In 1976, after three years teaching at a Catholic college prep high school in New Rochelle NY, I was let go to be replaced with a recent graduate from the seminary college run by the religious order that owned the school. Besides being told that the school could save money by not having to pay a salary to a lay teacher, I was informed that I was chosen because I was the last hire in the English department, and anyone could teach English.
The faculty had been informed early in the school year that at least one teacher would be terminated at the end of the year, and the impression held by many on the faculty, and still is, was that I had decided to do whatever it took for me to be that teacher. What they were not aware of was that I had already been told by the principal that it was me, and was asked to say nothing for the sake of student morale as the students liked me.
So while the teachers thought I was acting in such a way as to be the one cut, I already knew I was the one, but I was cooperating with the request for silence because of the implication that accompanied the principal’s news that if I cooperated and things were to go differently, I might not have to go after all.
I played along.
I kept silent.
I hoped.
The principal, who had agreed I had been a good teacher and had said he wished things could go otherwise, misled me to buy my silence.
I also learned the indirect lesson to join a union if available as, at one point, the principal had snarkily informed me that based on my teaching record, if I had a union contract, he would have had a harder time letting me go in the fashion and for the reasons he intended to.
It was a hard secret to keep as I loved the school and was close with the students and faculty.
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I went on interviews with publishing firms, and taught cartooning in the local library system, but, being a self-taught cartoonist, I was informed at each interview that not having formal training made me too much of a risk to hire. The day of hiring self-taught cartoonists was over.
I had a lot of time to draw to hone my skills, and with my dog sitting on the floor next to me while I sat in a chair using a board on my lap as my art table, I drew.
I did get a few gigs drawing for pay, including one with a store that made buttons for tourists in Times Square before it was rehabilitated, but nothing that would have supported me.
After seven months I returned to Massachusetts to accept a job as a high school permanent substitute teacher, joined the union to insure my previous experience would not be repeated, and a whole new chapter in my life began that included owning a home, “coming out”, getting involved with labor, teacher, social justice and GLBT advocacy on both coasts and in the middle, introducing me to new places and new people while never forgetting the people I had met and those I newly did.
During my concentrated drawing time, having read T. H. White’s “Once and Future King”, his telling of the King Arthur tale, and having named my dog Pellinore, after one of the characters, I drew a series of cartoons based on the tale and wrote a short retelling of it.
When moving I put it all in a manila envelope which eventually ended up in the trunk of things stored in the basement of a house on Cape Cod for close to thirty years before I rediscovered it.
I have now published it as a small e-book, and have dedicated it to the students I had taught in New Rochelle, NY during the first three years of my 38 year teaching career.
You can buy it here: