Getting married while you and
your new husband are still students means that you keep working even after
marriage...
I had already graduated, but was
theoretically in a Master’s Program (actually the MRS program) and had a job as grad student
teaching assistant...I taught two sections of freshman English. What were
they thinking? I looked very young...
 | |
| About 1967...student teacher at Highland High in Salt Lake and then grad assistant at BYU |
I was very young...but I guess most of my
students were at least five years younger....Harvey Hulme was one of my
students! I made $200/month. That was our total income...John worked hard in
the summer but never during the school year.
Rent was $80/month and I tried to
spend no more than $20/week on food. I can remember adding more pasta to a
macaroni/tuna salad to make it last for one more meal. Although gas was
only .25/gallon, we struggled a bit to fill our tank... John’s
cousin owned the Gas n Go on 4th west, but we never got free gas. Fortunately, as an English major grad
student, I was given a free dictionary by each of the publishing
companies...which meant I had 8 or 10 of them. When we ran out of money for
milk or gas, I would sell one back to the bookstore for $7 or $8...what
riches!
The first summer after we got
married we came back to San Jose...no, we didn’t live with my parents...we
house-sat for the Joe and Pauline Pace family...the people who had the bomb
shelter that John had lived in. They were on a trip to Europe so we had their
nice home on University Ave all to ourselves. Of course our summer jobs started
again too...John with his daytime construction job and nighttime fork lift
driving at the cannery...and I went back to the Payless Drug Store; (Kids,
remember that pink “rat tail” comb Dad had? he got it at Payless when I worked
there). John also got me a night job at the cannery, standing over a peach
sorting conveyor belt...because who doesn’t work two 8 hour jobs every day? I
only did that for about a week.
At the end of the summer we moved
to San Francisco where John started dental school at UOP and I began teaching
school. In 1968 I had a hard time getting a teaching job in California. A
declining birth rate meant declining enrollments and many school closures. I
was lucky to get a job teach English at Woodrow Wilson Jr. High in Oakland. (I
did apply and interview with Mt Diablo…they assured me that the new BART train
would soon be up and running to ease my possible commute…luckily I didn’t get
hired…since BART didn’t start running for 6 more years.)
First, regarding teaching at
WWJH. My only previous teaching
experience was student teaching…I had done mine at Highland High in Salt Lake
City. This school was located up on the “benches” near the University of
Utah. I taught five periods of college
prep sophomores…about as far from an “inner city” school as you could get. The
only unit I remember teaching was on Shakespeare’s Julius Cesar, and my only
discipline problem was one boy who didn’t always raise his had to talk…oh, and
I think a couple of kids chewed gum…
Flash forward to WWJH…this was
the school Hughie Newton (founder of the Black Panthers) had gone to. There
were only 12 white students…just as well; I could never be accused of
favoritism!
Bobby Seale and Huey Newton
Looking back, I wonder that they
hired me…maybe no one else wanted to teach at that school…or maybe the
administrators were really tired of all the liberal Berkeley grads who wanted
to smoke pot in the teachers’ lounge…who knows.
Anyway, it was with great
trepidation that I took on that job.
When I interviewed for the job
they saw that my minor was French, but they wouldn’t hire me to teach French as
it wasn’t a “teaching minor”...just as well.
But imagine my surprise when I
showed up at the 30’s era building on 48th and Telegraph to find out I was
teaching English and one period of Art! I mean, I like art, but hadn’t taken it
since 7th grade!
But I figured I could just do
what the two full time art teachers were doing, right? But one of them was
another new teacher…a white guy from San Francisco who didn’t know what he was
doing, and the other was a nice black lady who had been teaching elementary
school for 15 years and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown dealing with jr
high kids! *
Don’t scoff…it kept my students
busy for most of a week…and I noticed the other two teachers were doing my
project with their kids too!
(*I feel a little bad identifying
people by race…but it was very much an issue then…this was a very “black”
school…white teachers were definitely the outsiders…a very new and intimidating
situation for me….look up what was going on in the US in 1967 to get a feeling for what I was
dealing with…race riots, protests against war...etc.)
..
In my
English classes I kept getting kids added to my class throughout the year…not
kids moving into the neighborhood…these were kids getting kicked out of Mr.
Cheatham’s class…a tough disciplinarian who didn’t put up with any variance
from his rules. It was a shock for me to find out that kids didn’t just sit
quietly and do their work and also that many in the seventh grade could not
read!
But I
adjusted and figured out how to deal with my crazy new reality since it was my
responsibility to put John through dental school for the good of our future
family!
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