Beth

She caught my eye just as I walked briskly down the hallway. It was as I passed another hallway perpendicular to the hall I was traveling when I saw her. I had already passed by the hallway before it had struck me. My god, who was that? I had worked in the school for a few years so I knew everyone and everyone knew me. Mostly for the way I conducted my class, crazy to say the least. No one believed that I had control but I did. I guess you could call it, controlled chaos. That is one thing I have always felt strongly about and that is making education exciting while still having the students learn. In fact, the students definitely learned more with my methods than the old “here are the notes, memorize them, and now, you’re going to have a test” routine. You have to entice the students. Grab a hold of them with knowledge and give it to them. You have to make sure they have it and then let them go. They will hold onto it for the rest of their lives…that is if you do it correctly. I’d like to think that within my few years of teaching that I have mastered it and even perfected it.

I was walking to the faculty room right after helping one of my most challenged students. Most challenged yet so eager to learn, so motivated. She had to work so much harder than the rest of the students. And I worked all of them pretty hard. She was always after school, in my room for lunch, before school. She took up a lot of my free time but I didn’t care one bit. I am all about the student. Willing to go the extra mile to help that one student. That is what education should be about. Most teachers whine and cry about after school meetings, and lunch duty, blah, blah, blah. They quickly forget why they are in the building in the first place, to teach the youth of America. They also forget how to effectively use all the time off we have. Yeah, sure, we get a lot of time off, but during the school year we spend hours preparing, modifying, partaking in professional development, helping students with extra help, and correcting papers. Any bad teacher could take the easy way out, give notes, give test, correct test, done in five minutes. That is not a good teacher. Good teachers care about the students, care about them grabbing a hold of that knowledge and taking it with them through life. Where would this world be without teachers? There would be no lawyers, doctors, or any other profession. Everyone needs school, everyone needs knowledge; otherwise you will fail. That is a problem with today’s society; the emphasis is taken away from teaching because they say we are getting paid too much. I think we should get paid more. Where would this world be without education…well we wouldn’t have doctors!

You know that natural tendency to look when someone walks into a room, or in my case when you walk down a hallway to look down the other hallways. It’s only human nature. We are curious, curious about what, who knows. So that’s exactly what I did as I walked past the other hallway on my way to my usually quick five minute lunch. I saw her. Who you might ask? Haha, I know what your thinking. WHO!??!?!?!?! Was that? This is called building suspense. Hopefully, I am doing a good job. If I am doing a good job at his point you are either skipping ahead to find out who it was, or you’re reading feverishly trying to get to the part were I tell you. Relax, man. Just enjoy the ride. Although if I am doing a bad job at building suspense, you’re just sitting there fine and dandy, hell maybe you even put the story down. Ouch, that would be bad. Maybe it’s time to cut to the chase. I was already past the hallway before it hit me and I guess my face showed it because I almost bumped right into a fellow faculty member coming out of the faculty lounge. She looked at me with those women eyes that knew I did something wrong. I knew those eyes from a woman and that grin that said, “You are up to something devilish.” I looked at her puzzlingly. She knew what I had seen even before I had realized. I gave the look “oh no it’s not what you think.” She smiled and continued on. All I kept thinking was “oh shit!” I turned my head back just as I entered the faculty room and I saw Sandra looking down the same hallway that I had just looked down seeing the very same thing that I had seen. I was about to be called out.

After I had walked into the faculty room, Sandra stopped in the middle of the hallway to greet the women. “Hi, Beth. Welcome to Gagnon High. I’m Sandra.”

“Hi. Sandra. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Her sweet feminine voice flowed like wind I would later find out.

“So how do you like Gagnon so far?”

“Well, today’s only my first day but its has been going very well.”

“Well that is great to hear. Are you on lunch right now?

“Yep. Just started”

“Ohh, great. I’ve actually got a few more minutes. Let me introduce you to some people.”

“Sounds great. I haven’t gotten to meet many people starting mid year.”

