Monday, June 02, 2003

In Honor of a Teacher

In Honor of a Teacher Who’s Finally On Vacation

When I graduated from high school, my school was one of the good ones.  Even though it was a public school in a big city, we had a lot of bright dedicated kids, decent facilities, and, most importantly, some damn good teachers.  I went from U.S.Grant High to some serious institutions of higher and post-graduate education, yet some of my best teachers were ones I had in high school.  I still think of them often, and in that way they continute to teach me - or at least, to instruct me.

Over time I heard that Grant went downhill.  It became a campus where most of the students were bussed in, which brought the school a lot of poorly prepared students who didn’t get along together very well.  Budgets for art and shop were slashed.  Teachers who had taught me world history and philosophy were spending most of their time teaching classes in English as a Second Language. 

I knew it was bad when NPR ran a piece on the deterioration of the LAUSD and they chose Grant as their poster child.  In the course of the story they included a brief comment from one of my old teachers, Parke McAllister.  He said something to the effect that, had he all his choices to make again, he’d have gotten out of teaching.  He wasn’t being appreciated by the students or supported by the system.  He was tired of it. 

This story ran years ago, maybe as long as six or seven years back, but PM never did quit.  He stayed at his post, teaching high school drama and theater to any kid who wanted to live out a dream.  He certainly made a huge difference in my life, and for a lot of my friends as well.  There were the skills he taught, which we all used and still use to be heard, to be seen - or to become invisible and mute; there were the shy, embarassed kids who learned to respect and enjoy their own company and to find and use the power in their own personalities; and there was the special bond he helped us form among a bunch of maladjusted theater geeks who supported each other - through deaths, miscarriages, breakdowns and revellations.  We gave each other emotional space, stability and context, and we made each other proud.  And in all these things and more, PM was our example and our inspiration. 

I don’t know if PM got to share these gifts, foster this environment at all in his later years at Grant.  But I deeply value the strength of character he helped me build, the discipline he encouraged me to develop, the emotional vocabulary he taught me and the insights into human behavior he helped me achieve.  We thought he was cool because he let us curse and smoke on stage.  In the end, I didn’t take up smoking as a result of that exposure, but I remember to this day the way he kept us focused, working, and interested, and how he coaxed our best work out of each one of us.  He really fit the definition of an educator - one who develops the inner skills and talents of another.  I am grateful to have been his student all four years I was in high school.

Late last week I got an email from a friend I hadn’t seen since the reunion last year, and prior to that, not since graduation.  We’d done a lot of work together in Parke’s class.  He wrote to me and a few others to let us know that Parke had died.  After finishing most of yet another school year, he had checked himself into a hospital a few weeks ago feeling run-down.  He was diagnosed with advanced cancer in his lungs and liver, and died after less than a month.  I am sorry that no more students will benefit from his pedagogy.  He had a hell of a lot to teach. 

To Parke McAllister - who helped me learn my cues, my mark, my lines, and my true value to myself and to others.  The stage is dark.