten my older bro by a few days — Trev got his Ph.D. from MIT that year as well.

After finishing my doctorate, I took the summer off and went traveling through Central and Eastern Europe with my best friend, Paul, and his wife, Linda. What a trip that was! Of course all our parents tried to talk us out of it, particularly with Paul having just come through an exhausting two-year research program to cure his Down’s Syndrome. As Paul himself put it, however, he desperately needed a vacation before starting back to school. Who better to show him the world than the two people he loved the most? We were adults and, besides which, I spoke a dozen languages fluently, including German and Russian. As I’d proven in the past, I could talk my way around just about any situation.

I couldn’t believe the cities we saw. The Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest is one of the most stunning examples of neogothic architecture I've seen anywhere. The tour we took of the interior left us speechless. Dresden was equally beautiful but in a different way. For decades, these cities had been behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ with only limited access to Western tourists, which today seems incomprehensible.

The utter drabness of Warsaw was inspiring in its own right. It was hard to fathom how the Germans could have driven the entire population out of the city and then burned it to the ground in punishment for the Warsaw uprising. The Soviets rebuilt Warsaw to their standards — it became a modern, utilitarian city for the proletariat and one of the most ugly in Europe.

Speaking of which, Russia was fascinating! Moscow is a city of juxtapositions — classic Russian Orthodox architecture intermixed with modern structures, with touches of western influence. St. Petersburg was a true highlight, although Paul got mugged there. Crime is a real problem in the former Soviet Union and we certainly experienced it first-hand. Someone dropped a bottle from a second-floor window in front of us, startling Paul in particular while an accomplice on the ground tried to grab his backpack. I guess they weren’t counting on a tourist who not only spoke the language, but could curse at them in an endless stream of Russian profanity. It attracted plenty of attention and the guy who tried to grab Paul’s backpack fled on foot.

The whole thing freaked poor Linda out but Paul actually enjoyed the experience. It gave us a chance to see the workings of a Russian police station from the inside. With his interest in Criminal Justice, Paul was fascinated by the whole thing. I was just glad that we came out of it unharmed. I think Paul was bored with all the museums we’d seen so, I guess, it was a nice diversion for him. It scared the shit out of Linda and me, however.

Speaking of museums, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg is one of the finest museums in the world. It’s amazing the quality and quantity of art the czars collected, and perhaps even more amazing that the communists didn’t destroy it as an example of Western bourgeoisie opulence. We ended up spending days at that museum. It was a damn good thing we’d planned to spend nine weeks on our trip — we needed every minute of the time!

The absolute highlight of the trip, however, was Prague. Prague is a magical city of such stunning beauty that not even the communists managed to wreck it. The view of the castle of Prague from along the Danube is truly magical. I knew beyond a doubt that Prague was a city I would want to return to again and again.

The rampant sex trade in Prague was certainly an eye-opener. I’ve always thought prostitution should be legalized, regulated and taxed. After all, there will always be prostitution, regardless of whether or not it’s legal, so why not make it relatively safe? It has little to do with the fact that my biological mother was a prostitute — to me it’s a matter of common sense.

Prague was another story entirely, however. Young children barely out of their diapers were sold into slavery to satisfy the perversions of tourists from around the world. I know firsthand what it’s like to be used like that and I vowed then and there that, someday, I’d do something about the sex trade around the world. No one should be forced into slavery. No one should be forced to live life as a prostitute, demeaned and degraded, beaten and starved, ultimately contracting STDs and then being tossed aside. No one should have to live like that, least of all a child.

In spite of being mugged in St. Petersburg and coming face-to-face with the sex trade in Prague, it was a great trip, but all good things must eventually come to an end. After spending nine weeks overseas, we returned home — Paul and Linda to resume their studies at Butler University and me to begin my career as a teacher in the same school system that had let me down in my early youth.

I’d chosen to teach in the city school system because that was where the need was the greatest. Emmerich Manual High School in particular was sorely in need and I had no difficulty getting myself assigned there. Frankly, a lot of new teachers were placed there because it was one of the worst in the city. The students were mostly poor white trash, much as I had been before the Austins took me in. I could relate to these kids on a personal level as no one else could.

When it came time for the first day of school, however, I was scared out of my mind. Petrified actually. Here I was, a brand new teacher starting out in one of the toughest schools around. The vast majority of students dropped out when they turned sixteen. That meant I’d be dealing mostly with fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds. I’d have two years at most to convince them to stay in school.

