Ode to Teachers

During grad school, I served as an intern at an at-risk high school in Columbia, South Carolina. My main task consisted primarily of increasing the number of mentors for these kids, and over the course of my time there I realized how much I respect teachers.

I’m pretty sure that every single thing I said or did was a mistake of some kind. On the first day, introducing myself to the kids, the lead teacher, Jacquie, introduced me as Mr. Rogers. Wellllll, when your self image is dangling by a thread, you don’t want a whole bunch of high school seniors calling you Mr. Rogers.

“Oh, no. Brandon will be fine.”

Jacquie looked at me with a mixture of inquisitiveness and contempt. She measured her words, “The students here show proper respect by referring to staff as Mr. or Ms.”

Snickers from the class. Oh, God, that nightmare where you find yourself back in high school at the front of a classroom with everyone laughing had really come true.

I looked down to check if I was wearing pants.

Jacquie offered a compromise, “How about Mr. Brandon?”

I nodded, meekly. Jacquie had me sit down, but almost immediately a teacher’s aide walked in and called her to the front office. Jacquie turned to the class and said, “All right class, you know your lesson for today. I’ll be right back.”

I was terrified. Surely she was going to ask me to accompany her. She wasn’t going to leave me alone, was she?

As soon as she left, the kid next to me started puffing on his pen. The student behind him said, “Hey, pass that shit back here!”

I giggled.

Well, it was funny.

Later on, I took a couple of boys with me to the university. Both of them, quite by coincidence, were named Gary, though both names spelled differently. One was Garee. The other, Guary. This was back in 96 or so, and neither Gary had ever seen the internet. So I wanted to show them how it could help with their homework.

“Hey! How do I see pictures of Lil’ Kim?” asked Garee.

“Uh, well, that’s really not allowed…”

The next thing I saw on his computer screen was an ass.

“Ummm, okay, we’ve gotta go.”

As I dropped them off, Guary said to me, “You know, you’re pretty cool. And you look like Clark Kent.”

“Really? You mean Superman?”

“No. Clark Kent. The dude with the glasses.”

“Mm-kay. Thanks.”

“See you tomorrow, Mr. Brandon,” Garee said.

“Sure,” I said.

And in what should have been one of those moments of epiphany, the moment at which I realized I was meant to be a teacher, I instead said to myself, “Clark Kent, my ass.”

I decided instead that I would never, ever be a teacher.

“Dees eez good theeng,” my wife counseled me later that evening. “You vould be shortest person in classroom, Superman!”

“Very funny. Now pass that shit over here.”