January 5, 1970
On January 5th, both Nate and I started back to school, and it wasn’t easy shifting away from our tranquil time together at the apartment. But we both admitted the reason it had been so special was that we knew it couldn’t last. After thanking God for our first month of marriage, we moved back into the world of law school and 1st grade.
When the horn beeped for me in front of our apartment building that Monday morning, it was still dark out. But I scampered down the steps, eager to see my driving buddies, and was glad to jump into Judy’s warm car on a bitter cold day. After we’d picked up Linda for our 40 mile commute, we had fun sharing all that had happened over our Christmas breaks.
In our classrooms, the children wanted to do the same. My students and I all laughed as they competed to be heard, stretching their hands high in the air with gusto. “Oooo! Me! Me! Choose me!”
Show and Tell was dominated by new toys and tales of joyful holiday adventures, and I was reminded again how much fun it was to have so many children in my life. Their joy was contagious, and by the 3:00 bell, I was feeling grateful for such a pleasurable job.
Principal Scarce poked his head into my classroom that Monday afternoon, letting me know he was in the process of scheduling teacher evaluations. Mine, he said, would be the following week. “How does that work?” I said.
He told me he would arrive unannounced to my room, observe my teaching for a while, then fill out a form rating me. He would study my lesson plan book, inspect our room (and cloak room), and chat with the children.
Following that observation day, he would arrange for a one-on-one meeting to go over the results. I would sign and date the form, as would he, and the results would go into my permanent file.
This was new to me – and sounded like a threat. The Chicago Public Schools hadn’t evaluated us at all, though I had to remind myself they were in emergency mode when I began teaching. As they scrambled to find enough classrooms and put an adult in charge of each one, my guess is they intended to do evaluations but other things pressed harder.
When I got home that evening, I told Nate about the evaluations. The whole thing was unnerving, especially since I still wasn’t officially certified as a teacher. Both Judy and Linda had majored in education, and their paperwork was in order. Just having a degree in literature, I was the only teacher at McKinley on probationary status.
Since Nate had one more year of law school, I would need permission to teach again. If I couldn’t teach, what then? What other job could possibly support us?
As Nate and I talked it over, he spoke words of praise about how much the children loved me, but nothing he said could talk me down from my fears. Surely Mr. Scarce hadn’t forgotten the day Judy, Linda, and I had decided teacher training sessions weren’t important enough to attend.
Of the 3 of us, though, I was the most expendable.
“[She] will not fear bad news; [her] heart is confident, trusting in the Lord.” (Psalm 112:7)