However, I was only 22 years old myself. I didn’t look much older than they were. What made me think they would respect me — that they would listen to a kid — a rich kid who grew up in the suburbs and went to elite, private universities? What the fuck was I thinking?

I was renting a small apartment on the old Central Canal downtown. The drive from my apartment to Emanual, as the high school was nicknamed, was a short one — it took me only eight minutes, door-to-door.

The day started with a general teachers’ meeting at which all the new teachers were introduced to the veterans. We’d gone through orientation the week before, so I already knew some of the new teachers by appearance if not by name.

The veteran teachers were all new to me, however, and the difference in appearance was stark. Whereas the new teachers were all neatly dressed and had eager looks on their faces, the veterans were dressed a lot like the kids they taught, which was to say rather sloppily. Gone from their faces was the look of eager anticipation I might have expected on the first day of another school year. Instead there was a look of something else — call it resignation, or dread. It was as ifthey were resigned to another year in teaching hell.

In that moment I had an epiphany. It was no wonder the kids in this school dropped out rather than graduating. Although there were many factors, not the least of them being the shitty home life from which most of them came, burned out, apathetic teachers were hardly an inspiration to the students. Emanual was one of the city’s most poorly performing schools. The good teachers left as soon as something else opened up. The teachers who stayed, stayed because they couldn’t get a teaching job anyplace else.

With scarcely fifteen minutes left before the start of class, the Principal finally called the meeting to order. She gave one of the most uninspired speeches I’ve ever heard. There was no talk about new beginnings or teaching strategies. There was nothing even said about the new state teaching requirements that we all needed to know. Instead we were informed about the ongoing problems with textbook shortages and how we had to make do with the existing supply budget.

With that, we were dismissed to go to our classrooms. Mine was located on the second floor and it had a beautiful view of the loading dock. I would be teaching English primarily but, due to staffing shortages, I would also serve double duty, teaching French and Spanish.

The first order of business, however, was homeroom. I was responsible for monitoring the wellbeing of thirty-two freshmen — taking attendance, making announcements and just being there in times of need. I approached my classroom, which was already filling up with bewildered kids, with great trepidation. As freshmen, they were also new to the school and trying to find their way around.

Taking a deep breath, I entered the door and prepared to put to use everything I'd learned at Case Western Reserve University and at New York University over the past seven years.

It felt weird to sit at the front of the classroom. I was so accustomed to sitting among the students. As might be expected, the kids were more than a bit rowdy. Half of them weren’t even in their seats when the bell rang, but I let them alone until the appointed time, my moment of truth. What I did now would impact the relationship I would have with the students throughout the entire year. If I allowed them to get away with being disruptive, I’d never get control of the classroom. If I was too harsh, I’d never gain their trust. I needed to stake out the middle ground, providing a disciplined environment that was conducive to learning while at the same time engaging the students. The best teachers hardly needed to apply discipline at all. Nothing is more effective than peer pressure in getting students to behave, nor is anything more destructive in the hands of an inexperienced teacher. I was determined to make peer pressure work for me rather than against me.

“GOOD MORNING!” I shouted out forcefully, yet with confidence. I then proceed with my introductions.

This was my spiel with which I intended to start off all my classes. Now it was time to talk about homeroom.

Opening up a laptop on my desk with a little flourish, I continued.

“But Dr. Austin!” a boy shouted out. “How is the computer gonna recognize the difference between me an’ my brother? Our mother can’t even tell us apart.”

I’d already anticipated the question and verified that the software could differentiate between identical twins, and so I answered and assured him.

Taking attendance with the computer went amazingly smoothly as it literally took seconds for the computer to recognize each student’s face. All they had to do was to look at the display — there was a built-in camera and their faces were displayed directly on the screen. When the computer recognized a face, it would beep and display their name on the display, giving the kids instant feedback that they’d been counted as present. Both of the twin boys were astounded when the computer correctly identified each of them. The software was that good.

The technology certainly impressed the kids and, if nothing else, signaled that this teacher was different. The proof, however, was in how they behaved. Although there was the usual banter among them as they stood in line, they were well behaved and surprisingly quiet. Even after being scanned, they went back to their seats and talked quietly among themselves.

Once they were all seated, I continued my spiel.

I began as the bell rang.

And with that, homeroom was dismissed.

