TAC Building-=Chirstmas Past

This is so grand. It was exactly 10 years ago when I had the meeting at the TAC Building. This stands for Teacher Administrative Center. Of course I was nervous as all get out all day. It was one day left and it would be a Friday and then I'd be off for the Winter Recess.

But what was coming hard was the meeting at the TAC Building. There was the teacher leader Sam Clinton, the friendly spider, hoping I could get "the monkey off my back." Well, it just so happens I didn't.

But wanting to write an op-ed for the paper--the hadn't heard from me for a month--I thought of how niece Meg, also brain damaged, hurt the same year I, as it turned out, left the ft teaching profession for good, is ginning up her resources to give another go at the nursing exam. And then I start, as a backdrop, how the unfeeling from my reported colleagues. I thought I'd just write down what I thought I remember them saying. Well, that didn't seem quite right. So I went and dug out my book. I had to look as far as Chapter Five.

Here below, the exchange. While I get nervous about the book because it's never been published, and I get nary a reply, I looked at over and saw that there were some fairly good parts of it.

Chapter 5


International Association of Bridge, Structural, & Ornamental Ironworkers vs. Omaha Public Schools

What surprises me, Ron, is that nowhere on you application
there was any indication that there was anything wrong.”
OPS Asst. Supt. Dr. Mackiel

While Dr. Mackiel said Doc Mitchell might pop in—I thought he’d said third week in May—for an observation to stay the my teaching career—
Mitchell was a no show. In fact, after the March meeting with Mackiel, no one entered my classroom save students and my two paras.
And, because I felt it was my last chance to stay an ed career’s end, I’d laid it all out like a rebar patch. In fact, I felt confident the last few weeks of school—when I moved to my favorite part of the school year, the spring—Frost and Chaucer and Dickinson and Langston Hughes came readily to mind, easy for me to explain. That mid-May we’d be tripping down the narrow power corridor of Steinbeck’s The Pearl, calculating the travail of Juana and Kino and Coyotito.
It was then I felt the curriculum specialists or Sam Clinton or Dr. Mitchell could come in and observe and see my best teaching performances—and stop the decline.
I laid it all out, down, like they say on the road construction gang, “to a gnat’s ass.” Yet no one came by.
But Tom’s interjection reminded me of how Mitchell’d said in his first evaluation that while “I displayed some strong instructional strength in the traditional English area” and Mitchell’d hence maybe keep me in mind for an English opening, it was not talked about again. I remember how I was further backed in the corner, when I’d told Tom Scates near the end of the first year how I might be considered for and English position the next year, quickly put this little fire of hope out.
“Ah, no,” Scates said. “Not while you’re under intervention can you transfer.”
“But Dr. Mitchell said in the evaluation I was strong in English and that he’d find a place for me if there was an opening.”
“You have to get off formal intervention first,” Scates said. “That’s what we have to concentrate on now.”
Why doesn’t somebody tell me these things?
Well, then, year #2, I’d just devote my time and energy to when Dr. Mitchell would again grace me with his presence, noting how any and all deficiencies had been corrected: my planning was sound, my teaching diversity and learning diversity were now up to par. Moreover, the students in the alternative school were paying attention and they knew the consequences for bad choices.
But as the day’s lengthened and poetry became the norm with Coyotito’s brief life just ahead, I looked out the open classroom door for Mitchell’s tall black form to appear. Ironically, the only time Mitchell came around in the last two months of school was for a short visit. The small square two-story building, part of which had been converted from a garage for maintenance vehicles to classrooms on each of the two floors was again slated for a transformation.
I saw Mitchell walking down the hallway. Startled, the students gone for the day, I got out from behind my desk and ran quickly to the door.
"Enjoying the weather?" I said to the principal’s back, watching him spirit his large body down the hallway. I quickly scolded myself. What a dumb question. I corrected myself.
"Oh, I guess that was a pretty silly question," I said to Mitchell’s back."
"No," Mitchell replied, turning to me. “I am enjoying the rain; it helps my business."
I went back into the classroom. I looked at Cheryl, the paraprofessional, at her desk, a puzzled look on my face.
"Dr. Mitchell has a lawn-mowing service," she explained, looking up at me through her glasses.
“Oh,” I said.
Does he like to mow teacher's down?

