Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for September 4, 2007 BOOK PREVIEW

Author takes us inside the "Teachers' Lounge"

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

In his first book, Daddy Needs a Drink (2006), author Robert Wilder offered a comic, slightly R-rated memoir of parenting. In his new book, Tales From the Teachers' Lounge (Delacorte, $23), Wilder, a longtime English teacher, reflects in similar fashion on his 18 years of teaching — most of them at Santa Fe Preparatory School, a private day school in New Mexico's capital. Wilder, 41, began his 12th year at Prep last week. USA TODAY spoke with him recently.

Q: The book is full of vivid flashbacks of your own education. In one, you describe a Catholic school nun named Sister St. Ignatius, recalling that you and your classmates "were terrified of upsetting this huge sexless monster." Can you tell us more about her?

A: Years ago, my wife bought me a wind-up toy of a ruler-wielding nun who shot sparks from her mouth. This nunzilla figurine was not unlike my own first-grade teacher, Sister St. Ignatius. She was definitely the valedictator of the "learn through terror" school of pedagogy. On our first day, she dramatically dropped Dick and Jane books on our desks and commanded us to read them. None of us knew how, of course, so we were all terrified that she'd send us to "Purgatory" — the boiler room in the basement that some kind soul had painted red (probably just to haunt our dreams). Most of us spent the first few weeks either crying or trying desperately not to soil ourselves, or both.

Q: In another scene, you describe howpacked-in students heading into a graduation ceremony begin mooing like cattle, and a parent asks of no one in particular, "What's going on?" You observe, "When parents visit schools that cost over $15,000 a year, they expect immediate answers even if they don't know who exactly they're asking." Do parents call the shots more than they did a generation ago?

A: Many parents of both private and public schools are more demanding now, and teachers are the human shields. At my children's elementary school, there was a tradition not to post class lists until the Friday before school began because the principal would have had more complaints than Richard Gere setting up a kissing booth in New Delhi. I've been in meetings with high-maintenance parents where their list of demands was longer than my syllabus.

I understand that fear drives much of this hover-mother behavior, yet as a teacher, you have a responsibility to all the kids in your class, not just the ones with the most litigious parents. It's hard to teach Jimmy how to write a paragraph when his mom won't leave his side or you are buried in parent-teacher conferences all day.

I used to wonder why some teachers kept their home phone numbers unlisted; now I know. It's too late for me to do that, but letting my Pokémon-obsessed 6-year-old son answer the cordless shields me pretty well.

Q: Two chapters focus on your youngest brother, Eddie, who leaves a job teaching drama in an Orlando public middle school to work for Disney World as Crush the Turtle from Finding Nemo. Why the switch?

A: When my brother told me he was leaving teaching to work at Disney World, I flew out to see him. On Friday, I sat in his overcrowded portable classroom and watched him teach his tail off to 200 students in six periods and then, on Saturday, I caught his show Turtle Talk at Epcot. I had, and still have, very mixed emotions about his career change. On one hand, I'm happy that my brother can earn more money for his family under far less stressful conditions, but I'm sad that those students lost a truly dedicated teacher. My brother founded the drama program at his school, was on every committee he could volunteer for, raised money for and tutored countless needy students, and could put up a production of Guys and Dolls that included every kid who wanted to be a part of the show — even if the cast and crew exceeded 150 squirrelly middle-schoolers. In the end, he burned out and found that being a turtle was far less taxing.

Q: You paraphrase travel writer Paul Theroux, calling teaching "the saddest pleasure." What's so pleasurable?

A: Besides the invaluable fashion and hairstyle advice from my students? I think any teacher will tell you that although standing in front of kids all day is a difficult job, there are many pleasures.

O.K., so we could make as much money waiting tables; students in this iPod generation are harder to motivate and there are more of them in a typical class; kids have numerous learning styles, language issues and food allergies; parents can be quite demanding (and close talkers to boot); summer breaks are getting shorter; and most of us have to work anyway to pay off debts incurred during the school year. What was the question again?

Seriously, when a former student tells you — as one of mine just did last week — that she never would have been a writer without your class, it's worth all the madness.