I breathed a sigh of relief as my students filed out of the classroom. They actually stayed after the bell without giving me a hard time about being late! I’d only kept them an extra thirty seconds, so I doubted anyone would be late, but kids have a way of making a big deal over it.

No sooner had the last of the homeroom students left the room than the students for my first period class began to file in. My first class was a sophomore English class and I knew this group of kids would be much more challenging. For one thing, they’d already had a year of high school — a year in which to become disillusioned; a year closer to dropping out. Some of the kids would drop shortly after the first six-week grade period, just as soon as they turned sixteen. I was told to expect a steady rate of attrition throughout the school year, with nearly half of them dropping out by the end of the final grading period.

Sadly, the school took the rate of attrition into account in determining class size. There were forty students in the class at the start of the year, based on the assumption that there would only be thirty by Christmas. How I was supposed to engage so many students and convince them to stay in school was a mystery to me, but I was sure as hell going to try.

This group certainly was more rowdy than the last one. They kept right on shouting through the bell and didn’t even make an effort to take their seats. Rather than trying to shout above the fray, I took out a red police light, set it down on my desk and switched it on. Soon the entire room was bathed in the glow of its flashing red light. It certainly got their attention and the room quickly became completely silent.

“That’s much better,” I began. “Now if you would quickly take your seats, we’ll get started.”

I quickly went through the same introduction I used for homeroom and then I had them all line up to be scanned by the computer for attendance. Daily attendance records weren’t mandatory and we were all cautioned they would be an exercise in futility, given the large number of students who cut class regularly, but I wanted to know who was and was not attending so I could target those kids at risk.

Taking attendance didn’t go quite so smoothly for the sophomores in my first period class as it had for homeroom, but I only had to raise my voice once to get them to quiet down.

Once we’d taken attendance, I repeated the announcement about the formation of a GSA. The announcement was supposed to have been made in all of the homerooms but, from the reactions on the students’ faces, it was pretty clear very few, if any, of them had heard it. I was not surprised. I figured that even if only my students heard the announcement, word would spread quickly that Payton Manning was coming to Emanual High.

Finally, I turned to the issue of attrition, deciding the best strategy was a good offense.

That comment certanly got a good laugh from everyone, which I considered to be a good thing.

They all got a laugh out of that.

I continued with a grin on my face.

Lifting a large box onto my desk, I opened it and held up an entry-level e-book reader, and continued.

I spent the next ten minutes passing the e-book readers out to everyone and demonstrating how to use them. Once I was sure everyone could open the books and navigate through them, I announced our first assignment.

Taking a deep breath, I continued.

I was of course talking of the worst tornados to strike the state since the Palm Sunday tornados of 1965. A staggering 1500 people had been injured statewide, and over a hundred lost their lives. Since most of these kids came from families that originated in the rural areas of the state, there was a good chance that a number of them had relatives who’d been injured or killed in the tornado outbreak of the past spring. Sure enough, about a third of the hands in the room went up.

My question led to a spirited discussion of families trying to cope with the loss of crops and the loss of loved ones, and of a Federal Emergency response that didn’t come close to meeting the overwhelming need. This allowed me to put the Dust Bowl in perspective in a way they could understand it.

When the bell rang, it came as a complete surprise to all in the room, including me. The time had gone so quickly and no one wanted to see the discussion end. I had to literally cut a student short in mid-sentence. As they prepared to leave, I gave them a reading assignment for that evening knowing full well that I’d whetted their appetites. I had little doubt that, short of being unable to read, they’d read the assignment in full, if not more.

My second period class was freshman Spanish. In going over the class roster the night before, the thing that really stood out was the fact that about two thirds of the class consisted of kids with Hispanic surnames. I seriously doubted that so many kids with a Spanish language heritage could be ignorant of the language of their origin. It therefore seemed far more likely that these were kids looking for an ‘easy A’. The trouble was, they didn’t need to learn basic Spanish vocabulary and grammar. What they needed was to refine their vocabulary and grammar while studying Spanish literature. In other words, they needed a Spanish language course that was equivalent to the English classes they’d been taking all their lives.

Likewise, having a bunch of native speakers in the classroom was unfair to the kids who really were there to learn Spanish. I therefore decided to create a class within a class with two separate curricula — those who already had a basic command of the language would take a proficiency exam and those who could, would help me teach the non-native speakers the basics while I taught them to appreciate the richness of their Spanish language heritage.

