Chris Herrington decided years ago that his reality was much more fun…
and he’s ready to tell you why.
Sit back and relax.
It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the school where I work; The Martin School of Choice is its latest incarnation, but it has also been known as the ALC and the CRC. Our mission, throughout several administrations and re-locations is to meet the needs of at-risk students, many of whom had literally dropped out of school and given up on completing their formal public school education. Just like many of them, we have had to re-invent ourselves in the midst of a loss of funding, floundering support, and sometimes downright obstinate and confrontational opposition. I was on the first team, having been brought in the summer after it began; I seem to recall the spring of 1991. That was a long time ago.
There have been years where we dealt with as many as 256 students per year, and on average we have graduated 10% of the graduates from NISD every year for our entire history. As a teacher, I can look back on my own career of the last 34 years and see bankers, superintendents, lawyers, teachers, mechanics, homebuilders, literally every trade and profession, as those who rank among my past students. I have suffered along with their families the losses, the tragedies, and the incarcerations of my ex-students, following them to jail, re-hab, and to way too many funerals. This is personal work that gets the core of our being human, and to have been involved in such a deep way has always been a privilege and a cathartic journey; I see myself in their lives, and they are so much a part of mine.
On Facebook, or on my cell phone, our conversations have extended beyond the classroom and into my homes and theirs. Early on, I got a minister’s license so that I could visit them at the hospital and carry on my work in jail if need be. I have presided over weddings, been included in family gatherings, and played with their kids. All in all, the work has been a lot of play, and the play has been very rewarding.
The rewards are only partially that I have been a witness to their growth, successes, and triumphs over innumerable odds; I have been the recipient of many lessons and grown, I hope, much throughout the years. One of the most amazing parts of this pathway is that I was not a very likely prospect to become a teacher who would reach others in the classroom, having been a poor student and not very awake during my own public school years. I literally had no real mentor or guiding experiences to create a successful classroom; in fact, it was the miserable failing of the public education system in part that drove me to become a teacher in the first place. I wanted to provide in the classroom the essential experience of having been listened to as I had not been listened to; the system seemed broken to me because I had been allowed to slip through the cracks. No teacher took any special care to notice me or to attempt to understand my story. I felt that teachers had failed to see me as even existing in class. My name was called, I got graded papers, and I was counted absent when I was sick, but for the most part, I was invisible. I always felt that this was more than a mere oversight. I felt that the system would have to have worked pretty hard at keeping its head in the sand to not notice that I existed in 13 years.
I was ejected from kindergarten for hitting another student with a rock because he was smoking a grape vine and he would not listen when I told him that if he kept smoking something bad was going to happen to him.
I was put into speech therapy in 3rd grade for not ever speaking in school; they wanted to check and make sure I could talk, and I explained to the speech therapist that I simply did not find anything worth talking about given the violence in my home and how I could not see any relevance to my life in the stories of how Dick got down with Jane.
In 5th grade I was given 2 weeks of lunch detention for wearing a black arm band to school for protesting the Viet Nam War; at 10, I felt that the violence was unnecessary and that we needed to talk about our differences instead of killing each other.
In 10th grade I was sent to the office for a minor distraction in class, following the lead of several students who were making fun of the biology teacher’s having to work so hard in graduate school; when I went to the office, the principal asked me if I actually attended the school or if I was visiting since he had no record in his office of my ever getting in trouble.
Later that same year, I was sitting in the window of a portable building classroom when I got fascinated by the reflection of the sunlight off of my watch, which I used to attract the teacher in the next classroom by inadvertently shining it in her eyes; this time the principal did remember me.
In 11th grade my mother had a baby and it was announced over the school intercom.
I do remember a teacher, Ann Ruff, who was the best teacher I never had. She seemed so interesting and satisfied with her work, students intrigued by her stories, everyone writing daily journals and sharing his or her own thoughts and ideas, feelings and dreams. I thought that this was what school was meant to be, what it could be, a cauldron of feelings and insights into the human condition ever increasing our understanding of what our role in the cosmic play was all about. I was very idealistic, and in many ways I still am.
And now that I have been teaching for a 1/3 of a century, I can look back on the history of our school with a tremendous amount of humility and some satisfaction. I was not always the best teacher or the best listener. I can’t remember all of the names. I get the years mixed up. I still remember the stupid things I have done as if they were yesterday. I have said some painful things, and I have heard some painful things. My deepest wish is that I finally became a better student in the eyes of my classmates. I hope they feel that I have learned along with them. It’s not that I want them to have remembered me especially, although many of us are still great friends. I wanted them to remember going to school, having a class, and learning that learning can be fun and quirky, and important, and fulfilling. And that someone paid attention to them. I’m still learning how to do that, how to be present, how to listen, how to think, how to earn the right to call myself a teacher.
The ALC/CRC/MSOC has gone through many changes; we have gained and lost personnel. We have tried every trick in the book. We’ve done everything but close our doors, and I hope that is something that will never happen, even after I am gone. Oh, I’m not leaving yet. I’m just thinking, and planning, for someday. I feel like I am just now starting to get the hang of it.
runningturtle87
Having completed 32 years of public school service, Chris Herrington lives, with his wife, in Appleby, Texas, and his writing consists of blogging and essay writing concerning an array of topics including education, mediation, self-development, and human interests. He teaches at the Martin School of Choice, plays racquetball, and enjoys his job.
Chris Herrington can be reached at herrington@everythingnac.com
