Goodbye, Mr. Fitz: a new teacher challenges the limits on his students' creativity and takes on their school

Humanist, March-April, 2005 by Michael Fitzgerald

It should be obvious to me that this isn't going to work. I've always had problems with authority figures. And I'm certainly no good at pretending to be one. My struggles with authority are a prime reason for my graduating from college thirty years behind schedule. But in May 2004 I finally succeed in earning a bachelor's degree in print journalism from Jacksonville University in Florida.

Though facing a limited, low-paying market for professional writers, I luckily stumble on an opening for a creative writing teacher at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville. My schoolteacher friends swear it's a plum gig: D.A. is the most progressive school in the Duval County school system, plus it's a magnet school--students have to really work to get in and there are few discipline problems because they want to be there.

Since D.A. is a performing arts magnet school, I figure I'll fit right in. Ironically, I fit in a little too well--with the students, not the staff. At one of the preseason faculty meetings I hear some discussion about the dress code. One teacher wants to know the exact definition of open-toed shoes as opposed to sandals. "We have more important things to worry about here?" I want to shout, but I manage to stifle myself.

I find myself in front of a classroom of mostly fourteen-year-old girls, and it's easier than I expected. I sense a tacit consensus to cut me some slack and I'm grateful. Apparently they like me or feel sorry for me--or a little of both. And not only are these kids kind but some of them are great writers. Reading one girl's first paper, I feel a twinge of jealousy. "There's not much I can teach this kid," I tell my wife.

If the kids are the best part of D.A., however, the worst is the bureaucracy. As a twenty-year teaching veteran tells me, all the kids combined don't give the teachers one-tenth the hassle the system itself does. Parents, legislators, school board members, business leaders, pundits all think they know best how teachers should to do their jobs, and the resulting policies are a crazy-quilt of contradictions.

D.A.'s principal, Jackie Cornelius, is sweet as pie, but by November I've stretched her patience. After being here only three months I've, according to her reckoning, generated at least eight calls from parents. Parents' concerns carry a lot of weight at D.A. When I mention this to one of my students, he replies, "Are you kidding? The parents are running this school."

A real Southern charmer, Cornelius explains she only wants what's "best for all concerned." She suggests I might be better suited to teaching college. I don't argue with her. Finally she offers some context: Douglas Anderson is under fire. There are parents in the community who want to destroy the school. Why? Because it's a haven for nonconformists--particularly gay kids. And the students are being exposed to really sophisticated stuff. Parents who don't want their kids exposed to this side of life--or who don't believe the school system should permit such havens--are organized, she says. They have lawyers. Hell, some of them are lawyers. And some of them want to destroy the entire public-school system.

It turns out that she's not just paranoid. In October 2003, a substitute teacher at D.A. played a videotaped installment of PBS'S Art in the Twenty-First Century, showcasing award-winning photographer Sally Mann's work. The video contained photographic portraits of Mann's own children playing naked, not an uncommon sight in the mountains of Mann's Virginia home.

But Mann has long been a target for conservative-values groups such as Focus on the Family, and complaints against her work have been lodged in courts in Alabama, Tennessee, and Louisiana. A D.A. student mentioned the video to his parents, who called the Jacksonville sheriff's office and demanded an investigation. The sheriff's office ultimately decided it wasn't a criminal matter, but the battle lines were drawn.

Cornelius defended the school's right to show the video, but parents must now sign a permission slip before students can view it. This is the type of environment we're in now, she tells me. The school is under a microscope and so are teachers--especially me. The message is clear: if I want to self-destruct, that's my business, but don't drag the school down with me.

A former D.A. student offers evidence of just how much the climate has changed over the years. Nelline Zilberg, who graduated in 1998, recalls that her creative-writing classes read sexually explicit Allen Ginsberg poems. Though the content might have been deemed offensive, she says, "Those who didn't want to hear it were advised to walk out. I would never have imagined D.A. of all places would give in to conservative pressure," she says.

In case I've forgotten, I'm reminded rather quickly that D.A. is still in the Bible belt. Of course our school isn't as conservative as some others in Jacksonville, where even Ginsberg's less-controversial--and widely acclaimed--poems have been a source of controversy. The best advice I get comes from a veteran teacher and former army grunt: "Don't stick your head out of the foxhole." What he means is, don't call attention to yourself because once you get it it's hard to shake.