The Living Rockumentary

Andrew Sandoval has one of the coolest jobs in the world, eh Brian? It says a little too much about us, Brian, that I'd agree with you. He's not an astronaut or a ballplayer or a spy or even a rock & roll musician- he's a writer. Sounds like a cool book (there's that word again- cool- being bandied about like the word "genius" at an Academy Awards ceremony). The thing that strikes me about your selected passage is that even though Les Monkees were perceived by many as useless TV show stars, the "cool" musicians of the era welcomed them as peers. It's hard to believe that The Beach Boys, too, were regarded as equals if not superiors by the musicians of the day while being regarded as unhip by rock music fans. Must've been the lack of guitar solos. They had the long hair, did as many drugs, embraced the Maharishi, they even jammed with The Grateful Dead onstage. But Jerry played the lead guitar.

After spending the last year doing my student and then clinical teaching at Springfield Central High School, I've officially acepted a teaching post at a small private school in Hardwick, MA called Eagle Hill School for students with learning disabilities. The differences between my experience thus far and my new job will be many. At Central, I taught three classes (plus I ran the afterschool Recording Studio club) and had over ninety students, from various socioeconomic backgrounds, but all hailing from the urban city of Springfield, of course. The demographics at Central are 1/3 White, 1/3 Black, 1/3 Hispanic with only a small population of students who don't fit those three groups. At Eagle Hill, I'll teach six classes with only a total of 30 students overall. Because every kid at Eagle Hill has some kind of diagnosed learning disability, each one gets much more individual attention. Leafing through their yearbook, I also noticed that almost every student is white and because it's a private school that costs $45,000 a year if you include room & board (most of the kids live there), these kids come from wealthier backgrounds than my previous students at Central. So far, that's the only aspect that makes me sad about this new venture- that the diversity within Eagle Hill School compared to Springfield is practically non-existent.

On the other hand, there is a lot to like about my new job. In case you hadn't heard of Hardwick (I hadn't), it's a small country village bordering the Quabbin- technically, it's the beginning of Worcester County. Its neighbor to the south is Ware. Since our landlord is selling the condo in which we currently live in Northampton, we were planning on moving in the area of whereever I found a teaching job. The great thing about this place is that they offer faculty housing for a portion of my salary. In effect, we'll be paying about half of what we paid for rent here in Northampton, except we'll have our own house out in the country. And it's a really swell lil' house, dear. Two-floor colonial, wood floors, lilac, raspberry and wild grape bushes, two bathrooms, large yard for Hannah to roam around in.

In contrast to Springfield where I didn't even have a desk, I'll have my own room at Eagle Hill. In contrast to Springfield where every lesson you teach needs to incorporate the state learning standards and every unit needs to be within the city curriculum frameworks (and if you teach 10th grade, EVERYTHING IS ALL ABOUT THE MCAS- that standardized test that the Republicans use to punish urban schools for being poor and having the audacity to welcome students who aren't magically fluent in English like good white Christian kids from Texas), I develop my own curriculum. In other words, in Springfield, as a 12th grade English teacher, you had to teach a specific 10 poems (you could add more, which I did, but you had to cover those ten) and every student took the same city-wide final, which those 10 poems were engineered to prepare them for. At Eagle Hill, it's like college in the sense that I don't teach 11th grade English- rather, I teach a group of kids, who could range in age from fourteen to eighteen in the same class, but who have similar aptitudes, strengths, and/or difficulties in English, classes with titles like "American Literature Survey." Because I create the curriculum, that could mean I may teach Hawthorne, Thoreau and Whitman or it could mean I teach Wheatley, Hurston, Angelou and Morrison. I'm sure I'd make the curiculum more diverse overall but you get the idea. I wouldn't be forced to have to teach Great Expectations because that's what the frameworks demand and that's what the school owns for books. I imagine what I'll do (and this is how I answered it in my job interview) is select something that adolescents generally respond well to, and is quick and easy, like the play A Raisin In The Sun and start framing the curriculum around student interests. If the class is intrigued by the issues of race in that play, then maybe we'll do To Kill A Mockingbird or a unit on the Harlem Renaissance next. If they seem to enjoy the drama aspect of Raisin, then maybe we'll do The Crucible next. I generally will still work with classic literature although this last year found me incorporating a Randy Newman song, an Alfred Hitchcock film and even a short story written by Anthony Westcott in the early 90s (as an example of what not to do when writing short stories in Creative Writing class). The students who do well are the ones whose interests are being engaged, who come to class excited, or at least curious, about what they'll be doing.

So that's my new deal. I'll still be in the area, about 45 minutes away, so I won't see my N'ampton friends as often, but I'm available for consultations by appointment. And I'll be around all summer. Now that I have a job and know where I'm going to be living, my next question is: Who should I look like for Transperformance this year?