Parent Teacher Night: The Rise and Fall of Karen Burkie

Karen Burkie, West Side's new ninth grade grammar teacher experienced her first true terror as an educator tonight. Any teacher will tell you their first day of student teaching was frightening, worse than standing on a stage and forgetting your lines (as a teacher you quickly realize you have no lines, that your job is to make up your the script as you go). They'll say that the first time they stood in front of their own room was an armpit-sweat-inducing experience. Kids are always on the look-out for new nicknames and one simple error on your part early on can result in disastrous consequences: I had a teacher in middle school who bad been known as Miss Pit Stain longer than anyone could remember. The poor woman was in her sixties and nearing retirement, which makes one wonder if she'd been carrying that name since the Viet Nam War. Unless you're a PE coach, pit stains and classrooms don't mix.

Karen, fresh out of school with a shiny new diploma and a head full of genuine (read: naive) dreams, experienced her first Parent Teacher Night. It's a simple enough concept. Parents arrive at school, are given a copy of their son or daughter's schedule, and dash from classroom to classroom to meet the various teachers who make up their child's day. The class sessions are open to questions and answers and everyone is supposed to leave feeling satisfied knowing their children are in capable hands. The evening usually ends without a hitch, although in most schools several teachers wind up at a bar afterward to question why exactly it is they can't leave one or two children behind, three at the very most.

The problem this year was Laurie Murphy, our new principal. After the girls chorus had completed their ten minute presentation of highlights from Mama Mia, and after the entire ninth grade PE class had presented their line-danceaerobic routine, three hundred kids sat on the gym floor, their backs to the bleachers where their parents had settled, facing the faculty. Laurie Murphy stood up, thanked everyone for their participation and presence and began her "brief" explanation of the meaning behind the night's events. It was a speech we'd all heard a hundred times, the one about a unity between parents and their children and the teachers and the community. The faculty had gathered behind our principal, seated on folding chairs, smiling through the cliches and our aching backs. We all felt the way our students must feel every day, only we couldn't show it. We had to look alert and attentive, amused in all the right spots, serious at others, but always excited to be present and accounted for.

Karen Burkie was excited. Unlike the rest of us, she wasn't faking it. At twenty-three, her whole life had been one long push toward this moment. She'd actually gone home and changed clothes, freshened herself up. She'd put on make up and done something different with her hair. She listened to Laurie Murphy, believing every word of it. We hated her for it because most of us had been in school so long that we'd stopped trusting anything anyone told us. And yet we still wanted to believe. We wanted to know we were changing the world, not just working one step removed from changing diapers. We wanted to know parents were actively involved in keeping their kids in school, not just trying to keep them out of the Police Log. We wanted to know all the aluminum we'd been slathering in our armpits had been put to good use.

Not Karen, though. Not dimply little Karen with the small frame and high voice, the curly blond hair and good manners. Not Karen with the peaches-and-cream-complexion and every other cliche about goodness and heartiness and purity. Karen sat on the edge of her seat, her face all but glowing, her eyes on the verge of leaping from her head and rolling across the gym floor.

It was when Laurie Murphy decided to introduce the faculty one at a time that Karen began to get nervous. Or maybe it was the chalupa she'd wolfed down as she dashed from school to home and back to school again. Maybe it was the one cigarette she'd allowed herself to calm her nerves. It had been a ginger and green tea leaf cigarette and one hundred percent herbal, so surely it couldn't be bad for her. Karen was strict about the number of cigarettes she allowed herself to smoke, and this one would be only the third this year. Never mind that a friend had given her the pack back in June on a meditation retreat in the Sawtooths. When she'd finished the cigarette she'd doused herself in the sweet-smelling perfume she kept in her purse, adding two extra spritzes for good measure.

At first everything seemed fine. "Gene Talbot," Laurie Murphy introduced the silver-haired man who had occupied a lengthy and rather fabled spot in the English department. Since long before I myself had been enrolled in Gene's class, West Side's students had insisted he was a mind reader and a witch. As his name was called, whether out of fear or awe, the students clapped politely and fell into a quick hush

"Ryan Fletcher," Laurie Murphy said and Ryan, the wrestling coach and all-round good-looking guy, jumped to his feet and waved, shooting the entire gymnasium his best and brightest smile. The students cheered and hooted as Ryan returned to his chair.

"Annabell Grunge," Laurie Murphy continued, gesturing at West Side's one and only chemistry teacher, a woman who looked more like a dry leaf with bug eyes than an actual woman. Annabell's introduction immediately following Ryan's was a bit like the act that followed The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show: none of the students wanted to see her, in fact, her mere presence–not half as entertaining as Ryan's–was reviled and several students let her know it. There was some soft hissing and one low boo. Annabell, too professional to react, smiled through it all and adjusted the large, round glasses on her nose.

Karen Burkie felt her stomach lurch. They had booed someone. The students had actually booed someone in front of all the other faculty and the parents. This was most unexpected.