**********

Yet a February visit to the neuropsychologist my first year with OPS proved I wasn’t making it up—some residual effects falling three stories off the iron—could be seen in problems with prioritizing and organizing.
This info, however, didn’t change “the District’s” stance one bit.
And now it was the last week of school for the second year. Like at Macy, Lynch, and Lincoln Public Schools, I didn’t have a teaching contract for the next year. Instead, arriving in the mail just after my meeting with Mackiel and the TAC building, I had a non-renewal notice. While the paraprofessionals and I were just cleaning things up and putting them away, I thought how unusual that Dr. Mitchell hadn’t come around.
Maybe I should give Scates a buzz. I mean, wouldn’t this be a great time to get all this over with, one way or the other?
“Hello, this is Tom Scates.”
“Yeah, this is Ron. I explained my predicament. “I thought Dr. Mitchell was ‘sposed to come in and observe me before the school year was out.”
“No,” Tom said, slowly, careful articulation hiding his partial lisp. “Dr. Mitchell already gave the final evaluation when it was due. By state statute, April 15th is the latest for assigning contracts. Dr. Mitchell does not have to visit your classroom if only by an invitation from you.”
“Well, Christ, I didn’t know that,” I said, feeling my anger rise. “Here I’ve been sittin’ here waitin’ for him to show up any day now.”
“Well,” Tom repeated. “Only by an invitation from you will he show up—if he so chooses. He’s already taken care of his end of it.”
“I guess it’s too late now. There’re only a couple days of school left.”
“That’s true,” Tom said.
“Well, we’ll just have to try to see what we can do now. I guess we have the June 28th meeting with no less than three school board members.”
“Yes,” Tom said. “That’s right. I’ll be getting’ that ready. I’ve got your report from Dr. Korn and I sent it to their attention.”
“Yeah, well, I’m ADA. I mean the guy in Washington, D.C., Ed, said I had to be either accommodated or re-assigned.”
“Well, like I said, we’ve never been there before. We’ll just have to see what they decide to do. Meanwhile we’ll get ready for the meeting and you have a good summer.”
“Thank you.” I thought my next stop would be Omaha’s Local 21 union hall. If they didn’t have anything I’d see if I could get on again at the Nucor turn around, call the BA from Local 184 up in Sioux City, where it had all started so many harvest moons ago.
But I always thought maybe ‘d be okay if “the district” let me try English instead of BD Resource. I thought of Al Marchisio’s question a few weeks before, after my first year at OPS was almost over and Mitchell said I’d be considered for an English teaching position if there was an opening. Al, like others who were now coming into the mix, was a guy I just basically came across after talking to a few people and looking in the phone book.
Hailing originally from Queens, N.Y., I always liked talking to Al. He helped people get back to work after injury. My case, he said, like Scates, was one he’d never come across; but Al’s take was that I had sustained an injury so severe and still I was able to attain a high level of academics. He listened patiently about my idea I’d be better off teaching English than BD Resource.
“Are you qualified to teach English?”
Am I qualified to teach English, I thought. I felt like jumping up and down and screaming. Instead, I said, “Oh yes. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do—teach English.” I thought about my degrees from NYU and Teachers College, subway rides on the 7th Ave. IRT to Harlem, bike rides to Washington Square Park, it seemed, day and night, year in year out, had all gone by the wayside. I was almost embarrassed to admit I had degrees from such prestigious institutions and here I couldn’t even keep a steady job.
Al said he had to see that every angle was covered.
"What if there are no openings?"
Al could no doubt read the pain and fear in my face, mulling on the long year ahead—jumping through raised-higher district hoops for nine more months for the next year.
“We’ve just never covered this before. Usually our cases don’t deal with someone at such a high level,” Marchisio said. “I just want to make sure. We’ve never had someone with such high degrees being terminated from a school system.”
I looked out the windows behind Al’s desk. It was getting brighter because the days were longer. Summer vacation was just around the corner. Would I be able to work iron again?
"Oh," I said to Al, "I think there'd be English openings in the district right up until the day school starts.” With 4,000 teachers and 44,000 students “in the district,” finding an opening wouldn’t be a problem.
“Well,” Al said. “I really don’t know what I can do. You’ll just have to get through next year and see what happens. If they fire you and you appeal, I can probably use some of the resources I have to maybe get you an English position. But like I said, we’ve never worked with anyone at such a high degree status and can’t keep a job. Just have to let me know what I can do, how I can help when you find out more about what’s going to go on.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I mean, you had your evaluation with Dr. Korn. He’s shared his report with me and his recommendation that you teach English does seem like it’d be the best thing to do, at least let you try it.”
“Oh, no,” I said, repeating Scates, “not when you under formal intervention. You can’t transfer.”
“Well, keep me posted. ’ll see what I can do.”
I thought of Mitchell's pledge to give me an English position at one of the alternate schools should an opening arise. I remember how buoyed I was by this statement after we’d gone over the Evaluation Summary.
The final Evaluation, more U’s for Unsatisfactory than ever before. This was despite my getting their early, staying late, being filmed, visiting other schools, meeting with Vickie and Mitchell and Lou about the areas I had to work on. And trying my best to do what they said to do.
And, like other promises, it turned out to not be entirely true. Feeble were these attempts to switch midstream against “the District” current.
I had a lot to think about over the summer.

