R.I.P.

“Substitute teachers do not get fired. Their phone stops ringing at 5AM, which is both curse and blessing.”
I wish I had read that quote rather than lived it. The curse was unemployment in San Diego but the blessing was this quote:
“I would be remiss in my duties if I did not offer you a contract to sign right now.”
Mr. Acosta, the recruiter, was looking at the L. A. Times article about the Godfather of Math. All I saw was the dotted line of a teacher’s contract. It was March 25, 1987. Thus began my career as a full-time teacher but this blogpost is not another Jeffersonian story. It has to do with the days when my phone would ring at 5 AM.

I was given a week-long substitute assignment for a math teacher about to embark on jury duty. I spoke with him briefly that morning. He bookmarked the chapter pages and told me to “wing it.” I did exactly that after opening a Geometry text to the chapter on Special Parallelograms. On the wings of whimsy & wit was born the Rico Parallelo story.
In Mr. LongForgotten’s classroom, I gave birth to the “Godfather of Math.” But I do remember Oceanside High School students’ laughing, cheering and threatening to chain me to the teacher’s desk because they thought they never would be able to “understand this stuff.” That was twenty-six years ago and five thousand students ago. The only name I remember from Oceanside High School is impossible to forget despite my ignorance about his BMOC status.

In Los Angeles, my students were Afro-Americans and Latino-Americans. I am an Italian American. Maybe you are Irish-American or Asian-American...
The race/ethnicity always precedes the -American but there is one exception: American-Samoan. They are so named because their island of origin in the South-Pacific is “American-Samoa,” an unincorporated territory of the United States. There is a large community of American-Samoans in Oceanside, California.

All teachers know the difference between the smart student and the smart aleck. In the presence of a substitute, students offer living proof that the smart aleck could easily morph into the smart student but not, unfortunately, as often as smart students become smart alecks. Luckily for me, many Samoan-American students at Oceanside High School showed me their better side.
I cannot credit an accurate and specific classroom example for this one particular student but I do remember something from the next decade while reading a cover story about him in Sports Illustrated. I exclaimed “Wrong!” when the article implied that the only place he manifest any intelligence at the University of Southern California was on the gridiron.

But it is undeniably true that his talents on the football field will soon be immortalized in the NFL Hall of Fame. Equally undeniable is his beloved status as a God-figure throughout San Diego.
Rest in peace, Junior Seau.