On and on Laurie Murphy went. Mostly the faculty were met with silence, but at those times when they felt strongly for someone, be it Rick King, our basketball coach who jumped up and raised his hands above his head in triumph, encouraging a similar response in the students and their parents, who all had nearly fanatical opinions about our winningest coach, or Zack Brode, the deathly boring and inept pre-algebra teacher who almost everyone hated with every cell in their bodies, the students let us all know who had won their favor and who deserved a harsh punishment, possibly even death. Throughout it all the faculty remained stoic and professional, not batting an eye through whichever response they received. Laurie Murphy, for her part, tried to minimize the damage by pushing on in attempt to stave off any embarrassment, although never quite soon enough.

Karen Burkie didn't like this at all. In fact, as the introductions moved steadily her way, her mind was racing through the past month trying to figure out if she'd be met with respectable silence, a blessed applause or the symbolic equivalent of a rotten tomato tossed in her face. Her stomach lurched again and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

The first few days had gone well. The students seemed to like her: she was young, almost one of them, pretty (which always played well) and passably humorous. It was in the second week that the cracks began to appear. The students weren't paying as much attention, often ignored her requests for silence and focus, and weren't as excited by her subject/predicate lecture and the role-playing exercise as she'd hoped. Her strengths, she learned, were also her weaknesses: she was young, almost one of them, pretty and only passably humorous. So she tried harder. By the third week she'd made some headway by following the recommendation of her advising teacher, Cissy June, who told her simply, "Cull the herd and don't smile until Christmas."

And so Karen had adopted a seating chart, separating the troublemakers, adding more homework and actually sending three students to the principal's office. The class had started paying more attention by the start of the fourth week, but now they openly glared at her as she put them through their paces. For instance, whenever she said the word "adverb" the entire class was required to repeat her mantra three times: "adverbs answers how, when, or where." Her classroom was finally under control, but did they still like her? As the introductions moved closer, Karen knew she'd soon find out.

As her nervousness grew, so did the perspiration on her face, specifically above her eyes and lips. She blinked twice and dabbed at her forehead with the back of her hand. The introductions, which had taken all of about two minutes, were only four teachers away. She felt flush. As her body temperature rose, so did the scent of those three spritzes of perfume she'd donned in the car. Her stomach turned with butterflies–or were they racing burros?–and she shifted again in her seat. Only two to go.

Craig Hurley was next. As a coach, and not a good one, he was also required to teach remedial classes such as Business Communication and something called Careers. A bit of an amateur sociologist, Craig made a point in each of his classes of criticizing all of society by commenting on the sorry state of its restrooms. Whether this was because he honestly believed it or because his classroom was located directly across the hall from the boys lavatory is not clear. Regardless, in his thick Brooklyn accent he often told students, "Those toilets in there, they're filled and no one does a thing about 'em. Well somebody should! Somebody should flush them. Flush em all!" When his name was called, several students performed remarkably accurate impersonations of a toilet actually being flushed, causing Craig to smile demurely and nod his head, a silent, "I get the joke."

And then it was Karen's turn. She sat up straight in her folding chair, sweat dripping into the corners of her eyes. She could taste it on her lips. Her stomach did one last flip and as Laurie Murphy called her name, Karen smiled sweetly, blinked twice and farted.

It wasn't a long fart and certainly not loud, but it was high in pitch and ended abruptly with a punch, on a sort of staccato note. The faculty did not move, although the two people sitting immediately next to Karen turned their heads ever so slightly. Those two heads were all the accusation and confirmation that was needed. Karen Burkie had dealt it. People began to giggle, both parents and students, and Laurie Murphy, a good principal, moved right along, right past poor Karen, who was forced to hold her head head with that crazy frozen smile on her face for the next two minutes. Craig Hurley, out of the corner of his mouth, congratulated her. "Thanks fer the perfume at least."

Needless to say, she did not sleep at all that night. Over and over she played it in her mind, breaking it down, trying to determine whether or not it could have been prevented. At three she'd concluded that it had been a complete surprise, that she couldn't have squeezed it off for a few more minutes. It had crept up on her and announced itself like a sneeze. By four-thirty she'd decided it was the chalupa–that she'd sabotaged herself–and swore them off for life. At six, as the alarm sounded and she climbed out of bed, she'd come to accept that her students would tease her and make jokes and that she would deal with them in a mature manner... and then make them pay for the rest of the semester.

She arrived at school half an hour early, bypassing her classroom and heading to the office to check her mailbox. Standing in the doorway was Gloria Fletcher, the regal and perfectly coiffed head of the English department. She held the door for Karen.

"How are you feeling this morning, dear?" she asked.

Karen smiled sweetly, knowing she could count on her fellow faculty members to support her. "I'm fine, Gloria. Thank you for asking," she replied.

Gloria nodded. "Welcome to West Side," she said sweetly as she moved back into the hall. "Just toot if you need me."

Take the Karen Burkie Grammar Challenge here!