******M
Then a mid-June update, a week after school was done, a letter from Dr. Heck. There’d be a meeting with Personnel in mid-August just before the next school year started. Like one big happy family, we’d all go over the Formal Intervention together, those areas needed for improvement.
Walking the iron or punkin’ the rebar, it was on my mind all summer long.
Meanwhile, outside the Lincoln airport, adjacent to SAC fighter and the Looking Glass plane landing and taking off at all hours, Journeyman Ironworker Ducky's givin' me a raft of shit. It was my last ironworking gig for the summer.
The meeting is just two weeks away.
“Can’t you and John get that tied straight? Jesus Christ, a blind man could do better ‘n that.”
Ducky was left that morning to run the show, general foreman George Macht runnin’ to a different job site to land some iron.
“Hey,” tall John said, looking over. “We’re getting’ there. Take it easy.”
I ran over to the pile of rebar and began throwing it by the bank to keep Ducky happy. Okay, we’ll get it. But what I mostly thought was the meeting at TAC right around the corner. My second year at OPS would begin in one week. What would I say at the meeting? I looked at Ducky, his hands on his hips. The small rod patch sure looked straight enough to me.
And, just days before ironworker endos—term for job-end, the end of the bar, etc.—a curly-haired young Boilermaker from KC, who's working iron because work’s slow at his local, slams a No. 9 rebar—rebar about an inch thick—against my left index finger. I’m standing on the mat, trying to get it straight to the other end.
“Yeoww,” I yelled, “mother fuck.”
“Ooops, sorry,” the boilermaker said, looking at me.
Of course, I’m tryin’ to act like Gary, the pusher on the bridge deck on I-80 at 84th St. a couple weeks ago: he never wore gloves. He said his wife likes his callused hands over her tits. Gary’s hands are cut and thick with calluses—I’m sure his wife always had a good time. The thick iron rebar easily plows a gash in my index finger, nearly taking off the nail.
"Mother FUCK," I yelled.
"Oops, sorry," Jeff said, looking at the blood dripping off my finger.
"That's ok, I shouldn't 've had my hand at the end of the bar," I said. Like the brain-damaged can sometimes do, I’m conditioned for blame taking. It’s become a reflex.
I climbed out of the stirrup we’re putting together and head over to the first aid station—the toolbox of the old International pickup. I grabbed a bandage from Macht’s old truck and get it over the cut, over the nail. Steeling self against the gash, I’m trying to be tougher. I thought of all the U’s on the Evaluation Summary, Form F. My saving grace is "I'd like to see Mitchell out here workin' iron, tying rebar. I'd love to pace him through a day or two. We'd see if he could work with a fingernail of the index finger taken off. Then we'd see who the real heavy hitter is."
The sharp pain is near unbearable but I manage to make it through the day.
Then, a couple days later, I see my watch is busted, smashed by one of the rods. My finger’s okay.
"The only thing you're good for is keeping time," Ducky informs me, hands on his hips, looking at all the piles of iron that had to be pulled out of the pile, punked to the deck and tied.
Ducky’s still pretty pissed because Macht again has left him in charge of the rebar duties while Macht goes out to problem-solve at another job site. Macht, himself a near college graduate had played football for the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers, was a pretty big guy. I learned that he teaches the Local 21 Ironworker Apprenticeship class on how to tie rebar. His classroom management style is to be commended. "If they don't like it, I tell ‘em first class, they can meet me outside."
George didn’t say whether anyone had ever taken him up on the offer.
I remember how Macht, when I first got on the job, how had told me how the No. 9 rebar "is a little heavy." It required double-snaps but the rod’s size, the circumference of a silver dollar, didn't seem to bother Macht much. His biceps bulged out of the shirt. It looked like he pumped iron at least once a day, every day. I watched as he reached down to the pile of rebar and began shaking it out, lifting the bar out of the pile and flipping his wrist and the 25-foot No. 9 whistled to a place outside the pile.
And, while I thought from the two-week stint on the bridge deck over I-80 put my rod bustin’ ability up to that of the journeymen, I learned that double ties, saddles and figure eights was yet another skill level.
Ducky likes to work but he doesn't like to read blue prints or give orders and gets grouchy. He wants me to let him know when it's break time. Because my watch is busted at 8:30, banging it on a rebar, the rest of the morning is fighter wing and a pilot prayer.
"Is it break time yet?" Ducky queried a little later.
"No," I said, standing up. I didn’t have the slightest idea, "in a couple minutes."
"Let's go have coffee," Ducky said. 'Course, Ducky, who told me he's been working iron since he was 16, has his own internal clock for coffee break, no doubt more accurate than any timepiece.
Suddenly, it's the last day working iron for the summer. We put in six and one-half hours on Saturday, three days before my TAC day. I shake hands all around. I think my grip is stronger from summer long rod bustin' but I note how much stronger and thicker are the hands of Journeymen Ducky, George, and Ed, John’s dad, who've been working iron for years.
Ed says, “We’ll see ya around next year. George Mattice said to make sure you got your assessments paid up.”
It was an unwritten cardinal rule—after you get done with the job, go the hall and pay your assessments, 3% of your gross and $5 bucks a week for your dobby.
“Oh yeah, I will.”
Getting home, there’s a note from psychologist Bev Doyle—a gal I saw when I was floppin’ around last spring on what to do next. All my efforts didn’t seem to amount to squat. Marchisio, like he did with Korn, had set up the meeting—after an hour of chitchat, she charged $90 a pop.
While high, Bev gave me a little boost.
“Don’t let ‘em push you around,” she said. This was the first time I’d heard anything like a combative stance, something I guess I was expecting out of Scates and the OEA.
"What’re you 'sposed to do,” Bev asked reflexively, “get out your BD handbook?"
I thought of the classroom and the paras and me thumbing through some pages while the BD students did their BD thing.
Dr. Doyle continued. “What you need is someone who has experience working with people who’ve had a closed head injury and help you get your classroom set up before the year even starts.”
Bev, who taught at Creighton, was like Al—she had experience working with, studying about the closed head injured—unlike, it seemed to me, OPS administrators or the teacher’s union. Now the trick was pulling all these things together, connecting all the dots.
I called Scates to see how things were stacking up for launching into year #2.
“Well, we can meet before the 7:30 meeting if that’s all right with you.”
“Sure, that’d be fine.”
Suddenly, the day had arrived to kick-off a second year of teaching at OPS, teaching “in the district.” It was a bright clear day, a bucket full of potentialities. I thought about it all summer working iron, both structural and tying rebar. I still didn’t have a clue what to say.
I saw the tall frame of Tom Scates standing in front of the state and American flags, whipping gently in front of the huge old building that used to be Omaha Tech High School.
Tom sees my approach and immediately extends his hand. “How was your summer?”
“Oh fine.” I said. I thought of punkin’ rebar over the I-80 bridge deck, walkin’ the open iron at the Cargill plant four stories above the ground for the first time in 15 years, finishing off the summer at the Lincoln Airport. The sweat, the hard work, my gettin’ over the fear of falling. I doubt if Scates would understand. “Oh, it was a good one.”
No, I didn’t talk about my ironworker summer. For me, it had to be one of the wildest summers on recent record. Other summers I’d been piddling around graduate schools, thick overpriced books in my hand, sifting through bushels of ed theory and practice. This summer, workin’ iron, from Nucor and Cargill to the I-80 bridge deck and Lincoln Airport, it's been a wild ride. I worked the iron and didn't get hurt. I picked up a skill.
Meanwhile, the family's staying put.
Tom wouldn’t understand the slightest thing I was talking about. Tyin’ rebar—figure eights or saddles or double ties. Hammerin’ and bangin’ with Local 21 and 184 Ironworkers, I was a head injured BD resource room teacher currently in teacher remediation.
“Yeah, it was fine,” I repeated.
“Well,” Tom said, hitching up his attaché case and pushing back his glasses and turning to me, “it’s just a review, go over the formal intervention you’ll be on for this first semester, a continuation of last semester and get input from you.”
“Sounds good.”
We walked the singled flight of thick-carpeted stairs to the back corner room of the Personnel Office. We sank deep in the thick blue chairs and watched professionally dressed people enter and exit out of glass doorways, attaché cases or binders in their hands about the business of educating America.
Scates nodded at a few people and greeted them. They pretty much just blankly stared at me, no doubt knowing the nature of the business at hand. Scates looked quite distinguished in his black suit and white shirt and tie. I wondered what he’d look like on the ironworker job site, standing in a rod patch.
"We’ll talk about those areas that were unsatisfactory after your last evaluation,” Tom said, leaning over and looking at me, “and note any input from you as we start the school year."
According to district schema, the formal intervention would continue through the first quarter.
"Dr. Mitchell will observe you towards the end of the first quarter and see if those areas that you need to work on have been addressed."
"Well," I said, "I know all that. But it seems that no matter what I tried to do from when the intervention started in March to the end of the school year I ended up with more U's. I just don't understand that."
"Well, that is something we didn't expect," Scates said. "But I think at the meeting that if you show you're willing to work hard and address those areas of concern, those areas they think need improvement, I think you should be all right.
Suddenly, a middle-aged lady pushed the glass door that said Personnel Office open.
“They are ready to see you know.”
Tom stood and looked at me. “Are you ready to go?"
"Yeah, let's fire away."
Scates pulled open the door for me and we stepped into a small office.
“Just go that way and take your first left.”
“Thank you,” Tom said.
The day is basking in summer calm; August sunshine bathes the three-storied TAC building in gold.
As we step through another door, Dr. Heck, Personnel Supervisor, greets us warmly. It was like we’d all been on this elaborate voyage together all summer long at different parts of the ship—and so didn’t see each other—and reached the shore in one piece.
“Good to see you,” Heck said. “How are you doing?”
‘Fine, fine.”
The room itself is filled with suits and ties and formal dresses, not a rod belt in sight. Two of the people I don't recognize. Dr. Mitchell, well over 6 ft., is most prominent of all, wearing bright suspenders and new-age tie, his usual natty garb. While body language more circumspect, he extends his hand, modeling his boss, Dr. Mackiel. Going back to my summer get-yourself-through-the-day mindset, focusing on Mitchell, I hoped he could feel my calluses and trace their authorship. While I see Curriculum Specialist Vickie Vaughn is there, a frequent visitor to the classroom, hair lighter than before, parted combed on the other side of her head, I see another lady about the same age standing next to her.
