Sex and Violence

That One Time I was the Subject of a School District Threat Assessment

Most people probably don’t recall that the pilot of The Muppet Show in early 70s was salaciously titled “Sex and Violence.”

It seems incongruous that such a seemingly child-oriented program would use those two words to attract an audience (actually, a voiceover announces the END of “sex and violence on television” and then a Muppet blows up the two words). But then again it was the Seventies and it was Jim Henson. The puppeteer was a subversive genius whose art always played on multiple levels at once. I have always admired him and his work.

I thought of his pilot episode when I got in loads of trouble for my own short story collection.

It was 2011, and I was stuck.

I was an out-of-classroom teacher, hating my position with a passion. I was the right-hand man of a wrong-headed principal who reprimanded me so many times that I officially could not transfer out of the school because the District did not allow educators who had received an “Unsatisfactory” by their administrator to move anywhere. I was trapped in an illogical paradox: the more he said my work was bad, the more I was forced to work with him.

But school districts don’t run on logic. They run on hierarchies. So, I was trapped.

In addition to the principal disliking me the entire school also hated me and not only because I had given a good chunk of them parking tickets and refused to apologize for doing so. The problem was that I was smart-mouthed and never knew when to shut the hell up.

During a professional development I was leading, I once made an off-color joke about blasting the air conditioner for the comfort of my seemingly menopausal audience. I had become accustomed to hearing (and commenting) on women’s health issues because I lunched with women every day for over a decade. That’s what they all talked about as we munched on our salads, cafeteria burritos, and Lean Cuisines. The topics of conversations were often perimenopause, menopause, and vaginal vs. Cesarean births. I mistakenly thought I was part of some women’s health issues knitting circle and could therefore make a female-centric jokes.

Nobody laughed at my joke. Some of the women frowned.  I immediately was reported to the principal who gladly and quickly wrote me up for my failure as a standup comedian.

Then I got into a debate with an older woman special ed teacher about how to organize the school’s interventions. When I was losing the argument, I relented but sarcastically complemented her for having a “bigger special education dick” than me. I was written up.

Then another day the principal was rushing me, badgering me over the school’s walkie talkie. “Where are you?!” he asked, “Where are the Perfect Attendance Certificates?!” I got on the walkie talkie and told him to “hold his horses” as I printed them up. I was written up, once again.

I had a very smart mouth. It has always gotten me in loads of trouble.

I am also a writer. That has also made trouble for me.

I rarely divulged my literary pursuits to my colleagues, especially since most of the staff didn’t talk to me.

I graduated from USC’s Masters in Professional Writing program in 2008, and since then I was slowly putting together a collection of my short fiction. By the spring 2011, the book of stories I had spent years writing was almost ready to come out into the world.

Meanwhile, I was stuck at this school. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t quit. And in the midst of this career constipation, the only thing I knew how to consistently do was work on my book. So, I concentrated on writing my stories. Until some movement finally started to happen.

At a faculty meeting that same spring of 2011, a preschool teacher stood up to announce her retirement after thirty-eight years of service.

She wept as she declared the end of her professional career. The staff was surprised and disheartened as her decision came at the same time as some other dismal news— the principal had just warned us that a dozen teachers could potentially be losing their positions due to severe budget cuts in the upcoming school year.

It was a very challenging staff meeting to say the least.

However, the teacher that retired knew she would be saving another teacher’s position, a younger teacher’s position. She clearly understood how her retirement was a boon to the newer teachers at the beginnings of their career. Later, she confirmed to me that she retired knowing I would have the opportunity to take her teaching spot.

And she was right, I decided to give up my out-of-classroom position and go teach preschool. Although I couldn’t flee the school itself, at the very least, I had the opportunity to exit the hateful position I was in, return to the basement classroom of my favorite grade level, and get the hell out of everyone’s hair. And that’s exactly what I planned to do.

Summer vacation then arrived, a nice respite before the new school year.

I fled to sun-drenched Spain for a much-needed break. I wanted to be as far away from A. Elementary as I could manage. I toured Castilla, Catalonia, and Andalucía with a boyfriend. I also kept writing.

While in Madrid, I hit a button on Amazon’s self-publishing website and digitally released my book of short fiction onto the Internet and into the world, not really expecting much to happen.

I enjoyed the rest of my vacation, satisfied that when I returned to Los Angeles, I would be well-rested and rejuvenated, ready for my return to being a mild-mannered (yeah, right) preschool teacher.

However, just when I believed all trouble had died down at A. Elementary, the distress started up again.

When I returned to set up my preschool classroom right before the new 2011-2012 school year, I noticed the other teachers, also on campus to set up their classrooms early, were ignoring me.

They scurried past me in the hallways like frightened little forest animals and kept their eyes downcast whenever I passed them. They didn’t answer back when I greeted them.

Mr. L., who had a nickname for everyone on staff, refused to shout out his usual “Hey Ritchie!” as he usually did in years’ past. He walked by me with barely any acknowledgment.

I was perplexed. I thought for the new school year we were letting bygones be bygones now that I was no longer in a position to hand out parking tickets. Could the faculty still be upset about something that had occurred practically a year before?

I couldn’t figure out the resurgence of their distaste.

Then one of my colleagues called me, “Oh, Richard. You did it again,” she said.

“What did I do now?” I asked.

