INTERVIEW WITH A TEACHER

My career path as an educator did not go exactly as planned. At the age of twenty-seven my United Auto Worker’s representative—I knew I was in trouble when the rep said, I’ve never had to defend a teacher before—negotiated my resignation from the Michigan Department of Social Services for my refusal to chase two black youths down the back streets and alleys of Detroit. Now I might not be the smartest person in the world, but I knew the potential danger involved. First of all—if I caught these youngsters (and I probably would have due to their having to frequently hoist their pants up)—then what? An ass kicking? And by whom?

I left DSS with two letters of recommendation and a guarantee that my former employer would not bad mouth me. Call it the art of the deal if you will. I frantically pursued work elsewhere before someone had a change of heart. It wasn’t long and I found a teaching position at a Catholic school in Detroit. During that time, I vowed to never ever work for the State of Michigan again.

Unbeknownst to me, my name and civil service test scores remained on some state agency list, and when I least expected it, three-fourths of the way through a school year, I got the call. “Would you be interested in teaching in a prison?”

Again, I’m no dummy—I knew to follow the money, after all, the Archdiocese of Detroit wasn’t paying their teachers diddly-squat. But there were no guarantees that I’d actually get the prison job. In fact, I was under the impression that I had set up an interview appointment with one person, a principal; however, this was not the case. I sat at an elongated table in an elongated conference room surrounded by a warden, deputy wardens, personnel manager, inspector, and a school principal—each person ready to bombard me with questions. My only defense, an empty glass and a pitcher of water in front of me, a stalling tactic within arms reach.

“What would you do if two inmates started fighting in your class?” the Warden asked.

“I don’t know exactly what your policies and procedures are,” I answered, “but peer restraints have worked wonders for me in the past.”

“What’s that?” the Warden asked.

I poured myself a glass of water and took a sip. “It’s where I have the other class members ‘circle-up’ and ‘take-em’ down until order can be restored.” I was being cocky, knowing damned well they don’t do those sorts of things in prison, but for some reason everyone on the interview panel enjoyed my answer, and the one's to follow. I’ll be the first to admit, my early years in teaching were probably a far cry from resembling the role that Hilary Swank played in Freedom Writers. In other words, I just didn’t give a damn.