The new member of the Formal Intervention Gang of Four is Sue Garland, who like, Vickie, serves as a curriculum specialist for “the District.” She will visit the classroom same as Vickie--at random, post haste.
Word around the faculty campfire has it that there was a bit of brinkmanship at her previous school. A tenured teacher, so the sources said, she had to be placed somewhere, preferably not in a classroom.
I recognized a few faces: Mackiel, Heck, Mitchell and the man to take teacher leader Lou Lou’s place, Sam Clinton.
Dr. Mackiel, Asst. Superintendent of Personnel, immediately rose from his chair, extending his hand. “Well, it’s good to see you, Ron. I hope you had a nice, relaxing summer.”
“Oh, I did, thank you.”
Vickie Vaughn, to Mitchell’s right, who’d suggested last April—bringing her own brand of showers—that I resign, nodded and smiled, her hair, looking closer, slightly thinner and more blond.
“Well, what we’re here for today is to review the formal intervention for this first semester of the school year,” Dr. Mackiel began, addressing all of us at the table.
He then turned to me. “Have you, Ron, had any chance to think about how you’re going to approach this school year?”
“Yep,” Dr. Mackiel, “I sure have. I’ve been working with Linda Heibel, a teacher at Lothrop. She’s shared with me her classroom management plan they use at their school. I’m pretty comfortable with it and am excited to put it in use.”
“Well,” Mackiel said, “that’s certainly good news.”
The conversation then took its natural course over instructional performance (teaching diversity, learning diversity, planning, etc.); classroom management (discipline, classroom rules and procedures, student relationships, etc.); professional qualities (communication skills, record-keeping); and personal qualities (dependability, grooming, demeanor). I outlined my strategies for making instruction more hands on, more dynamic.
In fact, the conversation was being steered like a donkey to its inevitable what-you-need-to-do conclusion. And, while I prepared for the worst, everyone in the conference room of the administrative building was gracious, was cordial, was benevolent. Everything proceeding so swimmingly, everyone brimming with confidence, maybe I wouldn’t bring it up.
But, in the back of my mind, I knew I had to talk about my disability—that my brain damage had to be taken into consideration.
This, of course, threw a bucket of cold water on the meeting.
“And,” I began, still feeling uncomfortable, “because I’m an American with a Disability I think that should be taken into account.” For Kath and I, the realization that my construction accident yet played a part—had always played a part, will always play a part—in my job security was new and important information.
Yes, all summer on the iron I’d been waiting. I acted out numerous scenarios on the rebar—I finally taught Mitchell how to give me one good tie after I showed him an old Indian trick. Then, like Joe Lyons, I’d leave him alone.
In fact, I almost didn't say anything about the head injury. But I found myself getting sick in the stomach in front of the warmth and smiles—I had to say something.
I continued, stepping out onto the iron, "Well, I just want to say that I think a lot of what might be thought of as planning or organization problems are because of a construction accident I had 20 years ago. I think with some accommodation like helping me get started at the beginning of the school year would make my teaching successful."
They listened raptly, unlike the wont of the BD student. The statement had the perceived effect. The tension that had been in meetings prior returned like an important guest surprised he wasn't at the head table.
Maybe they thought I forgot about it. Maybe they wanted to forget about it.
Mackiel, with a clearing of his throat and his eyes flashing, turned and looked at before the group. He laid out “the District” card.
"What surprises me, Ron, is that nowhere on your application or any of the records that you sent us, was there any indication that there was anything wrong, anything we needed to be aware of," Mackiel said, looking around the table. "We had complete confidence in the application that you submitted that everything was accurate.
"Why all of a sudden is this an issue now," Dr. Mackiel said, puzzled. "There was never any indication from our end that there was even a problem that existed. There certainly wasn't anything mentioned on the application."
Someone from somewhere inside of me spoke.
"But it wasn't in my sphere of knowledge at that time, Dr. Mackiel," I explained. Before this august body, I elaborated, doing my Chance Gardner routine:
"I didn't know anything about it until my wife came across some ADA material a couple years ago. It described people with brain damage."
I always hated it when I used that term. Saying something like "I've got brain damage" was akin to saying "I've got leprosy." I was more comfortable with "brain injury" or "closed head injury" but wasn't quite used to saying that. Instead I said “brain damage.”
"My wife Kathy said many of the characteristics of a person with a closed head injury fit me to a tee—losing things, forgetting things, etc.,” I said. “I didn't ever think it had anything to do with my difficulties teaching but now I'm thinking maybe it does."
Dr. Mackiel said, "Well, it certainly seems odd that you would start to bring this up now while you're on formal evaluation," He scanned the room. No one said anything.
"Well, I know,” I said. I could feel my anger rising and my voice curt. I mean, I already told them once. Hadn’t I talked about it last March? Did they think I was making it all up? “But like I said, I didn't know anything about it; it was not in my sphere of knowledge."
No one said anything for a while.
“Well,” Dr. Mackiel said, “we have a fine team here to assist you. We should be able to get through this.”
“Yeah,” said I, “I think we should. I feel confident I’ll get off to a good start.”
Like ironwork, I didn't want anyone to think I was letting him or her down or wouldn't do my share. I wanted to show I’d work hard to get it and do equal to what my brothers were doing. "All I can do is do my best with what I have."
“And you do know,” Mackiel said, “what is expected of you.”
“Yes.”
“Once again, you need to work on improving lesson plans, classroom management, record keeping,” said Mackiel. “At the end of the first nine weeks we’ll see where we’re at.”
“Yeah, that sound’s great,” I said. “I know I can do it.”
Everyone wished me well for the ensuing school year.
“Good luck.” We shook hands all around—again.
My lets-leave-it-on-a-positive note bubbled up. I said, standing and extending a hand said, "I'll be like Mayor Koch. Come by my classroom and tell me 'How 'm I doin'?'" Mackiel laughed at the harmless, somewhat inaccurate repartee. I hoped my departure was full of verve and vitality. Heck smiled, almost like he had heard a student exclaim that the past-due report will be turned in first thing in the morning—the dog had miraculously coughed it up.
I couldn’t help but note, out of the corner of his eye, Mitchell and Vaughan and Garland instinctively draw together, talking between themselves, and didn’t look at me.
Everyone was glad the dirty business, which had to be done, was now over.
In many ways, however, it was just beginning.
Tom and I stepped out into a bright day in front of the TAC building
--a wonderful year just ahead. As always, speaking unscripted before professionals, I sought reassurance.
"Did that go all right?" I turned and asked Tom. I wasn't sure if I'd presented myself well, getting half-pissed off and talking, midway in meeting, rather tersely to Mackiel. Perhaps a little bit of the ironworker was coming out of me.
Tom assured me we were on the right track.
"You did a great job," Tom said, his note pad in the other arm, putting it up under his dark suite coat. Tom, to my surprise, didn't say anything during the meeting, just like the other meetings. He just furiously wrote down what we were saying.
"They were trying to get you to say you were aware of the condition prior employment and that you lied on the application," he added, his hand in his dark pants pocket, looking down at me. "I'll type these up and we'll have them as part of your file."
“Good. I guess we’ll take it from there.”
“Yes, we’ll see you soon. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
**********
Second year’s end, however, there was a different tune—with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, they couldn’t get me off formal intervention. The year ended—like with Macy, Lynch, and Lincoln, three other Nebraska Public Schools—without a contract.
Kath recounted the good start after the mid-August meeting. “Yeah, they certainly were behind you at the beginning,” Kath said. “But now look where we’re at. Just like your first year, coming in your classroom almost everyday, parking themselves in the corner and writing.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And then that gal that first year disrupted you classroom, bringing in the camera to film you, not being able to get it to work, tellin’ somebody else to do it and then it not having it work. How many times did she try to film and it didn’t work?”
“Oh, four or five, at least.”
“And then when she did get it figured out there wasn’t enough students in the room she felt to get a good picture and then had to go through all the nonsense again.”
“Yep.”
“I am just so sick of this Mickey Mouse bullshit. You went through more than a year and a half of it and still, here we are without a contract.”
“Well, I’m not gonna quit. I told them about my accident. According to what the guy from Washington, D.C. said, I have to be accommodated or re-assigned.”
“It don’t look too good.”
“Well just have to see how it all transpires before no less than three school board members.”
“Yeah. I know. I’m goin’ to the hall in the morning.”
“Remember, I don’t want you goin’ up.” She wagged a finger at me.
“Yeah, honey. I know.”
*******
I knew this second year of summer ironwork I had to take what was handed out—there wasn’t a teaching job “in the District” waiting for me.
“Yeah, right.”
I thought about the meeting at the TAC building just before Christmas. It was a 180 degree turn from the August review of how I would handle the situation my second year of teaching.
“Yeah,” Tom Scates said later. “They pretty much raked you over the coals.”
“I really thought things were going better.”
“I guess,” Tom said, “it might’ve seemed that way.”
Mid-December Teacher Leader Sam, pulling at bright suspenders covering a lean frame, came into the classroom, days before the conference. An adult visitor in the classroom is something I’d grown used to these last months under the Formal Intervention gun—a man or woman with a camera or clipboard, standing or sitting down somewhere at sometime.
I looked up at Sam with expectant eyes.
“You’re doin’ all right; you’re doin’ a good job.” For the first time, Sam lobs a grenade throws a salvo.
“How you been getting’ along with the other teachers?”
“Oh,” I said, a little surprised at the question, “fine I guess.”
“All right, brother,” Sam said, tapping me on the shoulder, getting up to leave. “You’re in the house.”
Meanwhile, the downstairs Dave, shop teacher, who'd come up to check on my FI status from update time to time, was getting frustrated. The Winter Recess wasn’t lookin’ so good for him either.
“We should sue,” Dave said. “The teacher’s union's not doing us any good. Heck,” he pointed out, “Mitchell’s part of the same union.”
I, too, was getting frustrated. I said, “I don't give a flat, flying fuck.”
"Has personnel called you to set up a meeting?"
"Nope, I haven't heard a thing."
“I heard there’s gonna be a big meeting. I heard ‘em say we can’t manage a classroom.”
“Is that right?” No, nobody’s said anything to me.”
Dave left the classroom, both of us pondering our immediate future with the school system.