“You published that book,” she answered.

“Oh, is that what all the ignoring is about?” I asked.

What I didn’t know (until about decade later) was that that special education teacher who I said had a bigger special education dick than me (which in some circles is a complement) and who had been in the room when I made that joke about menopause had also, in the previous week, got ahold of my book of short stories.

Admittedly, my little book is filled with lots of sex and violence.

She soon spread her alarming book review across campus to other colleagues, to administration, and to the district.

She concluded that I was a violent threat to her and our entire school. She felt my fiction was targeting the staff with thinly-veiled threats of violence. She complained to the principal, who then initiated an official district threat assessment.

As I was preparing for my preschool class, setting up my classroom, stupidly unaware, whistling while I worked by day, and holding happy hour cocktails with a former colleague by night, the District was secretly holding threat assessment hearings against me taking testimony from some of my coworkers about how they felt I was a potential danger to them and others.

I was in some deep shit and didn’t even know it!

A couple weeks prior, I had noticed my book sales suddenly shoot up on Amazon but since it was the first time I had published a book I didn’t realize the spike I was witnessing wasn’t usual and ultimately due to a secret book club forming at A. Elementary

I was never informed of any of this investigation.

I was on trial and didn’t even know it.

Luckily, around this same time I was reconnecting with an old friend at a happy hour. He was quite the world traveler and bon vivant, and I was looking forward to reconnecting with him on a personal level and swapping summer travel stories. He was also a principal at another local elementary.

I didn’t intend to divulge all my work woes to him, but after a few martinis I lamented how trapped I felt at my school and how horrendous the previous two years had been. I also told him how since I had started setting up my preschool classroom the past couple of weeks the faculty still seemed angry at me for my past diligence as a coordinator. I wanted out of the school but saw no options.

Immediately, he said he had a second grade position available at his own school, and he readily offered to make a call. He could get a transfer started for me, if I wanted.

Our happy hour was three days before the official start of the new 2011-2012 school year. Was that even possible on such sort of a notice? You think? Could you, possibly?

I had to make a quick, drunk decision: do I want to teach preschool or do I want to evacuate A. Elementary?

“Yes, please, yes if you can! Transfer me to your school!” I said. Hope had suddenly broken through. Had my career just changed over the course of a cocktail hour?

The very next day—a Saturday, of all things—he made a call. And the call took. One fuckin’ phone call and all my problems evaporated. One call! I was transferred immediately out of A. Elementary and to his school, L. Elementary. No paperwork, no submission wait time, no bureaucratic red tape, just a single damn phone call and my problems were solved. Although I was so very relieved, I was suspicious of the speed and ease. Did a single principal in the District really have that much pull?

Years later I realized some coinciding events ended up assisting me.

I suspect now that my principal friend made his phone call to his superior for the transfer and when he mentioned my name, a convenient, coincidental solution presented itself to the problem the District found on its hands at A. Elementary.

“Villegas?!” I imagine them realizing, “Isn’t that the name of the crazy teacher who wrote that book filled with sex and violence at A. Elementary that the teachers are all up in arms about?”

The District administrators probably recognized my name and immediately saw a way to solve two problems by transferring a troublesome teacher from one school to another while swapping me out for another teacher (a Mr. C.) whom my friend wanted to be rid of at his school.

My savvy principal friend knew how to play the game of “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” He was getting something out of the exchange too, other than helping out an old friend.

Turns out teachers are just checkers on the District’s checkerboard. The veneer of union safeguards is a thin and flimsy collection of protections that plays second fiddle to administrators’ use of favors and gossip.

The school district pretends that it runs a professional organization built on fairness and equity but, essentially, it’s a glorified, bureaucratic mafia built on a hierarchy of suited dons, some in high heels, who run the system by doling out personal favors to friends and loyalists.

My best advice for new teachers is always to make a lot of friends.

Especially try to forge friendships early on in their careers because the ambitious go-getters in your cohort will eventually climb the ranks to become principals, directors, and assistant superintendents who may help you in a time of need.

I had met one such striver very early in my career during a summer school teaching stint in LA’s Chinatown. It was apparent to me that he was going places, fast, and not just because he drove a flashy automobile.

We became friends and we would, now and then, hang out with each other with our partners in tow. Over the course of years, I watched admirably as he shot up the career ladder in the district, becoming coordinator, then assistant principal, and, ultimately, principal of his own school. He ended up being a lifesaver, a job saver, a great pal. I was supremely appreciative.

Monday morning, the first day of the 2011-2012 school year, I received a call from a District director of principals at six a.m. He told me to report to L. Elementary, my new school site. I felt evacuated and relieved.

I also felt a sense of grief. I had left A. Elementary, that laughing school where I was first hired nearly twelve years before, where the smiles and jokes had turned into scowls and admonishments.

I was never to step foot inside A. Elementary again.

These sudden departures without farewells would become a pattern in my vocation. They would happen three times up till the end of my professional career. The same backdoor escape would also repeat at my new school, L. Elementary, where I taught for another five years and then one day suddenly transferred without the chance to say goodbye to colleagues and former students.

I was never the beloved colleague who received bouquets and blessings from the staff as I departed. More often I was the troublesome writer who was run off, expelled, and exiled.

I had a smart mouth, and I let the bridges I burned light my way.