I Am So Popular: Welcome to Harry Potter High School
In less than two months, my son, now legally an adult, will graduate from high school. It’s been an interesting ride, to put it mildly, watching him grow up, missing the little child gone forever now, but being psyched to see the young man he has become. Watching him play three gigs last week during SXSW was a great chance to have gratitude that he found his passion early—picking up a guitar at twelve and, as far as I can tell never putting it down—and that he lives in a town that embraces creativity in general and music especially.
Where was I when I was his age? Hmm… Well, I had passions, too, namely boys and booze. The human oxymoron, I was both president of the student council and a burgeoning drunk, having begun binge drinking at 14, heading down a path that would take me more than two decades to step off of, into the more stable land of sobriety. I was laughing on the outside, raging on the inside, furious at my tyrannical father and unhappy with my lack of options.
Like my son, I too, found my passion early, wanting very much to be a writer from the age of 8. An excellent student, I ranked fifth in my graduating class. And I was accepted at a prestigious private college, one I would not be able to attend. My father believed college was for posers. Even if he’d had the money to send me to school, it wasn’t an option he would’ve been interested in. The map he drew for me involved staying a small town girl, finding a husband, and cranking out babies. If I was going to get a job as I waited for a spouse to materialize, then, like two of my three older sisters, I could be a secretary.
My high school counselor, who spent much time doting on the basketball team he coached, and the rest of his time courting a student teacher (despite the fact he was, as I recall, married), looked at my circumstances. Great grades. Great extra-curricular. Family with no money. He announced that I should “just go to the local commuter college and be a teacher.” As only one member of my family had ever been to college (that local commuter school to become a teacher) I had no idea about scholarships and grants. My counselor—to his credit he apologized thirteen years after the fact—didn’t bother to explain these things to me.
Somehow, almost in spite of myself and my addictions and my foolish choices, I managed to eventually pursue my passion, more or less running away to a mediocre college in Florida, procuring an English degree, and peddling my words here and there while I waited on tables for fifteen years. Persistence and dumb luck joined forces and I eventually managed to eke out a living with words, some of them the creative variety, others in the form of highly commercial work like textbooks and tampon pamphlets.
Now, twenty-seven years post high school graduation, I can look back and see the brighter spots in the education I received. I am still in touch with my high school Latin teacher and my sixth-grade teacher (who happened to have attended high school together and who both decided, though they could have gone elsewhere, to return to their roots, ala Kotter, and offer a leg up to the kids of so many blue collar families). Though neither spoke the word, I believe both to be feminists, modeling behavior for me, which I absorbed subconsciously and took out into the world, learning to make my own way.
Their inspiration ran deeper than I realized as eventually, ironically perhaps, I did become a teacher myself. Not in any conventional sense. I never got certified and I was never full-time. But I came to enjoy, at least in small doses, being an educator, a notion the teenage me had rejected in part because my counselor tried to thrust it on me, as if he didn’t think I was “good enough” to do something else, but mostly because it wasn’t what I truly wanted at the time.
But I did come to teach in sundry capacities over the years—kids' summer writing camps, adult writing workshops and in the classroom. Writing and knitting are my strengths, though I have also taught literature and, in recent years sewing and fashion (though I am personally terrible at both—those who can do and all that). Of all the gigs I’ve taken, the one that lasted the longest and fed me the most was at the Griffin School, over in Hyde Park.
For years I walked by the little school on the hill, wondering what was behind those doors with the bright blue mural of a sky on the front door. Once, I screwed up my courage and went up the path and inside, inquiring as to just what went on in there, and offering to come talk some time about my life as a writer. It would be another year or so before, out of the blue, I got a call from the school’s director, Adam Wilson, who had a sudden opening for a part time teacher, someone to lead the elective classes of literature and creative writing. I leapt at the opportunity.
Thus began my years-long stint at The Harry Potter School (as some of us call it), a magical little universe with a tiny student body, usually hovering between five or six dozen kids spread across 9th through 12th grades. The largest class I think I ever had numbered eight students. The smallest—and this happened more than once—was one-on-one, me and a student, dissecting one book or another, discussing plot and theme and symbolism.
Whatever regrets I had about my life as a student often packed into a classroom of thirty others have melted away now. I’m old enough to embrace the notion that we are a product of our circumstances, that we grow from adversity and less than ideal conditions. I remember more the teachers who did take the time to fit in some one-on-one wisdom sharing on the side, despite their workloads. And I’m glad for the way things eventually turned out for me both because of and in spite of the opportunities I did and did not have.
But still, what if? What if I had had a chance to go to some version of the Harry Potter School? It’s a fantasy fun to entertain. I look back at my adventures at Griffin and the things I learned there. The student population, though small, was wildly varied. Some folks dubbed us the Punk Rock School, a tribute (or was that a condemnation?) to the fact that, unlike AISD, there was no dress code—you want blue hair and facial piercings, fine. We had rebels, and kids from other countries. We had brilliant, eager learners, kids who were bored with big box curriculum, but who thrived with so much individual attention. I loved it there because, like the students, I’d found a place that gave me a real feeling of fitting in.
And my colleagues, with their dedication, inspired me. Private schools typically cannot offer the financial safety net and benefits that, by comparison, public schools provide teachers. And yet still, after all these years, a core group of educators dedicated to the school return, year after year, continuing to display an enthusiasm for teaching.
What I think I liked best though, is a belief I share with Adam, a visionary if you ask me. Recognizing that experience counts for something and that not all of us had the time, financial resources or interest in certification, he pulls his elective teachers from the large pool of creative types that makes up this city of ours, saturated in talent. Computer teachers, acting teachers, art teachers, video teachers, music teachers and yes, writing teachers—all of us with years of hands-on, real life skills under our belts, able to give the kids insight into application and how to answer to passion’s call and make a go of dreams. It’s an ideal combination—mixing the certified, full-time core curriculum teachers with the workaday artists.
My son, who happened to thrive in social hubbub of public school, will attend a graduation ceremony with hundreds of others, a big event, all pompy and circumstancey. Meanwhile, over at the little campus on the hill in Hyde Park, a much smaller gathering will take place. The class of ’09, perhaps fewer than a dozen students, will sit at the front of the campus chapel, surrounded by a full house of family and friends. One by one, they will be called, alphabetically by first name. Each will have up to three loved ones come forward, stand at the microphone, and speak a few words. For years I attended this ceremony, always moved to tears, not just by observing a major milestone in my students’ young lives, but also with gratitude for being part of this little school that gave me a sense of belonging.
Spike Gillespie got kicked out of the National Honor Society for her bad attitude. She blogs regularly at www.spikeg.com. She is the Head Mistress for The Dick Monologues. Next show is April 15th. Email spike@spikeg.com to reserve seats.