Yet I thought I was making noticeable improvement, how the second year had started off so well. Not only had Linda helped me get together a working point system, I began to get on the Internet regularly and look over and use what I thought were some novel lesson plans. In Garland’s first summary of an observation, in fact, there weren’t any U’s. The comment was, “It’s obvious that Ron knows what he’s doing in the classroom.”
Scates, however, pointed out later that Garland had filled out the wrong form, that only the principal can use U’s or I’s or S’s on the Teacher Evaluation.
But I thought of how I was getting even more creative in lesson plans. In fact, one of them, teaching student’s adding, subtracting, and measuring, was to make, as a class activity, a batch of M & M cookies. I’d teamed up with the Home Ec teacher—she showed him and the paras where everything was at in model kitchen, but a few feet from where a safety-goggled Dave was conducting a shop class.
Most fun of all, the lesson plan authors pointed out, they’d get to eat the results.
I thought—what better timing: Garland had bopped in—
and that's how she presents herself, she bops, kind of a jaunty, buoyant stride, gum in her mouth like she's the queen bee of this here little hive—smack dab in middle the M & M cookie production.
However, a couple days later, one of the comments on the post- observation was “less teacher direction” because, Garland said, "it was obvious that the two girls could cook."
Here, ala previous observations, I thought I wasn't giving enough feedback!
It was a question I had to ask.
“How did I know that ahead of time?”
“Well,” Sue countered. “It’s obvious they’d been in kitchen before.”
“Yeah, but next we’ll have a follow up worksheet on adding, subtracting, measuring.”
“Yeah, okay, that sounds good. Remind me to make a note of it.”
Garland, her visits now growing in frequency this second month of school, looked over typed lesson plans. What every student should do with every textbook, page, number to do, required score. The around-my-neck-gal came back a few days later.
“I took these home over the weekend, Ron. It took me two hours to find some things. I really tried to make sense some sense out of it.”
Of course, I didn’t know what to say. “Well, I can pretty much understand it, it makes sense to me.”
“Yes, but what if a substitute came in to take you class. How would you expect them to follow it if I had so much trouble?”
“Well,” I said, feeling the weight of the rebar pinching my shoulder, “here’s this week’s lesson plans. I’ve got them much more in outline form. You shouldn’t have any trouble looking these over.”
“Okay, I’ll make a note of it and attach it to the Formal Observation,” she said, pulling on her necklace, her laugh like a bark when left the room and ran into one of the other teachers.
Yet I was ready the wear the Garland swimmingly. I put a good deal of effort in the lesson plan, worked it seemed like hours to perfect it: what I was to do, what each student was to do--the exact page, exact textbook, exact amount—what the paras were to do. All the Duckies, on paper at least, were in a row. Come hell or high…
But then I found myself swoon into the far distant past, shortly after my accident, shortly before Christmas. The empty house for the first time since they left full of color. I was back at the Powerhouse and they called me Count. Twenty years later I watched Count put up the tree. The joy that was in this green symbol midst the white this time did not appear. Putting up the green tree in the green house on the corner from years before, oh always what time of fun it was: Mom coming from town with the family car loaded with groceries and a large green tree stuck out of the trunk of the Ford LTD like it been captured. All the kids rushing to put it up, sticking it in the corner, throwing presents beneath it, puncturing their fingers with sewing needles as they strung popcorn all around.
Yet now a few years later, it wasn’t the same. Singularly looking at those lights, Count was caught up in his own joy of the memories. The Tonka truck, the Lincoln logs, presents beneath the tree. He thought of a picture Kerry took of Jeremy holding up a dead mouse by the tail in the bedroom doorway. His light hair was rumpled and he had an expectant look on his face. Just a few months ago but now seemed like eons. His brown hair, his near resemblance to Count, Jeremy never did come by to look at the presents or look at the tree.
I caught my breath and shook my head. I guess I have to hark back to what Ma said sometimes when I was impatient over my accident recovery: you've come so far.
The Dave ship of state got me back.
“Hey, what’s goin’ on?, Dave said, bounding upstairs and coming into my room. “Did you have your observation?”
“Yeah, Garland stopped by last night.”
“Did you write a response?”
“A response,” I said dumbly. “No, were we ‘sposed to? I just went over a couple of things with her.”
”Can if you want, I guess,” Dave said, swinging his arms then leaning over the desk.
:”No, I didn’t. Did you.”
“Yeah. John Tees said I should point out any areas I didn’t agree with on my observation.”
“Oh.”
"They're going to have a big meeting," Dave said quietly before school started for the day. The other teachers were just coming into to their classrooms. I hated for them to be aware of my marginal teacher status even though I’m sure they were.
"But they had to postpone it because John Teese (the teacher’s union president representing Dave) couldn’t make it.”
Dave continued, “Teese said he heard them say we couldn't manage a classroom."
“Oh yeah.” Noise and voice from downstairs came filtering up the stairway as the first busload of half-day Special Ed students arrived.
"We can appeal and postpone," the young strapping man said, who looks like he has less than 10% body fat. "I think it's going to go on for quite some time.
"They can't fire us midterm," Dave said. "They'd have to pay us anyway, even if they do."
Dave told me he runs most every other day, a good distance, some six miles. He'll ride his handmade 18-speed bike for miles and miles. I liked to think I stayed in reasonably fit condition, able to work iron and going to the gym at least three times a week but Dave was closer to the zealot stage. He's in much better shape. He blazed the 10K Corporate Cup that I ran this year for the first time. I was happy with 50 minutes for 6.2 miles.
Dave could've sat down and had a three-course meal before I finished.
And Dave saw me at the finish line.
“Hey, way to go,” Dave said, slapping me on the back. “Looks like you had a little left in the tank.”
Gasping for breath, I thought I was going to collapse. Dave stood over me smiling, clapping, glistening beneath the morning sun in his running gear, tank top and biker shorts, laughing and slapping me on the back. "Way to go, a good one for Omaha Public Schools," Dave said. "
As Dave strode away, I wanted to say, “And the Local 21, 184 Ironworkers.”
********m
And now it was Christmas. The 9-week evaluation was filled with U’s like the others. Now I was again at the TAC building, sitting in the visitor's waiting area, waiting for union rep Tom Scates to come, I once again reviewed the pictures on the walls of past OPS Superintendents. It's an impressive display, dating back before photography was readily available. The first two pictures were drawings of grave serious men who’d looked over railroads and packinghouses and a teaming collection of white immigrants.
How esteemed, how elegant, they look like U.S. Supreme Court Justices. I watched the hairstyles change over the years. I noticed a couple names some present schools are named after: how did they ever rise, how brilliant they must have been.
Vickie, Curriculum Specialist like Sue, walked by. She went in another entrance. She wore a long blue coat. Politely, she waves at Tom Scates and Sam--who has just arrived—and me.
I wasn’t predisposed to greeting her warmly. What did she say last week? That I should resign? It was the 2nd year in a row she’d stood over me, looked down, and said that.
But certainly, at this point in early December, I didn't want to be caught with my pants down. I hoped I had a couple things in the corner.
I thought back: Sam films me. He just has the VCR on his shoulder. He's in and out. The students are attentive, watching me give examples of fraction addition on the blackboard. Kinnley, who came to me in long multiplication, is beginning to get excited on the wherewithal of fractions.
Later, I thought, Well I'll be goddamned go to hell. It’s what Dad always said when things went crazy on the farm. Vickie, like last year, tells it direct, her eyes blink rapidly.
Were her contacts too tight?
Sue and Vickie had observed Friday, yin and yang, morning and afternoon. Sam had filmed Thursday.
A week before the TAC meeting. “Had they’d reached a conclusion?” I thought about it all weekend.
"I thought about it over the weekend and I'm known for being blunt and I think you should resign continue." As before, when she gave me the if-I-were-you, she stood at a slight angle, white hands resting on my desk.
She continued, the axe blade drew closer: "I think I'd resign now instead of at the end of February and have them terminate you. I don't think it'd be very good if you were terminated from a school system."
Vickie went on to say how there should be a system in place for the intervention. And stuff like they got to be able to get back to the regular public school. Basically talking to herself, I wasn’t sure what she meant. I did understand what she said just before she left, however.
