“Didn’t you teach in the classroom once, Harold?” Beatryx inquired, breaking in so gently that it took Ivo a moment to realize that she was intercepting a developing argument. Afra and Groton must have been through a similar dialogue before, and the good wife knew the signs. Ivo could read them himself: the stolid man replying seriously to facetious questions, never losing his temper, while the excitable girl worked herself into a frenzy. Perhaps Groton defended astrology merely because it was ludicrous, subtly or not-so-subtly baiting her.
Had he been sympathizing with the wrong person? Afra was beautiful and brilliant, but her temperament betrayed her. She might actually be at a disadvantage in this type of encounter.
No — Brad would have broken up any such contest. Groton had said something, and Afra had pounced on it, while his mind drifted, and now somehow Groton was launched into a narration of his teaching experience. This had, it developed, predated his marriage to Beatryx. Ivo listened, finding to his surprise that he was interested. There was much more to Groton than he had thought.
“…volunteered. I suppose quite a number of professional people were as naïve as I was. But the company I worked for then — remember, this was back in ’67 or ’68 — had no sympathy with the striking teachers, and offered time off with full pay for any employee who was willing to give it a try. And of course the temporary salary from the school system was extra. So a number of us engineers set out to show the dissident teachers that we valued a functioning school system, even if they didn’t, and that we were ready and able to preserve it, no matter how long they threw their collective tantrum. After all, we were as qualified as they were, since we all had BA’s, MA’s or doctorates in our field, and plenty of practical experience too. That’s the way it looked to me at the age of twenty-seven, at any rate.”
He paused, and Afra did not break in with any irate remark this time. She was interested too. Beatryx had succeeded in pacifying things.
Twenty-seven. Two years older than Ivo was now. He could picture himself in that situation readily enough, however, assigned to fill in at a school where about half the regular teachers were out on their illegal strike. Technically, it was a mass resignation subject to withdrawal upon satisfaction… a transparent veil.
He dressed in a careful suit, trying to appear composed though his pulse raced with stage fright at the coming confrontation with a juvenile audience. Would he remember what to say? Would he be able to present clearly what was so well-defined in his own mind? It was so important that the material be properly covered.
This particular high school had not been able to keep all the classes going, and some of the lower grades were home, but there seemed to be kids everywhere. Boys were running down the halls and screaming, throwing books on the floor and collecting in noisy huddles: there seemed to be nobody with the authority to bring order. As Ivo waited with the other volunteers for briefing and specific assignments he observed some pretty heavy petting going on in a doorway, but the passing teachers ignored it. He had forgotten how mature, physically, sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls were. Two boys broke out in a fight directly in sight of the principal’s office; the harried executive simply stuck his head out. yelled “Break it up!” and glared until they ran off. The lovers were also startled out of their preoccupation, and sidled to a more distant doorway before resuming their courtship. Otherwise, chaos reigned.
His classroom was at the end of a wing, in the technical section. He was lucky, as it turned out: he was “in his field.” Some of the engineers from his company found themselves trying to teach English or History, and one even wound up babysitting a Spanish class. The kids kept jabbering Spanish at him, and laughing, and he couldn’t tell whether it was legitimate drill or dirty jokes at his expense. Ivo was to feel queasy, later, just thinking about that; it was like nakedness on a stage.
He stood before thirty-five senior engineering students. They were, in that quiet before the storm, reasonably orderly, watching him intently. What should his first words be? How should he break the ice?
No problem: he called the roll. The principal had made that tediously clear. They could put up with a few firecrackers and water balloons in the halls, but they could not omit that roll. It seemed that the state paid so much per head per day in class, and the school mustn’t miss a head. Still, it did help control the situation. A kid running up and down the halls or necking in a corner did not get credit for attendance unless he got into his classroom in a hurry. So rollcall was not as stupid as it seemed at first.
Easier said than done. He did not know those boys by sight, and had to take their word when they answered to the names he laboriously pronounced. There was increasing merriment that he thought stemmed from his errors in pronunciation — until two answered at once on “Brown” and he realized that they were covering for an absent student.
He remembered, with relief, the seating chart. He could check them that way… as soon as each boy was seated where he belonged. “All right, engineers — you know where you sit. Move. From now on, I want every one of you in the proper place.”
“My place is home!” one quipped, and the rest joined in with a too-boisterous laughter.
His next task was to discover where they stood in engineering, so that he could start teaching meaningfully. It was a general course, mostly electronics, and the textbook was good except that it was sadly out of date. He would have to extrapolate from it, filling in the advances of the past decade, or the training would be almost useless.
One of the boys casually took out a cigarette and lit it.
Ivo snapped to classroom awareness. “Hey! You—” he looked at the seating chart — “Boonton. What are you doing?”
“Smoking,” the boy replied, as though surprised at the challenge.
“Isn’t there a school rule against student smoking?”
“It’s permitted for seniors in the technical wing, sir.”
Ivo looked about, suspecting that the boy was lying. Others in the class were covering smirks. They were trying the substitute out, as he had been warned they would.
This was the time for toughness. The principal had put it plainly to the group of volunteers: “Either the instructor rules the students or the students rule the instructor. If you’re weak, they will know it. Put your foot down. The whole authority of the public school system stands behind you. Most of our kids are good kids, but they need to be governed firmly. Don’t let the few bad apples take over.”
Platitudes galore, he had thought at the time — was it only an hour ago? — but probably good advice. Now was the time to apply it. He affected a boldness he did not feel and laid down the local law.
“I don’t care what the technical-wing rules are for what grades. I will not permit the fire hazard of smoking in my classroom. Put that weed away immediately.”
Then they all were on him. “What do you mean?”
“Mister Hoover lets us smoke!”
“How do you expect us to concentrate?”
“Cheeze!”
Ivo hesitated, suddenly unsure. He did not want to be a martinet. “All right, Boonton. You may smoke in class—” there was a spontaneous cheer — “if you can show me a note from the principal approving it.”
Silence.
Then the boy jumped up. “I’ll go see him right now! He’ll tell you it’s okay!”
Ivo let him go. He spent the rest of the period trying to pin down how much the boys knew about engineering of any type and how far into the text they had progressed. It was hard, taking over a functioning class from another teacher, and he could see that much effort would inevitably be wasted in the changeover, simply because of the differing styles of the two men.