Megan, welcome to Hamptonville High School! I’m Margaret Carnahan, I’ll be right next door if you ever need anything. Here – let me help you carry that. I hear you’re a first-year teacher, is that right? Well, welcome to teaching! I’ll just put this on your desk.
This room used to be Andrew Roffe’s – he taught in here the last 3 years. He was a good guy. We could set our watches by what he was doing. If he was walking into the building, it was 7:45. If he was leaving the building, it was 4:00, and somehow you knew every paper was graded. There WAS a little disruption in his routine when his son was born, but once the baby started sleeping through the night, Andrew was back on track. He and Lauren were saving up to move out of their little apartment and into a house. He spent the day teaching; he spent the night with his family. Coached a little football. He was a happy man.
And the students got that. Guidance used to take the kids who spent most of the year in detention and assign them to Andrew on purpose. Somehow he made algebra fun and he kept things organized, and it worked for them.
He almost never assigned a detention. And when he did, he would show up, sit with the student, and work on the assignment. He never lectured them about “making good choices” or about attitude or respect – they talked about math. Kids liked that he didn’t talk down to them.
He and I didn’t agree on everything, though. Last March a mother cat had some kittens underneath the storage shed over by the parking lot. Some of us started leaving food and treats so the mother cat wouldn’t have to leave the kittens alone for very long to get food. Andrew used to laugh at us when we talked about it at lunch. He said that cat would be just fine on its own.
And then came that Monday … it was early in April. Andrew came to school with a bad headache, said he had felt dizzy all weekend. His family had been sick, too – he joked about how they took turns throwing up and doing laundry. Lauren was going to call the pediatrician when the clinic opened up. While Andrew was at school he started feeling a lot better, so he thought it was a 24-hour bug. He called at noon, but Lauren didn’t answer. He thought she was at the clinic.
The coroner said it was carbon monoxide. They found a hole in the rusty vent pipe from the gas water heater in that tiny apartment.
He took a week for their funeral, and his sister came in from out of town for a few days. He brought back all our casserole dishes and wrote us all thank-you notes. We could still set our watches by his coming and going, but he stayed in his classroom all day, even through lunch. We tried, but no, he didn’t want to go out for a beer on Friday after school. No, he didn’t want to go see a movie with a bunch of us. No, he was fine. He’d be OK on his own.
And then … and then those kittens started eating that cat food we were leaving, and we knew they were weaned and it was time to find them homes. The first 3 went quickly, and then someone claimed the runt, and then the momma cat was on her own. Like Andrew said, she was OK. But she hung around the storage shed like she was looking for something.
I had detention duty in May. The custodian left a door propped open so the baseball team could get to their lockers after practice. Andrew was sitting with a young man, talking about quadratic equations, when that momma cat strolled into the detention room. A couple of girls squealed a little, but they knew they couldn’t get out of their seats. And that cat walked over to Andrew. He tried to shoo her away, but she waited until he wasn’t looking, and she jumped up on his lap. Andrew was so startled he just kind of sat there for a second. The cat bumped her head up under his hand. She wanted to be petted. Andrew kind of scratched her ears a little.
And then … a flea jumped off the cat onto the worksheet … and it caught them by surprise … And they laughed. AND LAUGHED! It was the first time I had heard Andrew laugh in weeks.
He scratched that momma cat’s ears and said, “You need a bath and a flea collar. You wanna come home with me?” And that cat purred, and he smiled, and just for a moment, I could almost see the old Andrew again.
We decided detention would be cut short that day. I went home to MY family; the kids went home to THEIRS; and Andrew … well, Andrew didn’t go back to that apartment alone.
The last couple weeks of school, there was a little more laughter coming from his classroom. He complained about the cost of cat food and vet bills during lunch. And when summer came, he left Hamptonville and moved closer to his sister and her family.
Andrew was right: that cat was OK on its own. But it was better when it wasn’t COMPLETELY on its own.
And Megan, honey, you are not completely on your own, either. Sometimes teachers feel like we’re isolated, but we never are. I’m next door, and you’ve got friends all up and down this hall. You remember that.
I’ll let you get settled in now. If you need anything, just holler.