“I have a gut feeling," she said, "that the intervention will continue.”
As usual, I was still working in the classroom long after students had left. I could’ve been knocked over with a feather. I didn’t know what to say. I so he just looked at her.
Vickie, pulling her thinning shoulder length hair back from her face, must’ve read the pale look on my face.
“Your “Christmas Carol” reading in the cockney accent,” Vickie said, her eyes beginning to blink a little more, “was quite good.”
She further suggested, “Maybe you should consider teaching English instead of Special Education.” She paused and added, “But I don’t have any control of that.”
Meanwhile, I went crying to Sam. Would he at least give me a good recommendation?
Sam, the friendly spider, immediately let her have it. “Well, that was fucked lettin’ you know before Christmas,” he said, pulling at his black pants. “You’re doin’ a good job; I’ll give you a good recommendation.”
However, Vickie’s advice just made me work harder. Like when I was told I’d be a vegetable. I think, Oh yeah, I’ll show ya.
I hate being so easily discounted. That’s when I fire up.
Besides, I’ve got a family to feed, bills to pay.”
But I also knew I was quickly running out of school systems.
Hence, days before the Christmas meeting, I worked night and day. Teaching episode so succinct and pliable as to beg imitation. It took hours, but I felt confident I’d at least get a passing grade.
I hurried to the TAC building after school, one day before Winter Recess, and waited outside the Personnel Office. Scates came by a little later. He had a long black trench coat on, a long black scarf around his neck, his dark attaché case.
"I think we can wait in there," Tom says. He gestures to the small foyer where two secretaries sit. We walk through door and sit down.
I bid goodbye to my esteemed silent friends, confident I'd see them again someday.
The secretary looks up. She greets them formally, "I'll tell Dr. Heck you're here."
"Thank you," Tom said. He sits down and crosses his long legs. “What’s that?” Tom asked, leaning down to me, cupping his ear.
“I said it’s really getting dark out.”
“Yes, it is.”
A short time later, Sue Garland shows up, wearing a bright blue coat and yellow scarf and is carrying a satchel stuffed with paper sticking out of it. I say hello. She briefly looks over and says "Hi, Ron."
So far, so good. I pretty much know they'll be talking about plan book and record keeping. The “management thing,” like the song says, "under my thumb”—I was "gonna take it easy, baby.”
Moreover, lesson plans, now typed, posted behavioral goals, classroom a living, learning environment—all in order.
However, handshakes were not as easily proffered as there was at the beginning of the school year in the same room when we collectively set our sites for the school year ahead. Conference room mood matched that of the dismal weather.
I don’t think it had started snowing yet.
Heck, standing, cleared his throat and informed the small audience.
“Dr. Mackie’s at a meeting,” Heck said, looking about the room. “He’ll maybe come in later.”
Everyone pretty much nodded at this piece of information.
How should proceed, and how should I begin? Vaunted words had come rushing in the brain as we’d made pushed through the door.
I took my usual seat in the middle of the conference table; Dr. Mitchell, Vaughn, Garland sat across from me, hands folded.
Tom Scates on my right; Sam was on my left.
Heck sat at the head of the table.
He began the meeting—a clearing of his throat. "We're here to review the Formal Intervention of Ron Hartnett," said Heck, looking up through his glasses at the group. Heck is somewhat of a diminutive man; they’re nearly the same height but Larry's more on the slim side, quite possibly the smallest man in the room. However, his brown eyes flash about like lasers.
"We here to reaffirm the continuation of Formal Intervention; review the areas of concern from your October 31 performance Evaluation Summary; and review additional input from you regarding specific ways you would like assistance for improvement during this formal intervention process."
A momentary silence envelops the room. Suddenly, Garland launches the first shot from the perimeter. The three is nothing but net. "I was in the classroom 11 times this year," she begins, her eyes lighting, "and saw no improvement."
Garland’s arms cover reams of paper. They look like copies of a grade book and lesson plans. There’s a sinking feeling in my gut stomach. I thought, No wonder she had trouble saying hi.
Moreover, Sue has all the evidence. "Here are Ron's lesson plans," she said, unguarded, on the fast break after a steal. "It took me two hours to go over them and I still don't know if I got it right. They are very hard to understand."
The lesson plans I was so proud of because I'd put them on the computer, a blue print of what would transpire in the classroom. My template on which I tied my classroom rebar. Well, I thought, They said they had trouble reading my writing. Wouldn't this, then, be a solution?
Vickie Vaughn, whom I thought would lead the charge, said, politely, reassuringly, smiling like she was addressing a child who forgot to brush his teeth agreed with her sister specialist.
"Ron, I also had a great deal of difficulty following your lesson plans. I
looked at them for 45 minutes and I still couldn't make sense out of them."
Maybe Vaughn was backing off from the second near knockout punch she threw the week before, telling me to resign. I could hardly get off the canvas.
Garland, meanwhile, was wringing my neck, near the juggler. Like a magician, she pulled out the rumbled sheets from beneath her arms and held them out for audience view. Yes, indeed, that's what they were alright—pages from grade book and daily assignment sheets, a pile of paper that, from my vantage point, looked like undecipherable scrawl.
Going into the sky-is-falling-chicken-little stance, Garland continued: "If I wouldn't have gotten on Ron about the IEP conferences and updating the IEP," she said, "I'm really not sure if they would've gotten done on time."
And so on. Vaughn played the Hyde role; she threw suggestions on the table like a gauntlet.
"Maybe a little more training would've helped," she said. "Maybe if we would've had a little more time."
"We've cut down the number of students for Ron," Heck ventured, "hoping we can pull it together."
"We're full to the brim," Mitchell finally said, his black form advancing towards me.
Scates at my right, sat silent, writing furiously.
Sam, to the left, straddled the fence. "I think Ron wanted to become friends with the students," Sam suggested tentatively. "But I don't know if that always works."
Mitchell, for his part, like Joyce would say, sat ponderous, full of indigestion, almost glowering. His reading glasses down across his broad chest—suspended like wires—he'd put back on and look at the material in front of him; he'd then put them down again. When queried if there were steps to help me succeed in the classroom, he scoffed at the light load—the few students I had—and said, "I'm bustin' at the seams."
I just wasn’t ready for the barrage. Actually, I was more or less looking forward to the pre-start school meeting, the bright sunny day Buck Mulligan day when a few adjustments would be made and get, like Sam said early in the year, “the monkey off my back.”
Notable improvement had been made, had it not? I’d spent hours with Linda Heibel attacking those "areas of concern" over the summer. Because this year was so much better than the first, I thought, I’d finally have it over with. Be done with it.
Heck pulled out the latest FI packet. He reviewed and repeated the deficiencies I’d now heard for almost a year without interruption. Scates continued to write furiously.
"Do you understand what you need to do here, Ron?" he asked. "Do you understand what needs to be done?
“Yes,” I said, looking at him. “I do.”
After an hour and a half, the meeting was over. Sam, Tom, and I exited, stage right. Heck, Mitchell, Vaughn, Garland stayed behind.
Mackiel never did come in.
Outside the TAC building, lights blinking brightly from hundreds of windows on the cold December night, I held out my hands and looked up to Tom. I couldn’t talk.
Scates looked down at me, his briefcase full of writing he’d yet to pound on his keyboard, by his side.
“Man,” is all I could say. In supplication, I held his hands up to Tom. This can’t be happening again.
Scates looked down at me, pulling his coat tighter against the wind. “I’ll type these up,” Tom said. “Call me tomorrow if you want to discuss it.”
“Sure, okay.”
What’s there to discuss? Another way to teach?” I remembered Dr. Bev Doyle’s hands in the air rebuttal to OPS machinations, “Pull out a Behavioral Disordered handbook?”
What’s the use, I thought, watching Tom walk away.
I walked in snow ankle-deep over to Sam getting in his car in front of the flags whipping from the north wind in front of the old refurbished building.
Sam opened his car door, got in, and leaned out.
“That was fucked tellin’ you before Christmas,” Sam said. “You’re all right brother, you’re doin’ a good job.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t worry brother: we’ll think about it.”
Driving home, I just wondered what was next.
Giving Kath the lowdown, I saw another woman's eyes flash. "I would've got up and walked out of the meeting."
I woke up at 5 a.m. after a fitful sleep. I called Sam just after 6 a.m.
“I’m not feeling well, Sam.”
It was my first absence all year. 90% of the time first there, last to leave—I just couldn’t do it.
"Ok, brother," Sam said. "I'll call a sub."
My notes say: “So I guess we go on.”

