it. We’ll sit in those classes that have nothing to do with our lives. We’ll work in our shops where we learn about the real world and we’ll try to be nice to the teachers and get outa here in four years. Whew!
Here they are. The door slams against the shelf that runs along the base of the blackboard, stirs a cloud of chalk dust. Entering a room is a big deal. Why couldn’t they simply walk into the room, say, Good morning, and sit? Oh, no. They have to push and jostle. One says, Hey, in a mock threatening way and another one says, Hey, right back. They insult one another, ignore the late bell, take their time sitting. That’s cool, baby. Look, there’s a new teacher up there and new teachers don’t know shit. So? Bell? Teacher? New guy. Who is he? Who cares? They talk to friends across the room, lounge in desks too small for them, stick out their legs, laugh if someone trips. They stare out the window, over my head at the American flag or the pictures taped to the walls by Miss Mudd, now retired, pictures of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Emily Dickinson and—how did he get here?— Ernest Hemingway. It’s the Life magazine cover and that picture is everywhere. They gouge their initials on desk tops with penknives, declarations of love with hearts and arrows alongside the long-ago gougings of their fathers and brothers. Some old desks are gouged so deep you can see your knees through holes where hearts and names used to be. Couples sit together, hold hands, whisper and gaze into each other’s eyes while three boys against the back closets sing doowop, bass, baritone and high notes, man, snap fingers, tell the world they’re just teenagers in love.
Five times a day they push into the room. Five classes, thirty to thirty-five in each class. Teenagers? In Ireland we saw them in American movies, moody, surly, driving around in cars, and we wondered why they were moody and surly. They had food and clothes and money and still they were mean to their parents. There were no teenagers in Ireland, not in my world. You were a child. You went to school till you were fourteen. If you were mean to your parents they’d give you a good belt in the gob and send you flying across the room. You grew up, got a laboring job, got married, drank your pint on a Friday night, jumped on the wife that same night and kept her pregnant forever. In a few years you emigrated to England to work on the building sites or to enlist in His Majesty’s forces and fight for the Empire.
The problem of the sandwich started when a boy named Petey called out, Anyone wan’ a baloney sandwich?
You kiddin’? Your mom must hate you, givin’ you sandwiches like that.
Petey threw his brown-paper sandwich bag at the critic, Andy, and the class cheered. Fight, fight, they said. Fight, fight. The bag landed on the floor between the blackboard and Andy’s front-row desk.
I came from behind my desk and made the first sound of my teaching career: Hey. Four years of higher education at New York University and all I could think of was Hey.
I said it again. Hey.
They ignored me. They were busy promoting the fight that would kill time and divert me from any lesson I might be planning. I moved toward Petey and made my first teacher statement, Stop throwing sandwiches. Petey and the class looked startled. This teacher, new teacher, just stopped a good fight. New teachers are supposed to mind their own business or send for the principal or a dean and everyone knows it’s years before they come. Which means you can have a good fight while waiting. Besides, what are you gonna do with a teacher who tells you stop throwing sandwiches when you already threw the sandwich?
Benny called out from the back of the room. Hey, teach, he awredy threw the sangwidge. No use tellin’ him now don’t throw the sangwidge. They’s the sangwidge there on the floor.
The class laughed. There’s nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don’t do it after you already did it. One boy covered his mouth and said, Stoopid, and I knew he was referring to me. I wanted to knock him out of his seat, but that would have been the end of my teaching career. Besides, the hand that covered his mouth was huge, and his desk was too small for his body.
Someone said, Yo, Benny, you a lawyer, man? and the class laughed again. Yeah, yeah, they said, and waited for my move. What will this new teacher do?
Professors of education at New York University never lectured on how to handle flying-sandwich situations. They talked about theories and philosophies of education, about moral and ethical imperatives, about the necessity of dealing with the whole child, the gestalt, if you don’t mind, the child’s felt needs, but never about critical moments in the classroom.
Should I say, Hey, Petey, get up here and pick up that sandwich, or else? Should I pick it up myself and throw it into the wastepaper basket to show my contempt for people who throw sandwiches while millions starve all over the world?
They had to recognize I was boss, that I was tough, that I’d take none of their shit.
The sandwich, in wax paper, lay halfway out of the bag and the aroma told me there was more to this than baloney. I picked it up and slid it from its wrapping. It was not any ordinary sandwich where meat is slapped between slices of tasteless white American bread. This bread was dark and thick, baked by an Italian mother in Brooklyn, bread firm enough to hold slices of a rich baloney, layered with slices of tomato, onions and peppers, drizzled with olive oil and charged with a tongue-dazzling relish.
I ate the sandwich.
It was my first act of classroom management. My mouth, clogged with sandwich, attracted the attention of the class. They gawked up at me, thirty-four boys and girls, average age sixteen. I could see the admiration in their eyes, first teacher in their lives to pick up a sandwich from the floor and eat it in full view. Sandwich man. In my boyhood in Ireland we admired one schoolmaster who peeled and ate an apple every day and rewarded good boys with the long peel. These kids watched the oil dribble down my chin to my two-dollar tie from Klein-on-the-Square.
Petey said, Yo, teacher, that’s my sandwich you et.
Class told him, Shaddap. Can’t you see the teacher is eating?
I licked my fingers. I said, Yum, made a ball of paper bag and wax paper and flipped it into the trash basket. The class cheered. Wow, they said, and Yo, baby, and M-a-a-a-n. Look at dat. He eats the sandwich. He hits the basket. Wow.
So this is teaching? Yeah, wow. I felt like a champion. I ate the sandwich. I hit the basket. I felt I could do anything with this class. I thought I had them in the palm of my hand. Fine, except I didn’t know what to do next. I was there to teach, and wondered how I should move from a sandwich situation to spelling or grammar or the structure of a paragraph or anything related to the subject I was supposed to teach, English.
My students smiled till they saw the principal’s face framed in the door window. Bushy black eyebrows halfway up his forehead shaped a question. He opened the door and beckoned me out. A word, Mr. McCourt?
Petey whispered, Hey, mister. Don’t worry about the sandwich. I didn’t want it anyway.
The class said, Yeah, yeah, in a way that showed they were on my side if I had trouble with the principal, my first experience of teacher-student solidarity. In the classroom your students might stall and complain but when a principal or any other outsider appeared there was immediate unity, a solid front.
Out in the hallway, he said, I’m sure you understand, Mr. McCourt, it isn’t seemly to have teachers eating their lunch at nine a.m. in their classrooms in the presence of these boys and girls. Your first teacher experience and you choose to begin it by eating a sandwich? Is that proper procedure, young man? It’s not our practice here, gives children the wrong idea. You can see the reasoning, eh? Think of the problems we’d have if teachers just dropped everything and began to eat their lunches in class, especially in the
