Fat School Confidential

FAT SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL

a memoir

Joe Rourke

Copyright © 2012 Joe Rourke

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher.

This book is a memoir. With the exception of the author, all names have been changed to protect the innocent
—and the litigious.

Cover painting by Arabella Proffer

Book design by Chris Whigham

ISBN-13: 978-1480140059

To Stewart Lindh. Mentor. Friend.
Family.

CONTENTS

Prologue

And there I was. Sitting in my mini SUV next to a girl old enough to give consent but young enough to be my daughter, I contemplated a great many things. If I were caught, my career as a teacher would be over. If I got away, I would leave behind a beautiful wife and a three-year-old son. Either way, I was doomed.

   
Her dark features diminished by a black hoodie, Wendy sat passively in the passenger seat. As if in a trance, she stared straight ahead. I tried to make small talk as we drove away from the school.

    “
Where do you want to go?”

    “
Away,” came her only reply.

   
She was scared. I was scared. Up to this point, we never sat alone, save the multiple times she spent in my office. Of course, my door was always open. But not here. This was new territory.

   
She turned on my satellite radio. Not familiar with it, she became frustrated.

    “
How does this fucking thing work?”

   
Skipping a few channels, I found her a station that satisfied both of our old school rock sensibilities. With hands at ten and two, I glanced over at Wendy. She seemed restless—and obviously more nervous than me.

    “
When can we stop? I need to smoke.”

    “
Do you have anything?” I asked, referring to money.

    “
Do I look like I have anything?”

   
As I pulled into a gas station to get cigarettes, she blurted, “We have to get back in less than an hour, so we can’t go too far.”

   
In the short time I’d known Wendy, she had to have exactly what she wanted—or else. Not being a smoker, I had to have what she wanted practically spelled out.

    “
Marlboro Reds, hard pack.”

   
We drove past farms and rural tenements. For a guy from Los Angeles, everything looked the same.  I was used to cities that embraced urban sprawl. Wendy may have seen slight differences in this landscape compared to her hometown in Illinois, but to me, this was a different world. Central California was about as familiar to me as the dark side of the moon.

   
I was hoping nobody saw us together, either back at school or on the road. The escape from campus proved to be more sloppily executed than the plan. We were to wait until just after dark. I would pull up in front of an adjacent vineyard. Wendy—dressed in ninja black, would hide among the grapes until I closed in. At five foot nine, she would have to stoop below the height of the vines as she made her way to my Honda. She would get in and off we’d go. Staff wouldn’t notice her missing until long past the post-dinner activities. She would be back before then. The plan seemed easy enough.

   
Unfortunately, when it came right down to it, Wendy wasn’t one to stick with plans. Instead of waiting until nightfall to pull it off, she stormed into my office right after the last class of the day. She was upset.

    “
What’s wrong?” I asked.

    “
Can you come back in an hour?”

   
I was a little more than concerned. “But it won’t be dark yet.”

   
She didn’t care. “I need to get the fuck out of here.”

   
It was apparent she had a rough day and needed to blow some steam.

    “
Okay... But you’ve got to make sure that we stick to the plan.”

   
Despite her obvious determination in carrying out this mini road trip, she worried me. At some point, she was going to slip up. I just knew it.

   
Within the hour, I came back, parking within a couple hundred feet of the school grounds. Looking over my shoulder, I craned my neck to see if anyone saw me. Like clockwork, she scurried out of the vineyard wearing white pants and a brown hoodie. Ninja girl she was not.

   
Turning onto a narrow, paved road, I found a clearing to park. We had a good ten minutes before we had to turn back. We got out of the car so Wendy could smoke. Although I grew up with a chain-smoking, three pack a day father, I’d be damned to continue the trend by endangering my lungs to an eighteen-year-old girl. She was annoyed that I wouldn’t allow her to smoke in my car, but she also understood the consequences—especially the fact that the lingering smell would draw suspicion.

   
Leaning against my car, Wendy took a drag. I stood a good five or six feet away. Ever the subtle one, I started the convo.

    “
Would this be considered our first… date?”

   
I don’t know if it was her own nervousness or if it was part of her own misleading ambition, Wendy fired back. “No. This is our first outing.”

    “
So what happens after the third one again?”

   
I could tell she was getting frustrated with my obvious lack of tact.

    “
Is that what you’re thinking of?” she interjected before I could attempt a shoulder shrug.    “Sex?”

   
I got defensive. “No, of course not… I just was thinking of the next level.”

    “
Uh huh.”

   
I needed to switch gears, and switch fast.

    “
Smoking? And on an unsupervised outing with your teacher? Well, well, well. Looks like we’re going to have to talk to your B.C. about this!” I teased. Wendy laughed. She had a full, lilting quality to her laugh. It was irresistible.

   
B.C. stood for Behavior Coach—a sort of therapist, cheerleader, and lifestyle consultant rolled into one. Once a week, students would meet with their respective coach individually and in a group setting.

   
And then I had to open my mouth again.

    “
Your laugh’s orgasmic.”

   
If she were drinking milk instead of smoking, this would be the time she would shoot it out of her nose. Her laugh killed me.

   
Collecting herself, she took another drag.

    “
I feel odd calling you Joe.”

    “
I feel odd being called Mr. Rourke. Well, by you, anyways.”

