“OK, so setting the scene: 9th grade honors English, a class full of future ivy leaguers (Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, etc.), and me and my best friend “Patrick” who were already heavy into booze and w**d and would both end up at football party schools for college.
The year starts out decent – our teacher is old and mean, and the syllabus looks boring, but we kick off the year with a cool project about the US Presidential Election. Everyone gets into it, even us two delinquents, who dive into an oral report on fellow mediocre student Dan, “He’s No Jack Kennedy” Quayle. The teacher is so pleased that she lets the project drag on into November, as we break down and analyze the election and its results. At the time, no one questions why we are spending months on the election in an English class (instead of Civics or Social Studies), but who cares; we’re having fun.
Fast forward a few months, and the teacher has a sudden realization… She let a couple-week lark on the election turn into a multi-month distraction, and now we’re way behind on the syllabus. Mind you, she uses the same syllabus every year and the election only comes around every 4 years, so there was no slack in there to begin with. We now have a very short amount of time left in the year to plow through all the Shakespeare, Canterbury Tales, etc. that is laid out in her department-approved syllabus. As the son of a rebellious NYC English teacher, I have grown up with stories of great syllabus battles against the administration. That’s what ultimately forced my mother out of teaching, so I know just how serious this is for the teacher, and by extension, us.
The good news: If we plow through one novel/play per week between now and the end of the school year (including spring break), we may just pull this off. Not just reading them, mind you, but class discussion & critique, writing the papers, taking all the tests, and everything else that was promised. After all, it’s all on the syllabus; smart students would already have begun reading ahead on this material. We set off at breakneck speed, but it’s quickly clear that this will be difficult even for the no-social-life brainiacs in the class and basically impossible for two hungover malcontents who were planning to take turns flipping through the Cliffs Notes at Barnes & Noble and then copying off each other.
As this starts to ruin golf team practice and cut into weekend drinking time – a plan is hatched. A quick survey of the masses reveals everyone is equally upset with the unfair situation we find ourselves in. We float the idea of open rebellion and slowly bring everyone over to our side. It probably helps that I am 6’2″ and he is a football player/wrestler type, and everyone else looks 12 years old, although at the time we just thought that we were very convincing. Eventually, the following Monday when a major paper is due is selected as the moment to strike.
On the appointed day, we act as spokesmen for the rest of the class. The teacher has heard many complaints from these, the best and brightest students in the grade, but has failed to take any action. Enough is enough, we say; no more work will be done until there is a complete renegotiation of expectations. She begins to get quite heated as we explain that no one, not one single person in the class, has prepared today’s required assignment to hand in as expected. As we argue, and she yells, I can tell from body language that everyone else in the class has actually written their papers and are hiding them in backpacks and notebooks… They are practically reaching to lay a hand on them as this drags on. They are waiting for that moment when she breaks us and we are sent to the principal’s office, at which point they will throw their papers at her in a rush, say we threatened them, and beg forgiveness to maintain their straight-A averages. It is no stretch to say that most of these kids have never received a B or even an A-minus in their life.
But they have underestimated us (and perhaps we, them), as we don’t break and neither do they – the teacher does! She collapses into her chair with a sigh, admits we may be right, begins muttering about where she went wrong. In fact, she basically gives up, encouraging us to read the material, but no longer demanding lengthy homework assignments and barraging us with constant quizzes and tests.
For the rest of the year, we coast, as she is so defeated she barely even maintains the charade of teaching class. At the end of the school year, as we are goofing around, signing yearbooks and chit-chatting, when she stands up to give her final speech. This is normally a speech going something like, “You’re the best class ever, you’ll go far in life, I’ll miss you, come visit me next year, etc.” She instead proceeds to tell us that we are the worst class she has ever had in 25+ years of teaching. In fact, she has decided to retire years earlier than planned and will never teach again, and it’s all our fault for being such b*stards.
I have never felt such power over an adult authority figure! It was intoxicating and laid down a blueprint of defiance that would define our next three years of high school. FWIW – I don’t have a transcript handy, but I think I ended up with an A-minus in the class.”
