Hart, Shannon

OWP Essay #1

6/20/97

As I stood at the head of my empty classroom, I could look out through the windows and see the aqua-green ocean with the white breakers surging in towards shore. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and it was hot. Beads of sweat rolled down my face, and although it was only 7:30 in the morning, I was as wet as that ocean. Well, it was my first day of teaching, and that would make anyone sweat, but it was also around 80 degrees. I stood there imagining what the class would be like, full with children, but my mind drew a blank. I couldn't imagine it. The only thing I could think of was what a long, strange trip it's been! What have I gotten myself into?

If you had asked me five years ago that I would be teaching high school English, let alone teaching it in Hawaii, I would have told you that you'd been smoking something ripe. But, there I was. Of course, someone would say, teaching came naturally to you and you were born and raised in Hawaii. You were coming home. There is no problem here. You know the people and you know how to relate to them. You are one of them. Again I stand there, trying to picture the full class of children eager to learn, and again, nada. The only thing I could think of was how the past couple of days had been such a whirlwind of the familiar and the bizarre; that which makes you feel secure like a warm blanket, and that which jars you awake like a glass of ice-cold water.

Just five days earlier, I was at home; Salem, Oregon. It was early September and my worst fears had been realized. I had graduated from a teaching program in June, and after a long hot summer of resumes and interviews, I was jobless and time had run out. I had a Monday appointment for substitute teacher training, and it was Wednesday. My wife and I were near broke and I had taken a job as a warehouse worker at a local office supply store. I needed a job desperately to pay the bills, and with no full time teaching position apparently for me, I was prepared to do the impossible. I would sub for my food. Life could not get any worse. But just as quickly as I had reached that conclusion, my life changed. A phone call from a man in Hawaii.

"Are you interested in teaching in Hawaii?"

My mind raced with the possibilities. I was definitely interested. I didn't want to be a substitute teacher. I had trained and dreamed of being a full-time English teacher with my own class, my own responsibilities. This was my chance. I said, "Yes."

On Thursday, I was interviewed by phone. It was a conference call involving myself, the principal and the head of the English department at Waimea High School on the island of Kaua'i. I was hired on the spot.

"When can you be here?"

"Monday", I said without hesitation. I didn't know if I could get a flight that soon, or if I could afford it, but I didn't want this dream to slip away before I even had a chance.

Early Sunday morning I drove myself from my small, one-bedroom apartment near the railroad tracks in Salem to the Sea-Tac airport just outside of Seattle. A five hour drive followed by a six hour flight followed by another half hour plane ride, and by Sunday evening I was walking to the baggage claim area of Lihue airport on the island of Kaua'i. The oppresive heat and humidity, while uncomfortable, was also strangely assuring. I could do this. In the rush to get to Kaua'i, I had forgotten to ask what the principal looked like. Luckily (yet somewhat oddly!) he came straight up to me and said, "Please tell me that you're Shannon Hart!"

The principal told me that he would pick me up at the airport himself, and when I first met him, he was very happy to see that I was a large man (only later did I find out that he was glad to see that I was big, because he was worried about me holding my own with the hooligans I would soon be meeting). Over the phone, he promised me that he would arrange for housing for me. This was important because I knew that just a year earlier, Kaua'i had suffered through a disastrous hurricane, and I knew housing would be a problem. As we drove the 26 miles to the town where I would live and teach, the principal could do nothing but talk about how glad he was that I had agreed to come and that I had come so soon. He hoped I would stay, because everyone else had gone. The school year was already four weeks old, and I would be the fourth teacher these kids would have had this year. He wouldn't exactly go into details, but from conversation I did manage to elicit the small fact that the first teacher had abruptly taken a stress-induced health sabbatical (and she had no desire to return), and that the subsequent teachers had been short-term subs who were more than glad to give the reins over to new blood.

As it would soon turn out, the principal's plans, whatever they were, had somehow fallen through, and he didn't really have a place for me to stay. He informed me that there were some other teachers who were renting a large home together near the school and they would take me in. If that didn't work, he would let me stay with him and his wife in their home. I just looked out the window of his dirty-red pickup truck and stared at the miles and miles of sugar cane, and not for the last time I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

Thankfully I was put up in the home of the three new teachers who rented a large three bedroom house together. There was room for me on the floor in the living room. I could stay there until I found a place of my own. Thank God my wife wasn't arriving until a month later (she had the unpleasant task of packing up our apartment and shipping it to Hawaii), because this little set up would not fly with her. I would end up staying on the floor of their home for one full month. They were extremely nice to me, and to this day I call them my friends, but their home had mosquitoes the size of pigeons. Each night was a battle against the buzz.

So there I was, 7:30 in the hot Monday morning, dripping in sweat, and feeling...alone. Was it too late to drop everything and run? Before I could even begin to answer, the first students began to file into the class. Relax, I said to myself. Take a deep breath and do what comes naturally. But first, you better break up that fight in the back...and thus the odyssey began.

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