I worked nonstop until it was 3:35 on a Monday afternoon in August, and then I caught a shadow at the threshold of the open door. I looked up from my books and papers and saw the principal standing in the doorway, an unnatural smile spread across the entirety of her face, seemingly in a trance. I knew instinctively that something terrible had happened, or was about to happen.
“Eze,” she said. “Can you finish the lesson that you’re working on, and then come to my office?”
Perspiration was congealing on my forehead. What is happening? I inhaled deeply for some calm. Maybe they just wanted to speak to me about a more mundane issue. They wouldn’t fire me right before the beginning of the school year? And on a Monday? “Sure, I can come to your office,” I said. “I’ll finish and come right over.”
It took some effort for me to rise from the chair, as the sudden realization that my tenure at the school might be coming to a very abrupt end was staring me directly in the face. As I exited the classroom, my bowels shifted and my pulse throbbed in my ear. My apprehension grew with every step that I took toward my eventual fate. But there was another part of me that wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. If I was to be fired in this way, three weeks after I’d started, I didn’t want to stay too long afterwards. I wasn’t going to subject myself to any further humiliation by hanging around the premises. The lanky CEO was waiting for my arrival at the doorway of the office. His hair was wild and unkempt, but he wore a tie — his appearance was reflective of an inconsistent personality. He extended his hand forward. I took his hand into mine.
The office was sparse, bereft of any adornments except for a desk with a black swivel chair behind it, and the two wooden chairs on the opposite side. Betsy, the school principal, was sitting in one of the wooden chairs, her soft and misty brown eyes were fixated on me. I fitted myself into the chair that was next to her, and then the CEO took his place in the black swivel chair.
I felt something collapse inside of my chest. It was the hope that I’d been carrying, that of a black man overcoming his mental illness and circumstance to become a sixth-grade math teacher at an “elite” prep school. I knew right then and there that they were going do it. What an ignominious end to a fledgling teaching career.
I chose to focus my attention on the CEO, who was leaning forward in his chair, and waiting for everyone to become properly situated.
“How do you think everything has been going for you so far?” he said.
Oh my fucking god. It’s that question again, the one that had become the anathema in my life. While I was in graduate school, my instructors would always ask me that question after I’d finished imparting a lesson to students at the partner school. I would say that I did well and then they would tell me all the ways in which I’d failed.
I responded to the question with the answer that I believed to be truthful. “I think that things are going pretty well,” I said. “It’s just the beginning though, and I know that there are some things that I can improve upon.” I paused, and there was no immediate response from the CEO. “But things are going pretty well.”
What else was I going to say? I suck at my job and everything was going horrible. Of course I wasn’t going to say anything like that. It would be giving my enemies more ammunition to shoot holes through me.
The CEO nodded his head, jutted out her lower lip, and interlaced his fingers.
“Hmm, okay. Why do you think that?” he said. “That you are doing pretty well.”
“I’d been getting some good feedback from people,” I said as I turned to Betsy. She would not look me in the eye.
“Let me tell you what we think,” said the CEO.
He leaned in, and then proceeded with his verbal evisceration. He said that I didn’t have a grasp of the teaching taxonomies that had been described in Teach Like A Champion — I’d read and annotated the entire Teach Like a Champion book before I’d arrived — and that my command of sixth grade math was subpar. I’d passed college courses in managerial and financial accounting, scored high on the math section of the praxis II exam, and secured my teacher’s license from graduate school before I’d arrived at his school. But to him, I was an incompetent who was too stupid to teach six grade math to the students at his school.
The principal, from whom I’d received sterling feedback during my three weeks there, said nothing as the CEO continued his verbal flaying. This was after she had been in the room when I was delivering a math lesson to a sixth-grade class during my job interview five months previous, and after she’d assured me that I did a “wonderful” job while teaching a math lesson to the other new teachers a few weeks ago. She’d given me the proof of my performance, which had been scrawled onto a half-dozen evaluation forms.
“You should probably teach at a school that operates at a slower pace,” the CEO said. “Perhaps one that teaches in the format that you are familiar, or a place where they teach math using a program such as Everyday Math or Investigations. I also know about your interest in mentoring young people. You can look into places that have such programs.”
