Opening Day

 

Arthur Finstead, Science Department. That was my moniker, my title, and my address at Sturgeon Falls High School. It had been hand-lettered below my mailbox in the teachers’ lounge, written in black ink with fancy “Old English” letters on the cover of my red grade book, and also typed, slightly crookedly, in the upper left corner of my class schedule. Mr. Barnard, I guess, was setting an example for the Sturgeon Falls high standards of neatness, penmanship, and organization. My Principal, Thaddeus Barnard, did this for all his new-hires. This year there were only two—Madeline Johnson, the new English teacher and myself.

            I was the entire Science Department. My assignment was to enlighten the children of this farming and logging community with the great discoveries and ideas of science. My first day in school, a workshop day without students, Mr. Barnard warned of going overboard with theory and technical stuff, especially ideas that students couldn’t actually hold or touch. “These are families of practical, hardworking pioneers who toughed it out to make a living way up here in the north-country. They don’t like outsiders telling them what to do, they want to know how they might use book-learning in their future,” he paused, “and go easy on that evolution stuff.”

Comment: A teacher’s first year is such a memorable experience. I can still remember the names and faces of a number of favorite students and where they sat in the classroom. Every male teacher had a paddle or in my case, a meter stick, and were encouraged to employ it as needed. My second principal was a bully­—he burned the cribbage boards in the lounge and announced at a faculty meeting that he intended to get rid of all the woman teachers. I know I looked young, but an older English teacher, a single lady, admonished me for standing at the foot of a stairway without displaying my hall-monitor badge—a privilege granted to only 9thgrade students. I shared my room with another older and single lady who loved to relate stories of the summers she had spent with Timothy Leary, the godfather of the LSD movement in the country.