   
I glanced at my watch. “Shall we?”

   
With the sun dipping over the horizon, we headed back, listening to Joan Jett and her “Bad Reputation.” We neared the campus. The Admin building was dark, as was the parking lot. Facing her, I asked, “You do consider this as more than platonic, right?”

   
Without missing a beat, she shot back with, “Of course!”

   
By the time I pulled into the side lot, I had a feeling this was but a dry run for something more substantial. And by this, I didn’t mean relationship.

Chapter 1

The Fallback

Getting the job at the Academy couldn’t have come at a more opportune— or ironic time in my life. After teaching Special Ed for L.A. Unified for nearly five thankless years, I was ready to do something. Anything. Other than teaching.

   
It was late June, Two Thousand and Five.

   
I unceremoniously quit my job at Franklin High School without lining another one up. That’s how it was with me. Whenever I grew tired of a job, or felt that it was only a matter of time before I’d be fired from one, I quit. This time, though, it was different. I had a wife and child to support. What I was doing was irresponsible at best. It didn’t matter that teaching Special Ed to violence-prone kids was a risk I took on a daily basis—it was still a job. It didn’t matter that my temporary credential was about to be revoked for not turning in assignments to L.A. Unified’s District Intern program. I could have stalled them a little longer. No, I was burnt out, plain and simple.

   
During my time at Franklin, I found there were very real dangers in my chosen profession. Like the day there was an off campus shooting. It occurred one morning, minutes before the first bell of the day. A gang-banger getting even with a tagger, or maybe it was vice-versa. It happened some fifty feet from my classroom. The shots rang out without warning—I didn’t have time to duck and cover. Luckily nobody got hurt. There were more than a couple close calls like this throughout my four and a half years at Benjamin Franklin High School.

   
I’ve had my share of threats. But I never reported any of them. I figured, if I couldn’t determine the difference between what a real threat and a fake one was, I had no business in education. Most of these kids were trying to intimidate me. Or test me. Either way, I couldn’t have been much of a physical challenge to them. At five foot seven and a half, I was about average in height in comparison—for a high school freshman.

   
One such intimidator went by the name of Danny Ramirez. Shorter than me by half a foot, Danny was an underachiever—like many of his peers—but unlike them, he possessed an intelligence that belied his “special” status in my class. Whether it was because of his intelligence, or his ego, or a little bit of both, he did whatever he could to circumvent graduating from Franklin. His sole extracurricular activity seemed to involve illegally painting various commercial and residential properties. He did this strictly on a volunteer basis, of course. Needless to say, Danny had a serious chip on his shoulder. One day, while teaching class on the basics of human biology, I found him whispering jokes to one of his classmates.

    “
What was that, Danny?”

    “
Nothing, Mr. Rourke.”

    “
Thought so.”

    “
Fuck you.”

   
I was shocked by what I heard. I turned around to face him, but he had his back to me. The other students smiled, either at his audacity or out of embarrassment. I was livid, but, being the good teacher, I didn’t show it. Keeping my mouth shut, I handed Danny a note to take to the dean’s office.

   
He complied without a fight.

   
Sadly, Danny was the only Latino student who pronounced my last name correctly from the get-go. The rest of my students—most of them Latino—couldn’t help but vocalize the silent ‘e’ at the end. But it wasn’t enough for Danny to win favor with me. Not after this.

   
Still, the troublemakers were few and far between. I couldn’t help but stick around for the majority of my students, who, by and large, were the good ones. The ones who showed up for class and wanted to learn. The ones who were five or six grade levels behind and continued to show up. The ones who greeted me with a smile. The ones whose parents showed up at the school’s open houses and parent teacher conferences. The ones who wanted a future for themselves.

   
In short, the ones who felt that school mattered.

   
Don’t get me wrong, there were some funny moments with my troublemakers. Like the fight I had to break up in the middle of a field trip—at the Museum of Tolerance. An African American kid and a Mexican kid started their scuffle indoors. I got them to calm down and leave the museum without security intervening. But by the time they were out the front doors, they started cursing and throwing punches. It got so bad that a passing motorist—noticing the kerfuffle—yelled out, “Stop fighting! This is the Museum of Tolerance!”

   
Before I left Franklin, I had an easy class load, with anywhere from a handful of students to a baker’s dozen at any one time. This being Special Ed, my class load was made up of learning disabled, or “LD” kids—those who were several grades behind their peers. I had first choice on subjects to teach. Part of this was due to seniority, part due to attrition.

    
Besides the high burnout rate of Special Ed teachers (many within a year of teaching), there were veteran colleagues who had the tendency to die of heart attacks and other stress-related illnesses. No surprise there.

   
I also had a supportive network of teachers who helped me when problems arose. First and foremost was Miss Flores. She was my friend and confidant—always there when I needed to talk to someone. Like me, she saw teaching as a temporary, if stable, way to make money. We both had similar film industry aspirations, but we ended up in the education racket instead. We hung out together during breaks, and often joined each other for lunch. At one point, students thought we were having an affair, until I pointed out to them that Miss Flores was a cousin of mine and that if anything was said about one of us, the other would know for sure. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have chemistry between us. We had it in abundance. But Laura was more like a younger sister—a sister I wished my own sister would be.