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5
JOEY
Does every teacher feel like throwing up right before they meet their first class? I would really like to ask someone this, but Ginger is all the way in the science building, and there is no way I’m asking anyone in this building—because it’s either Jarvis Kraft, who has been teaching longer than I’ve been alive, or it’s Dexter Kaplan, and no. Just no.
Jarvis Kraft, as if anyone in the world doesn’t know, is the people’s artist in the least sellout way. He paints accessible work without pandering to popularity, and for as long as he’s been successful, he’s been teaching. He gives and gives and gives, and he’s both a pop culture figure and a voice for creative movements. He’s a cross between Santa Claus and Mick Jagger, and everyone loves him. Everything he’s ever done has been a success.
He's terrifying to me.
And he doesn’t want to take the arts chair. He’s the obvious choice: a successful, popular artist, a seasoned teacher, and a star in the Chamberlain firmament. Now that I’m thinking about it, they probably opened the position expecting to give it to him. But he’s not interested.
And speaking of being not interested, I am not interested in looking vulnerable in front of Dexter by asking him if he was a nervous wreck when he started teaching. Not interested at all. No matter how handsome his eyebrows look when he smiles.
I can look like an idiot in at least a dozen different ways without exposing myself to any Dexter Kaplan-style pity.
Show no weakness, that’s my new mantra. I want that arts chair position. I need it. It’s the perfect legitimizer for this job. It will impress my parents. It will increase my salary. Most importantly, it will make me necessary here. When things get tricky in the gallery world, I’ll be an integral part of the Chamberlain world. This promotion will make me look like a grownup. And I would dearly love to look like a grownup right now.
Three days of preparation was not, it turns out, enough to make me feel ready. My classroom still looks bare and sparse, and so does my apartment. Not that anyone’s coming to my apartment. But I wanted to have a cool, curated space here in the classroom, something to get kids’ creative mojo working, and now it just feels like a mostly empty room. But only for a few more seconds. It’s about to be full of teenagers. Why are they suddenly so scary?
I stand in the hall, pushing back the urge to vomit, and smile up at the kids as they walk into my classroom.
A few of them smile back at me, but mostly they look terrifying, like they know they could take me at any given moment. They know it, I know it, and they know I know it.
“Okay, let’s get started,” I say, hating the way my voice cracks and squeals up in the highest register. Squeaking like a cartoon mouse, I not only look younger than half the students in my class, I sound it, too. I clear my throat and try again, deeper. “Welcome,” I say. Awesome. Now I sound like I’m trying to voice the Jolly Green Giant.
“Welcome to Beginning Photography. I’m Joey Harker, and I’ve been a professional photographer for seven years.”
I wait for the expected whispers of disbelief. I know I don’t look old enough to make a claim like that. A few kids pull out phones and type into them, either to Google me or to text their advisement counselor and get out of this class.
“I’d like to show you a little of what I hope to be able to teach you this semester.” That does not sound like I’m willing to bet on my own success—or theirs.
I fire up the projector and show them the slide show I prepared. The music I added really helps the tone of the pieces come through. I watch it cycle through a few of my favorite pieces from my last three exhibitions. Macros of leaves, grass, and tree limbs; food art; and the mother-and-child series. I’m saving the other things—the less comfortable things—for later.
A few kids whisper through it, and I remind myself that it won’t do any good to reprimand unless I’ve set up an expectation. No point in making a threat with no follow-though. I rub my nose with the back of my hand and decide to believe that they’re talking about how impressed they are. It’s possible.
Well, it’s not impossible.
Somehow, I make it through Beginning Photography, introducing the kids to the DSLR cameras and their settings, and checking one out to each of them. And then there’s Art Foundations, the kind of class that kids who have no interest in art take because they can’t sing or act, followed by another section of Beginning Photography, 3D Art (a class which I was assigned yesterday, and which I will definitely be making up as I go, hopefully at least one day ahead of the students), Photo-on-Film (for the old-school types), and Introduction to Film, as in movies. I’m being paid to show kids movies.
I love this place.
By the time I finish teaching all six classes, I’m amazed to still be standing. A kind of exhaustion I’ve never experienced before covers me like a suffocating blanket. Was a day of high school this long when I was a student? My eyes sting. My head throbs. This ringing in my ears fades in and out until I realize it’s the phone in my office. I rush over and grab it.
“Hello?” Why did my tone convey desperation? “This is Joey.” No. Not better. Now I sound like a fifteen-year-old. A boy. “Harker. Ms. Harker.”
I hear the familiar laugh percuss through the phone. Ginger.
“Hey, you. How was the first day?”
I can’t contain my sigh. But I follow it with a bit of verbal mania. “Hi, yourself. It was great. What should I say? I should say it was great, right?” Vocal hemophilia. Cannot clot.
Ginger laughed again. “Sounds about right. Do you like how I can call you from my office on a phone with a curly cord? It’s scientifically sound time travel.”
“Yeah, look,” I say, as though she could see me pointing. “Apparently, I have an office. Like a real teacher. And the office has a phone. How very adult of me. Is this phone from the nineties?”
Ginger makes a sound of assent. “Only the best for the Chamberlain staff. Just don’t count on ever sitting down in that office.”
I glance around the bare, closet-sized room. “I’d have to find a chair. That seems like more work than it’s worth.” I slide to the floor and sigh again, way too loudly. It probably sounds like the north wind through the phone.
