Love or Leave

Nothing beats a cold, Red Stripe on a Sunday afternoon when all of the past week’s cares are a memory, and the next week’s anticipations are like froth bubbling up to the rim of the frosted mug. Nothing. Well, almost nothing. The only problem was I was already into my fourth can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and dreading the next week at my job. 


There was no excuse for drinking the way I used to, but I told myself that I was going through a traumatic period, so I deserved a little break. It was 1991 and my mother had died. My friend and mentor, Dennis Scott, had also died. I had a third child on the way, a boy, and my wife and I decided (more my wife’s idea) not to have anymore. It was also a time of change at Miami Dade Community College. A new president, Eduardo Padron, had been recently installed and a friend of mine, Phyllis Washington, who worked on the night shift at the college, told me that the ten year hiring freeze would soon be ending, and that she’d be willing to put in a good word for me. The thought of working alongside professors such as Bruce Firestone, Lou Skellings, and Susan Lev Koren for whom I had worked at a tutor in the Writing Lab was intriguing. I told Phyllis that I would think about it, but the truth was that I was unhappily comfortable with my position at West Miami Middle School.


Since the birth of my first child, I’d been working for six years at West Miami as an English teacher, newspaper and yearbook advisor, and soccer coach. The pay was good with the extra stipends, and I was happy to do the work because the former principal, Mr. Kavanaugh, made my job easier my keeping the really troublesome kids out of my journalism class and not allowing the guidance counselors to dump them in electives as they had done during my first year. Unfortunately, Mr. Kavanaugh had retired and a new principal had taken over the school. She ran the school as if it were her own fiefdom. Fiercely cliquish and intolerant, she only looked out for “her” people. She eyed the stipends that I’d gained under Mr. Kavanaugh’s tenure as prizes that she would dole out to those teachers who would have done anything to gain her favor. In many subtle and not so subtle ways, she made me realize that I and several other teachers were on her "hit list."


The stipend for soccer was the first to go and I really didn’t mind. The training with the team and the games meant that I was going home to my wife and two daughters at nine or ten o’clock at night. Coupled with the duties of the newspaper and yearbook, I was hardly seeing my family. I consoled myself with the fact that the pay was good. But then the principal started doing some things with the newspapers and yearbooks that went against my ethical standards. So when she asked me to give up the newspaper and the yearbook, I did so gladly. But now the bills and payments around the house were tightening up and we’d have to cut back on a few things.


Then I was shifted from teaching English to ninth grade honors students to teaching remedial eighth grade English and I began to feel pressured. Many of my students and there parents were recent immigrants from Cuba and Nicaragua and they didn’t speak English very well. That didn’t bother me. I always find a way to motivate my students. What bothered me was when my class size started to rise and instead of being a teacher, I was becoming a steward of kids who were anxious about being in a new country and everything around them sent an unwritten message that education was irrelevant. Many of them were thirteen and fourteen year old kids and every day was a new drama. Sonia was breaking up with Miguel because she found he was cheating on her with Carmen, her best friend and cousin. But it didn’t matter because Sonia could now go out with Jose, and she had always liked him from seventh grade. In the midst of all this, I was supposed to teach my students about misplaced modifiers and classic mythology. Just to get through one week was an achievement. Still, the pay was good...


So, as I was sitting in my La-Z-Boy recliner about to begin my fifth beer, I flipped to the Nature channel to see what was happening before I changed to 60 Minutes. I came in at the end of a story about a female cheetah that had just given birth to three cubs. The cubs would come over to her side, get some milk, and continue playing. She hadn’t eaten for about four days. She was hungry. Her bones stuck out of her mottled coat. Meanwhile, the cubs frolicked in the tall grass.


Finally, she spotted a Thompson gazelle in the bush. She shook off the dust, glanced over to her cubs as if to say, “Stay here until I come back,” and began stalking the gazelle. She moved stealthily through the long grass without letting her hunger get the best of her. Her back arched and she was ready to bring down the gazelle without exerting a lot of energy. She was just about to pounce on the gazelle when all three cubs popped up out of the tall grass, as if they were playing a game of game of hide-and seek, and frightened the gazelle way. The mother cheetah fell to the ground and had a look as if to say, “I give up!” Dust swirled around her. The cubs came over, as cubs will do, and continued their game. When ever they felt hungry, they came over to her side, got some milk and stated a new game, “Marco Polo.”


And that was when it hit me. The children at West Miami weren’t interested in classic mythology. They were interested in the mythology of underwear. They were doing what horny teenagers do all over the world were doing. I was an irrelevancy in their lives. Their fathers and mothers worked as mechanics, waitresses, and security guards and wanted the best for them. However, the message that was being sent to them was that they didn’t matter. In fact, one of my students said to me, “Mr. Philp, why do you bother yourself so much?” Another complained that only the honors students or the at-risk students got all the attention. “But what about us in the middle, Mr. Philp?” I couldn’t answer her and I couldn’t change anything.


I poured the beer down the drain and went downstairs to my office in the garage. I worked on my CV and the next day after school, I went to Miami Dade and turned in my application.

In the next few weeks, I was called back for interviews and was given a salary offer that was considerably less than what I had been earning as a public school teacher. Considerably less. I accepted the offer. I’d be working with some of the professors who had taught me freshman and advanced composition. In fact, one of them, Bruce Firestone, escorted me to the office and introduced me to my new office mates. I sat down at my desk. I was now Professor Philp. It felt good. It felt like coming home.

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