The Follow Up Interview

At the end of my third year of teaching, I had a great time.  I planned a field day for the whole school at Whitney Young, South Side's baseball team that I was coaching had a great year, and I didn't have to decide whether I was going to a new school.  I had started coaching summer baseball, had quit my assistant football coaching position at South, and was spending time with my friends and family.

Quitting the coaching position was tough for me.  From previous blogs I wrote about how much respect I had for Walt as my fellow coach and my former assistant coach.  Leaving him was difficult, but I had too many philosophical differences with the head coach that I just couldn't work with him anymore.  I had no way of knowing that those differences were perceptions that I had erroneously placed on him when it was the school system that created the atmosphere I thought he created.  Needless to say, we had the opportunity in later years to set the record straight.

So, that summer felt like the first that I was free to do what I wanted to do.  There was no football training to go to.  I knew what I was doing in the fall as a teacher.  And baseball was baseball, my favorite sport.
There was nothing in the way to disturb that.

By this time I had bought my own home as well.  I had a dog who was my constant companion.  The day that the phone call came, I had just come in from playing toss with Magic.  As he ran to his bowl to get a drink of water, the phone rang.  When I answered it, I had no way of knowing that my summer was about to get turned upside down.

On the other end of the line was Daniel Howe.  I think everyone in Fort Wayne at the time knew his name.  I did because he was a legend at South where he was the star player on the basketball team that won state in the 50's.  I was unaware that he had been named as the principal at North because I was enjoying my summer so much that I hadn't kept up on what had been happening in the schools.

After he introduced himself, he asked if I was still interested in being the head baseball coach at North.  You would think that I would remember the conversation from that point, but I don't.  I don't even remember whether the interview was that day or another day.  The next thing that I do remember is that I was sitting in the same office where I had interviewed with Max Updike just a couple of months before.  But the interview was vastly different this time.

The biggest difference was that Mr. Howe wasn't the only interviewer.  Also in the room were Orv Schlatter and Mark Tipple.  I quickly found out that I was being interviewed to be the English teacher in a block with these two men.  We may have talked about coaching along the way, but the premise of the interview was to see if I would be a good addition to the team.  In retrospect, I can't possibly see how I was chosen.  As a principal, I wouldn't have chosen me.  No high school teaching experience.  No English teaching experience. More important - no English teaching license.

I left that interview with the distinct feeling that I had the job though.  That afternoon I got the call.  In that call I was asked why I had quit my football coaching position at South and would I take a similar position at North if it were offered.  I didn't hesitate.  I said that I would.  Mr. Howe asked me to come back to North the next day.

That was when I was offered the English teaching position along with the head baseball coaching job and assistant football coaching position.  There was one stipulation - I had to finish my English license within a year.  When I said that I would take the position, my summer was not the same.  And neither was my life.