The
recent death of Bel Kaufman, author of the best seller, “Up the Down
Staircase,” brought back lots of memories of my days in the New York City
public schools. After graduation from college, (an art major) I got a job teaching
art to 7th, 8th and 9th graders in the Junior
High Schools of the South Bronx, not the easiest way to earn a living. If
nothing else, the experience made me an exceptionally good public speaker; if
you can hold the attention of 30 twelve to fourteen year olds, there is no
audience you can’t handle – although I have to say the worst group I ever
addressed was a DAR luncheon in New Canaan. My inner city delinquents were
nothing compared to that bunch of spoiled, elderly brats. I ended up doing
“stand-up” comedy to get their attention, a skill I acquired during my years at
Herman Ridder Junior High School in the Bronx.
The
problem wasn’t so much the students; they looked forward to their one hour of
art a week, although it had about as much relevance to their lives as Ivanhoe
or Algebra. It was the system that drove me crazy. I taught thirty classes a
week, each with over 30 students, close to 1,000 pupils in a subject that
required individual attention. To say that I was a basket case at the end of a
day would be an understatement. 
The
days flew by in what seemed like seconds. I felt like that character in the old
German classic movie, “Metropolis”, who struggles to keep a giant, clock-like
mechanism from exploding. If I let my guard down, chaos ensued. Scissors flew,
art supplies disappeared, never to be recovered, fights broke out. Charges of
m------f------------- rang out. My best friend who taught in an All Girls
Junior High (worse than boys at that age) used to break up battles with an
upturned chair, lion-tamer style. All it took was one emotionally disturbed
child in the classroom, and all learning stopped. 
Strange
as it may sound, the really hard part of the job wasn’t the students. They were
tough, street-hardened but basically lovable. The problem was the workload and
the administration (isn’t it always?) with their bureaucratic requests, none of
which I ever completed to their satisfaction. My lessons plans were always late
and incomplete, my attendance sheets never totaled up correctly, and so on and
so forth. Despite my neglect of proper paperwork and procedure, my children
turned out gorgeous artwork and the halls of the school were filled with their
efforts. Just hand them a crayon and a piece of paper, and, within minutes,
something wonderful appeared. I learned to be a performer, a magician, to
excite them about their ability to create beauty out of their own heads.
I
lasted at the job for six long years. During that time, I did practically no
artwork of my own. My only hope for escape (and to be an artist) was to marry
and get pregnant (things usually happened in that order in those days.) The
minute the pregnancy test came back positive, I handed in my resignation. As I
walked out the door of J.H.S 98 the Bronx for the last time, I made two solemn
promises to myself:
1) No one was ever going to say
“go f---- yourself” to me again, and…
2) I would go on Welfare before I would go back to
teach in a New York City public school .
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