The Elevator Incident

The football season was started, I had attended the new teacher meetings, and I had my supplies to start the first day.  So, as I entered North Side High School for the first time as a teacher, I should have felt confident.  Yet there were a couple of nagging thoughts running around in my head.  The first thought was that I had yet to teach one second of English in my life.  The second actually trumped the first - what do I do with a class full of teenagers!

Was I scared?  I would like to think that I didn't show it, but I was terrified.  I think every teacher who has ever started that first experience can relate to no sleep the night before that day.  In fact, I think that phenomenon is recreated every fall when a new school year starts, most Sunday nights, and especially after Christmas (I still can't get used to Holiday) vacation and spring break.  I didn't know that then.  When I opened the door to the building, I was pretty sure that I was going to bomb.

But enter that door I did.  What was before me inside that door amazed me.  I arrived as school an hour early because I had worked with elementary teachers for three years.  They got to school early and stayed late.  Now I am not saying that high school teachers all arrived at the last minute, but there were eight teachers in the hall where I was teaching, and Jim Lewinski and I were the only one there at that time.  The hall was deserted.

The desolate halls were only temporary.  Teachers filtered into their rooms as students filled the hall.  Suddenly, I felt a welling panic overwhelming me.  This was real!  I hadn't known Orv Schlatter long, but I had sensed from our first meeting that I could go to him for advise.  So I went in search of the wise sage.

That was when I realized that I had no idea where to go to find him.  As we planned the block classes, we always met in Mark Tipple's room.  I went to Jim Lewinski.  He gave me the room number.  Relieved I went in search of the man who would clear me of my doubts.

My next realization was that I had a room number, but no idea how to find that room.  I tried to use logic.  My room was 337.  His was 222.  My assumption was that the 3 and 2 were floor numbers because my class was on the third floor.  That was the last assumption that I surmised correctly

What I needed to know was that the second number is the hall number, and if you know the landscape of North Side even today, circular hallways on all floors lead to hallways that extend out from the circle.  For over 20 minutes I searched in vain.

Of course, I had help.  Students saw the blank look on my face, the dress shirt and slacks with tie.  The sharks circled and sent me in varied directions, all bringing me back to the same place.  Then the bell rang and the great scramble began.  Students scurrying to find their first period class, and one frightened young English teacher joining them.

My "salvation" came with one of the football players.  He was one of my defensive backs.  He was a senior and knew his way around.  So he guided me to the hall with the elevator and gave me his pass to use.  Before he left me, he gave me directions on how to get back to my room.

What you really need to know is that the renovation that totally transformed North Side included a feature that had never been included in the original building - a passenger elevator.  Needless to say, in 1974 I never found an elevator where my football player "friend" sent me, but I was ten minutes late for my class.  Standing in the doorway was that football player flanked by all of his friends laughing and falling all over themselves.

That afternoon after practice, the coaches and I introduced him to the game of "Knucks."