***********n
Meanwhile, I couldn't believe I dreamed of Mike Starzl last night. He had been transferred from a Texas hospital to the same small town hospital where Jeremy had been born twenty years before, comatose from a motorcycle accident. Jeremy, I think, was the only one in the nursery. Mike also pretty much had the same wing to himself. He laid prone in the single bed, unconscious, a frown on his young face, beads of sweat in small rivers coming down his forehead. Both I’d seen in the fetal position.
Mike just wasn't coming out of the motorcycle crash in Texas. Not negotiating a curve, he'd caromed off the bike and slammed his head against a pole. In the hospital bed, he was sweating and speechless, never to regain consciousness. He contacted pneumonia and was taken up to a hospital in Wayne, Nebraska where he died a short time later.
Mike was buried in the same parish where we'd gone through Catholic school together for eight years. He was a grade below me. Later, after graduation, we biked and partied together. We double-dated one time in high school. The gal he had a date with, Linda, hailed from Texas. She was pretty and had a light and appealing Southern accent. The gal I had a date with was Kerry. Ol’ Mike and I, we thought we were pretty much in control of things then.
A card on the small table next to the window of the hot room from Mike’s youngest sister Lori implored him. Beneath the benign banality of get-well cards was the handwritten plea, "Mike, please talk!" He got pneumonia in the fall and died a short time later.
Maybe Ma's right, I should be more appreciative of how far I’ve come.
“If this doesn't work,” Mom said, “you can try something else.”
I wondered about my accident. “How long was it Mom,” he asked, “before I started talking?”
“Oh, let’s see. I think it was about three weeks. You tried to talk but you had that trachea so it was difficult for you.”
“And then I started?”
“Yeah,” Mom said. “But you weren’t too happy. You really didn’t start really making improvement until Johnny Howard got you to laugh. Then you really started coming around.”
“Johnny Howard?” I said. “What’d he do?”
“Oh, he came to visit. You were in the wheel chair. You said you wanted to go back to your room. Johnny said, ‘You mean now I gotta go back and see Marie? Ain’t she a bitch?’ And then you smiled for the first time. You really started getting’ better after that.”
I remembered how, for some reason, I’d gotten wound up with the bar lady. I’d called her a bitch and walked off. I’d been so serious and ole Johnny Howard’d given me a little shit about it.
“Yeah, that’s pretty amazing.”
“And then,” Mom said, “you started getting’ better.”

