Never Give Up
“Teaching is a calling, too. And I’ve always thought that teachers in their way are holy angels leading their flocks out of the darkness.”
– Jeannette Walls
I am a teacher.
I taught an adult creative writing workshop this weekend in conjunction with an art exhibit that asked artists to take an abstract and express that word in a piece of art. Since I often speak to students about using concrete details instead of abstractions (envy, courage, regret, grief), I came up with an idea for a workshop on the subject, which the gallery accepted. It went well. The class was small, only four women, but the writing was mighty, and it felt good to be teaching again. My ex-brother-in-law once asked me why I continued to trust and appreciate men since my relationship history included some terrible things. This is an interesting question, except I remain hopeful and aware that the men who hurt me were a tiny section of the population. However, I have had the same question about teaching. I wonder why I love it so much when I've had horrible teachers.
photo by Isabella Fischer
In sixth grade, my teacher, Mr. Hallet, quit a few months into the year to join the FBI. To say this was devastating is an understatement. Both my sisters adored him, and I waited for my turn. The Moynahan girls were challenging because we had enormous vocabularies, traveled extensively, and swore more than any child should. But we loved school and were eager to be a part of something. Our childhoods had been disrupted both by years spent abroad and the unreliable behavior of our parents, who were amazing but also very careless. His replacement saw me as some power person in the class, and after she unsuccessfully wooed me, she began to treat me as an enemy. It didn’t help that she, unlike Mr. Hallet, was not attractive; she was much older and lacked the charm that anyone who has taught middle school knows to be crucial. After a few weeks, she sent me to the principal so many times that he put a chair in his office for me to sit in. When my mother finally met with her, she told her I was destroying her marriage.
”Molly is eleven years old,” my mother said.
“She's crazy,” my mother told me. But nothing was done.
In eighth grade, my friend had an affair with our history teacher, a married man who was disgusting but taught my favorite subject. I was used as a beard, so when she babysat, and he came over, they would go upstairs to have sex while I tried to watch television. One day, he came over with his hand bandaged.
”What happened to your hand?” I asked.
”My wife stabbed me with a fork,” he replied.
I wanted to stab him with a fork, preferably in the eye.
Eventually, they were caught. I told my mother, her parents sent her to an all-girl Catholic school, and he continued teaching with me in his class. Even though I was excellent at history, I started cheating. Again, nothing was done.
I was sent to private school for the last three years of high school, where I had some excellent teachers and some awful ones, but they were not predators. College was the best. I had wonderful professors who welcomed my opinions even when they were irrational. They were encouraging but also taught me discipline and helped me become a better student.
When I returned to graduate school to obtain an MFA in Fiction Writing, I already had a book deal with a major publisher. Still, I had missed school and looked forward to immersing myself in my favorite subject and getting a degree that could help me with a teaching job. One of the two professors who led the program was utterly inappropriate, asking me whether a character in a story had been my lover in real life, while he constantly singled me out in the workshop. One day I was standing in Union Square waiting for a friend, and he appeared from nowhere and told me I looked like a hooker, and he liked it.
His son called me one day to meet him for coffee to discuss his father's obsession. His son claimed his father, who was remarried after a divorce, frequently talked about me at home, and he feared the new wife was going to leave him.
“My father's obsessed with you,” he said.
Years later, I sat in a darkened theater and watched his son’s first feature film. It was about a teacher becoming obsessed with a student and its effect on his children. I was horrified.
Teaching is hard. It is ego-deflating, exhausting, and, at times, awful. I have taught in a variety of classrooms and schools. I have taught gang members, teenagers committed to a mental health facility, graduate students writing novels, Advanced Placement students, and those who struggled with literacy. I have taught adults who believed they should be the ones teaching, and in the Middle East where, my students, all girls, were only interested in accessing pornography on their iPads. Despite the variety, I have a short list of techniques. Lead with love. Most people have felt worthless; if you can push back against that feeling, you will have done something good. Remain deeply involved in the pedagogy of your subject. You should know what you are teaching far beyond the required level. Finally, never give up. Your students need to know you believe in their worth and their potential. And remain teachable. You can only model the behavior you do yourself.
—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach