A Christmas Story

Silence between Songs

A work of short fiction by Dan de Souza

Ya, I should be happy.  I’m sure all of the teachers slaving in classes at this time of year would gladly trade places with me.  What other lucky bastard gets to take the dog mid-week, mid-afternoon to the tree farm to get the goddamn tree….the mall walkers and me...senior citizens and me.  At least the dog won’t want to talk.  At least we can just get the tree in silence.

I pull the car into the tree farm parking lot over a rutted driveway.  Every Christmas we bring the kids here on the Saturday before the big day.  We ride on the wagon out to where the good trees are.  I chop one down that Emma and Steven have chosen and we drag it back to the car.  While the kids are having hot chocolate, Cheryl and I tie the tree onto the roof rack.  Not this year though.  It’s me and the dog, mid-week; no crowds, no kids, no noise.  The tree farmer comes out of the Quonset hut when he hears my car on the gravel.  He comes out to greet me, like he does every year.

“Where are the kids this year?”  I smile and nod at him, reach into the trunk and get the ax.  What I want to say is that my wife has ordered the whisper that is her husband out of the house as part of his recuperation; hoping he will return to her with a tree and a smile.  That is what I want to say but can’t.

The dog goes for a sniff.  I turn and the farmer is right beside me.  He says again, “where are the kids this year?”  I shrug, reach into the pocket of my jacket for my card and hand it to him.  I see his lips move as he reads: “I was hit in a hockey game, took a slap shot to the throat and will never be able to speak again.”  He looks up at this point, like they all do.  “I’m sorry “ he says.  I hand him the card from my left pocket, it says “Ya, I’m sorry too.”

No need for the wagon this year.  Just the dog and me.  I take the ax and place it over my shoulder.  We head down the dirt path to where the good trees are.  The dog is moving along in front of me, nosing the ground as he goes.  He keeps looking back to make sure I’m with him.  I choose a row of trees that looks good; the dog scoots down other rows but keeps returning to make sure that I’m still there.  My ax bites into the wood of the tree.  It is good to be doing something with my muscles again after all that time lying in bed.  The air in my nostrils and in my throat feels good, like breathing again after a long drawn out cold.  The tree comes apart, not with a shudder, like I imagine great trees falling the wild, but with a little puff of snow.  The death of a domestic, tree farm tree.  I place my ax over one shoulder and pick up the stem of the tree, dragging the body of it behind me.  

Where is that damn dog?  Christ, where the hell is the dog?  I begin to move back to the hut.  To hell with the dog, I’ll leave without him.  By the time I’m back at the lot, the dog is still nowhere to be found.  The tree farmer gives me a hand putting the tree on the roof rack.  “Where’s the dog?” he asks.  I shrug again and I can tell that he is embarrassed, they’re always embarrassed, as if someone is supposed to remember that an able bodied man can’t speak.  

I cup my hands around my mouth, like I used to do when coaching in the gym.  I prepare my voice to shout “Digby”.  I get ready to hear my teacher voice as my students use to call it.  What I expect to hear and what finally slumps out of me are two different things.  What I expect is the voice, the one that can fill any auditorium.  The one that makes small children and large adults turn their heads and pay attention.  Instead the sound that comes out is the sound of a dog choking on a stick.  My larynx implodes with pain; my eyes water and I begin to choke on the saliva I can no longer swallow.  I lean on the car and grab my throat and spit, staining the snow red.   The farmer takes up the call, “here boy” he calls.  His voice echoes through his suburban forest.  His voice bellows out full and robust, old and gnarled though he is.  Finally, the last humiliation’ my dog comes to him.  I nod in appreciation and disloyal, disobedient mutt bounds into the back and wags his tail completely oblivious to his treachery.

At the stop sign, at the end of the driveway, I wait for traffic to clear.  The dog begins to howl.  Every time we take the thing in the car, it howls like it is going to be put down.  Like we are taking it on its last visit to the vet.  If only.  The stupid thing won’t shut up.  I scream at him to shut up and almost faint with the pain.  I wipe my mouth after and there's blood on my glove.  When the traffic finally clears, instead of taking my car onto the highway, I beat my fists into the steering wheel. Christ, what am I going to do?  “Teach the deaf,” they all whisper at me as they look down at me on my hospital bed.  The tone of their voices says, glad this didn't happen to me.  Yes teach the deaf indeed.  That..would..really...suit..my...style.  I beat the steering wheel to emphasize each pathetic word.  When I look in the rear view mirror, the dog is sitting on the back seat, on ear flicked over, mouth open, happy as hell that we went on this mid-afternoon trek and finally quiet.

When the kids arrive home I am in the living room with the tree.  They come bounding into the room and hug me.  They are just happy that their Dad looks like their Dad again.  I hear my wife’s care come in the driveway.  The dog barks to greet her and to all appearances, this is a Christmas like every other.  The place smells like Christmas.  Christmas carols have been playing on the radio for weeks and the cards that we did not get a chance to send this year remain on the gate leg table in the hall.  There’ll be no brag rag this year.  If there was how would it begin?  “This year finds us just fine thanks for asking, my husband remains mute and life will never be the same.  Steven continues to score goals for his house league team.”  

The fire is finally lit.  My scotch is in my glass and the ice melting make swirling patterns you’d see in an advertisement for scotch.  Finally there is silence.  The kids are in bed.  My throat is not sore so much as it is throbbing.  The doorbell.  Christ.

The dog is barking like it does anytime visitors come to the door.  What kind of person would be calling on this cold of a night?  I let the dog out the back door so that he doesn’t jump on whoever is at the door.  When I open it, the warmth from our home meets the cold from the night and an immediate frost rises on my lenses.  I cannot see the visitors but I can hear them and they are singing.

I had forgotten about the carolers that come to our house every year the week before Christmas.  Forgotten them in the hustle and bustle that is Christmas for a family with young children and for a family that has only a whisper of what a father was.

I let the carolers in and can hear underneath their voices the sound of the dog barking at the back door.  They are singing “The First Noel”, my wife’s favorite and she joins me in the breezeway of our house.  I feel her hand on my shoulder as she stands on the step, above me that leads into the kitchen.  I step back, away from her hand, away from the carolers, they enter the space I have vacated.  The dog gives up his barking and is probably listening with his back to the metal screen door, quiet at last.  My fogged glasses blind me.  I can’t see my unwanted guests, nor can I greet them.  I can only hear their Christmas voices.

Finally I take off my glasses and rub them on my sweatshirt.  My feet are wet from the melting snow on the carolers’ boots and all I want to do is be back to my fire, with my scotch and my own brooding silence.  They stop singing.  My wife gives them a hearty round of applause.  I look up, putting my glasses back on and the faceless, murky carolers come into focus in the silence between songs.

For the first time, I see them.  They are my students, my senior students.  These are not the carolers of every other season, but my students that I have not seen in over a month.  The larger boys are in the back, uncomfortable in my house but nonetheless, they are there.  The girls, glowing in the light of the breezeway, with their jackets open and their mitts on, are looking at me from the front row.  There are tears on their cheeks as we see each other for the first time in what seems like a very long time.  My hand goes to my throat.

They say, all at once, but not together, “Merry Christmas, sir.”  We have one more song for you.  They begin “Silent night, Holy night.”

Silent Stories

It is Christmas and Christmas, more than any other season, is defined by its stories. The Magi, stories of Light, of stars, of Scrooges, of Grinches.  The stories we tell define us too.  They explain our position in the world.  This season is the season above all when people gather to listen to stories, whether in song or in prose; whether told or read.  These stories make me think of our stories.  What are the stories of teachers?  So many of our stories can never be told or if they can be told, they must be done with care and almost in a whisper.

Most of the students have gone home.  Some linger in hallways, wishing each other well and “all the best” and “Merry Christmas” but most have said their goodbyes,“Have a good break sir, Merry Christmas!”

The teacher is packing his bag; he has a dinner with friends planned and the Christmas break runs ahead like a smooth, flat, frozen river.   She stops him in the hallway as he is heading to his car.  She is crying, sobbing.  Her brother has been hearing voices.  He’s kicking in the walls.  He kicked in the fridge.  Her parents are at a loss.  He stands and listens and ushers her to the side, near the lockers, so that others in the hall can not hear her.

He calls home, quickly arranges a meeting at the school.  Their boys first break with reality  happened in  grade 10.  He started hearing voices that summer.  The teacher listens even though the hallways of the school have been empty for hours.  The family is too embarrassed to talk about it, too afraid.  They don’t know where to turn.

There are calls made.  Arrangements come together and quickly, efficiently, the young man is placed into professional care.  He is admitted to a hospital and he begins to get the help he needs.

Later, while others are at home, while others are with friends and family, the teacher, struggles with his coat.   “I’ll be back soon”, he says as he heads out the door.  There is a bag in the car; chocolates, a gift card for Tims, a book.  He nods at the nurse as he walks down the corridor, entering the room of a boy who talks to people who are not in the room.