“Well, we all appreciate you coming on such short notice. Carol had to leave sooner than expected. Baby decided to come a month premature. She thought she was going to make it until the end of the year. With only a few weeks to go, we were lucky to get you.”

“Well I was lucky to get the job. I just finished school a week ago. Tell you the truth, I’m not exactly certified yet.”

“ Ohh, who cares? It’s only a few weeks.”

Beth chuckled that cute young girl laugh. You couldn’t quite tell if she was a woman or a girl; that just in-between stage. But by no means does it have anything to do with age. It has to do with experience. No, not sexual experience. I know what you’re thinking, filthy mind. Experience as in life experience. In my own experiences, I definitely didn’t become an adult until I got out of college. College kids are so inexperienced. When you get out there in the real world there’s a transition phase. You know exactly how to act professional but it doesn’t come quite so natural. She was definitely in this phase.

“Come on in. Let me introduce you.” She placed her hand on Beth’s shoulder blade guiding her to the faculty room.

Inside I had just taken my food out of the fridge, popped it into the microwave for one minute and forty-five seconds. It is sad that only a few years in the profession I already have a routine of exactly how many seconds my lunch needs to be heated. The microwave beeped three times and there it was, stuffed flounder with crabmeat, fresh cheesy mashed potatoes mixed with sour cream and a touch of garlic and herb seasoning. On the other side of the flounder was simply whole kernel corn. I enjoyed lunch, what little time I had to enjoy it. I loved to cook and in the middle of a stressful day of teaching it was a wonderful joy eating a well-prepared meal. I had quickly forgotten about the woman or girl that I had just seen and was completely enthralled with my lunch. The smell alone would put a smile on my face. Some people in the school didn’t like the smell of fish, but I didn’t care. It was just one more thing they had on me, “Look at him. Going against the main stream and that fish ehuhgh.” I can’t even spell the sound that they made when they thought of my fish. You can only imagine the sound. Just picture someone’s face and their lip curling up on one side, jaw down and pressed inward, eyes squinting, and a sound coming out. But hell I didn’t care. The test scores of my student were way up, people could say whatever they wanted to. I was either loved or hated. I hoped I was mostly loved.

I sat with some fellow chums of the science department: Mr. Physics we liked to call him because that’s all he spoke about, Larry, the bio teacher, Rachael the Chem. teacher, and for kicks, Sandra would sit with us even though she was an art teacher. Don’t ask me why, she just did. I placed my food down onto the table and said hello to my science chums. I marveled at the masterpiece that lay in front of me. I picked up the shiny metal fork from home and broke off a piece of flounder with a little crabmeat and slowly brought the fork to my mouth. I placed the fork in my mouth, sweet heaven. The door opened, Sandra and the woman who I had just seen in the hallway walked in.

“Hi. Boys.” Sandra announced with a smile on her face.

I almost choked on my fish. With my fork still in my mouth I began coughing feverishly. Still trying to chew the fish and yes with the fork still in mouth, I was a bumbling idiot.

Everyone stared, “You alright Cal?”

I gave that ‘head nodding hand up to stop them from helping me’ motion. By this point my mind had begin to work again: fork out of mouth, chew food, still coughing feverishly, and face bright red.

“Beth, this is Cal the Earth Science teacher.”

I still could not speak. I did the whole ‘hand wave head nod’ thing.

“Larry is Bio, Rachael Chem., and Bob Physics. Guys this is Beth.” They all nodded and said hello.

“Hi everyone. Are you Okay Cal? Sounds like something went down the wrong pipe,” Beth said with a beautiful sweet tone.

Well if I wasn’t red before I was red now. I managed to get up enough courage to speak. I grunted first hoping to clear any last remains of fish from my throat. I opened my mouth to say hi but the bell rang. Everyone including Sandra quickly grabbed their stuff and exited, hurrying to class. Beth stood there saying goodbye to everyone as they left. I sat there disheveled. I have got to get to class I thought quickly. I grabbed my stuff and made my way to the door.

“Bye Cal.” She said with the biggest smile I had ever seen.

I just smiled and waved unsure if I was able to speak.