When it came to the actual implementation, however, it was more than evident the Spanish-speaking students were disappointed that their ‘easy A’ was not going to be so easy after all. That disappointment quickly faded when I brought out the e-book readers they’d be using the rest of the year. Each reader was loaded with some elementary children’s books in Spanish for the novices, and some advanced novels for the native-speakers.

I organized the class into seven groups of five or six students each — three or four of them native speakers and two or three of them novices. The native speakers worked together, reading and discussing classic and contemporary Spanish literature, learning to improve their grammar and vocabularies in the process. The novices in each group worked together to learn the basics, relying on the native speakers for help as needed. I guided all of them in their endeavor, praying my approach would work.

By the time the bell rang, everyone was pretty excited by the concept. I had a feeling this was going to work beautifully.

The rest of the day went pretty much the same way but, in retrospect not surprisingly, the Principal asked to see me during my free period.

“Austin, what’s this I hear about you giving out e-book readers?” she practically shouted at me before I’d even closed the door behind me.

“There aren’t enough textbooks to go around,” I answered, “so I got a local business to donate the e-book readers and the e-books.” What I didn’t tell her was that the local business was my father’s.

“You can’t just go out and buy something expensive like that, even if they are donated!” she shouted at me. “These things have to go through proper channels and they have to be cleared directly by me. Something this grand has to go before the School Board.”

“I did run it by you in advance,” I replied. “I told you I had a local business that was willing to provide books for my students. You yourself said I didn’t need to get approval in advance so long as the overall cost was less than a thousand dollars. I checked on-line and the official school policy is a thousand per class. I negotiated a sweet deal with the manufacturer for a substantial discount on a two-year-old e-book reader that basically made it free if we agreed to spend at least twenty-five dollars on e-books per student. Given the regulations, I was able to negotiate that down to a total cost per classroom of $999.99, which is under the threshold. Fortunately, most of the books my students need are in the public domain and, hence, free, and we got a quantity discount on the rest.”

“But do you realize how this makes the rest of the teachers look?” the principal admonished me. “Your students have been showing off their shiny e-book readers all day. Now all the other students want one and their teachers have to tell them, ‘no’…”

“Why do they have to say ‘no’?” I asked incredulously. “There’s no reason any other teacher can’t do the same thing I did. In fact, I was assured the deal I made would be honored for anyone else who would like to do the same thing. Better still, why not make it a school-wide program? After all, the students don’t need more than one e-book reader for all their classes. Why not get some local businesses to chip in fifty dollars per student for the whole school — that’s not a lot of money — and it should be plenty to buy the books they need for all their classes, particularly with the quantity discount and free e-book readers.”

The principal opened her mouth as if to speak, and then closed it. She tried to speak again, but nothing came out. Finally, she said, “I’ll take it under consideration and we’ll need to get agreement from the majority of the other teachers, as well as the school board — I think. In the meantime, I’m going to have to ask you to put your e-book reader project on hold for the time being. Perhaps we can roll it out next year, school-wide.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that,” I replied. I’ve already given the students their e-book readers and I’ve built my entire curriculum around them. My donor has given generously with the expectation that the funds will be used this year. I acted within the rules established by the School Board and by you. All it would take would be one disappointed student running to the news media and we’d have some pretty serious egg on our faces. Would you want to be the one to have to explain that to the Superintendent?”

Again the principal tried to speak, but couldn’t. Finally, she said, “Fine, but don’t you ever do something on this scale without talking to me first…”

“Which I did,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but there’s a significant difference between buying an e-book reader and buying some textbooks…”

“And given the low cost I negotiated, that difference would be?…” I asked.

“I think you know what I’m talking about,” she replied, “so don’t patronize me. Suffice it to say that anything this widespread needs to be formally presented to me, regardless of the cost or lack thereof. It’s all about perception, Dr. Austin, and you’ve managed to make yourself look good at the expense of the other teachers, and me.”

I almost started to say, ‘That wouldn’t take much,’ but decided I’d better hold my tongue. Instead, I said, “I guess I’d better mention the dual curriculum I’ve developed for my Spanish classes.”

Turning to me, she looked at me sternly and said, “Put it together in a thorough report, on my desk, first thing in the morning. We’ll discuss it this time tomorrow. Now as long as I have you here, let’s talk about this ridiculous scheme you have to start a GSA at this school…”

“But I’ve followed the rules,” I interrupted.

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it…”