And you’re a fucking asshole, and a condescending asshole at that, I thought.Every word that came out of his mouth was an attempt to belittle me even further. I wanted to defend myself in those moments, but I was too tired — felt like I’d aged ten years in three weeks — and frightened to offer up an argument to the contrary. For I’d never experienced anything like this before in my life, and I didn’t know of the best way to respond to it. My brain was locked in place. He had the upper hand as far as I was concerned. He was the reputed “genius” who had been able to create a thriving school — they were building more schools across the state — from scratch. He was the “perfect man”, as one of the new teacher candidates had stated, and I was the exact opposite. I was nothing, a nobody who was eminently dispensable, and a soon-to-be a cautionary tale for every other teacher at that school.
“The point is that I’ve got to look after these kids,” he said. I’ve thought about how this could work out for me, but there is no way for me to see it.”
So, I was an imminent danger to the kids. But firing me a week before school was about to start, and then replacing me with a teacher who had not been through the orientation process was a better strategy than working with me. Had he decided this in the span of couple of days?
He went on to say that I was the hardest worker that he’d ever come across, that he admired me for my decision to be a teacher, and that letting me go was the hardest thing that he has ever had to do in his professional life. Bile spontaneously welled up in my throat as he continued to spew hollow words from his mouth at a rapid-fire pace. So now I was stupid and hard-working too.
“But I’m going to have to ask you to resignation”, he said.
Finally.
“Do you want me to go somewhere and write it?” I said in a controlled voice.
He grabbed a beige piece of paper out of nowhere and pushed it across the desk in my direction. I reached for my “resignation” letter, and pulled it towards me. I made a half-hearted attempt to read it, but quickly decided against reading the whole thing through. I signed my name on the dotted line and passed the paper back to him, and then he signed his name on the line below mine. All three of us stood up when it was over.
“Eze,” the principal said, her voice trembling. “We’re having our afternoon meeting at four o’clock. You are welcome to attend and say goodbye to the rest of the staff.”
I glanced at her furtively. The heat was rising and spreading across the back of my neck, then head, and then to my face. I quickly turned away before she saw me losing control. Now I was afraid of how they would react if they tried to read my face. I needed to get out of that place as quick as humanly possible.
As calm as I could I said, “I don’t think so. I going to leave now.” I turned towards the principal. “Do you want me to give you the back the computer?”
“Yes,” said principal, bowing her head. “We do need the computer back.”
Like a furry critter, I scurried out of that office. I made a beeline for what hitherto had been my classroom. As I was fast walking through the corridor that led me to my doorway, I happened upon the vice principal’s office. I hesitated, twisted my head back and saw that the back of her chair was peeking into the space left by the open doorway. I knew that she was sitting in that chair, and I remembered her eyes borrowing into my back when she first saw me. I wished that she could read my thoughts just then. Students of color, the majority of the children who would attend this school, were about to be entrusted into the care of racists. The vice principal suddenly scooted her chair forward until she was no longer visible to my eye. Perhaps she was able to hear my thoughts after all.
There was no time to be neat and tidy during the cleanup. I indiscriminately collected everything that I assumed to be mine and stuffed it all into my backpack. I ripped the computer outlet from the wall, pressed the off button, and impatiently tapped my foot as I waited for the screen go black. A quick scan of the classroom and I was confident that I had gathered everything I needed.
The principal was in the copy room when I arrived with the laptop. When she turned around to meet me, I offered her the computer and then mumbled the words, “Here you go.”
“Thank — “
I didn’t let her finish. I turned away in a flourish and then left without another word.
When I finally stepped outside the confines of that place, the entire outside world was obscured from my sight by the black. Except for my little car. The only person, place, or thing that I can focus on as I skitter down the slope of the parking lot is my dark blue 2006 Hyundai Elantra, which is parked beneath a tree.
The sun shined down relentlessly onto the blacktop of the parking lot, causing the heat to rise. By the time I reached the driver’s side door of my car, the sweat is slipping down the front of my face, and my shirt has been soaked through. I felt the urge to rip the car door from its hinges as I pulled it open. I’m not strong enough rip off the car door, but the car does shake a bit from the force. I threw my backpack onto the passenger side, hunched forward and then plopped myself down on the seat. I slammed the door hard and the car shakes again. Once I was safely ensconced in my vehicle, I realized that I may not be ready to drive just yet. So, I placed both of my hands on the steering wheel while breathing deeply, bowed my head down, and started to squeeze the steering wheel as hard as I possibly can. I wanted to squeeze until it shattered into pieces.