The stories of teachers are not always the stories of pageants and choirs, of decorations and class parties.  Most times they are not the stories of dramatic rescues or heroic journeys.  They are not the stories of the powerful, of the famous, of the rich.  

Our stories are about children, they are about families.  Ultimately our stories, some of our most important stories, must remain as quiet as a silent night.

20 things they don't teach you in Teacher's College

1)  The more embarrassing the prescription, the more likely a student from your class works in the pharmacy.

2)  There is always a SNOW DAY bottle of wine in your house.

3)  The Head Secretary and the Head Custodian run the school.  Get to know them.  Bring them coffee.  Say hello to them, smile.  You're welcome.

4)  When teaching a student who has a hearing impairment, turn off the microphone that is attached to your shirt before you go to the bathroom.

5)  During a phys.ed. on call or when on yard duty, keep your head up.

6)  When walking in the hallway during class, always have a piece of paper in your hand and look like you are going somewhere.

7)   Be prepared to have to hold a parent teacher interview with the recovery room nurse after your colonoscopy.

8)  To end a parent interview, slowly stand up and look over the parent's shoulder even if no one is there.

9)  While giving the lecture on plagiarism, always sit on the student's desk you suspect of cheating on the assignment.

10)  Go to the bathroom before the bell rings even if you don't have to go.

11)  Check your fly and if a teacher has tucked her dress into her pantyhose...tell her.

12)  Your kid's teacher cares just as much as you care for other peoples' kids.

13)  Parents will ask you for parenting advice even though you could be their child.

14)  Everyone at a dinner party will know how to do your job and will want to tell you how to do it.

15)  You will lie about your chosen career when you are having your hair cut.

16)  You will be asked to use your teacher voice at a function at some point and you will be stunned by the power it holds over adults.

17)  When on a field trip, you will have to pay for at least one student's lunch.  You will not get the money back.

18)  The student you are having trouble with, will help you in some capacity later in life.  She may be your recovery room nurse after your colonoscopy.

19)  Your colleagues can be your salvation or your destruction.

20)  There will be days where you can't believe they pay you to do this and days where there isn't enough money in the world to do it.

20th Century Teacher in a 21st Century Classroom

Chalk is limestone, a porous substance comprised of the skeletal remains of sea creatures. I have spent my life writing with the bones of dead fish.

The future doesn't look good for chalk.

The landscape in the classrooms I teach in provides little room for the scratching of fish bone on slate.  In order for me to scrawl my archaic cursive, with the dust of the dead, I have to find a patch of board in the classroom.  That ground is now squeezed between a smart-board and a laptop, usually cut off by a cart full of Chromebooks.  It is a precious as a vacant lot in Toronto.

I am an anachronism, like a wrist watch in a gladiator movie, I am out of time.  It's the 21st Century you know.  The century of the "learner centered classroom."  The century of the "flipped classroom".  The century of "bring your own device." The century of screens, of virtual learning.  The century of "teacher as facilitator."  The current gurus tell us, "We don't need a sage on the stage." It's the century of the "innovator's mindset."  The century of the Google classroom.

Professor John O'Connor is a sage.  John taught me many English courses at the University of Toronto. He is a master of his subject.  His mind is as sharp as any I have ever met and his eyes lock on you in a class discussion and you know that there is no place to hide.  John taught me a very valuable lesson in the 1980's; he taught me to never ask a question that Google could answer. He did this before there was Google.

Sister Joan Peck was a sage.  She taught me grade eleven math. Sister Joan would snap her fingers at me, and smile at me and say "Come on de Souza, come on kid, I know you can do it."  Sometimes the only reason I was able to do it was because of her voice encouraging me.  Some of you who have had me as a teacher have heard her echo in my teaching.

Ultimately these memorable teachers saw me.  Their interactions with me were real, organic and human.   They saw me for who I was, they saw me for who I might become.

I sometimes worry about the future of our classrooms.  Our very best, our very brightest teachers are giving in to the gurus, many of whom have rarely stood in front of a class.  They are listening to the slick patter; it is a sales pitch, snake oil masquerading as innovation.   These gurus are the migrating birds of education, heard for a short time, then gone.

If I could scrawl a message, on a little patch of ground, with tools from ancient times, it would say:   

Teacher be the center of your classroom.  Earn that center by keeping your mind vibrant and your skills sharp.  Bring the student to your subject and show the students who each can be.

Be a sage, use the chalk.