************v
And, because if I didn’t show I could deal with it all the Formal Intervention bullshit after break what would that mean? At the very least, maybe I could escape all the typed dictums that followed the TAC meeting.
By now, I knew the procedure. A sealed intercommunication envelope from Larry Heck summarizing the meeting would be waiting for me in my box or handed to me by Sam or, like the first year, have Charley the security guard hand it to me. It would just be a rehash of the meeting, all the U’s, all the ways I had to improve my instruction, my classroom management, my demeanor. Now, I thought, missing the last day before Winter Recess, I won’t have to deal with it, with any of it, for a while.
However, such was not the case. From the TAC building, hand-delivered, that evening, an account of yesterday’s debacle arrived.
A knock on the door and it's this politely dressed capped man handing me a certified letter. Actually, it's a large manila envelope.
"No," I say responding to young voices chorusing behind me, "it's not Santa Clause."
"Dr. Heck said to give this to you," the man said, handing it to me. "Could you sign right here to acknowledge receipt?"
“Sure.”
I closed the door to the white night; I held the sentence in my hands, and looked at the gleaming Christmas lights running up the street of the old neighborhood.
"Who was it, Daddy?" third-grade daughter Kaitlin wanted to know.
"Oh, just someone dropping off some mail."
And, I knew the contents before I even opened it—been there, done that. The words and phrases of the review of the performance standards jumped out like an angry spray of Christmas lights.
Out of 60 possible categories of the Formal Intervention, I had U for unsatisfactory in 50 of them.
There was much to think about over the holidays.

********

Well, I'm in a huge hurry to write the op-ed so I didn't have a chance to really read it hard but it's basically what I don't want dear niece Meg to have to go through.