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 Review: Boston Public by Pete Nicely I think the students were just writing in their journal or doing something where no talking is required when Joe, a senior that I have taught for two years, looked up into the air and then into my eyes and said, "Mister, I tried to overdose on anti-depressants. It just made me sick." I stopped living and tried to decide what I said that might have sparked that comment. But, there's nothing I could have said that could have sparked that comment. Kids are extreme. Not just these days but since the beginning of time. It just gets harder to be extreme I imagine, with access to a universe of porn though the computer that would have permanently blushed my adolescent skin. Overdosing on antidepressants seems the perfect metaphor for kids today. Or it's just kinda like them. Like a simile. I actually try to teach at a public high school, so watching Fox¹s Boston Public (Monday Nights at 8) is a lot like watching 90210 when I was in high school. It's so ridiculous and cartoonish that when it actually depicts something real, something related to something I've experienced in my real life, I feel ridiculous and cartoonish. Of course, I didn't grow up wanting to teach high school. Like most kids I grew up wanting to blow up high schools. So when I did become the one behind the desk, the perpetual asshole, saying unbelievable things like "Guys, I know this stuff. I'm not doing this for my health," I hated myself, of course. Then I hated my motivations for teaching: a decent paycheck, a chance to be in charge, a way to learn grammar so I could actually write professionally one dayŠ So, I quit. Then I came back. Now I love what I do, but it is so fucking hard. Every job is, I know. But the truth is that if you have more than two adrenaline rushes in a day you will be exhausted. If you can get out of third period having made almost one hundred kids do things that they would never in a million years by themselves (read silently, spell want W-A-N-T not W-H-A-N-T , read Arthur Miller...) and not have had a few adrenaline rushes, you are very close to mastering your emotions or just a way better teacher than me. You were a kid; you were an asshole. You know the million things kids can do to piss overly involved adults off. When I think every annoying thing a kid can do has happened that's when I know I am due. That's when you get a phone call from another teacher telling you that she held back three of your biggest jokers. You stand in the hall waiting for them. The tall one is whistling down the hall. You tell him to go to his seat and read silently because the rest of the class is reading silently and it took two minutes to make that happen. He starts whistling again. You tell him again. He steps into the class. He starts whistling. You tell him to go to the tardy lock out; his pass has not been accepted. He tells me that I can't do that. I stop living for a split second and think he's right. Then I realize, "Who's going to stop me?" So I repeat the instruction. Leave. He pauses for a second hoping the class is about to lynch me, then leaves. They don't. They know we are watching a video today. The class returns to silence and I take deep breaths and the roll. You think everything is OK, you are explaining the vocabulary term of the day and you accidentally graze the head of the student with your hand (like Kareem Abdul Jabar did when he guest starred as a teacher on Diff'rent Strokes, but way lighter). You go on explaining but can hear the whistling guy¹s two friends talking about calling the Board of the Education. And now I can't occupy the back of my mind thinking about places where I can buy used books so I can get the twenty kids who have never read a book started on a good book so they can start reclaiming their mind from the mess their childhood must have been. Because I'm slightly scared for my job and fighting adrenaline's fight or flight instinct to break matter against flesh, for the second time in an hour. With a limited amount of faith, I (like you, reader of this) guess there is meaning to all this. So I guess this event is designed just to remind me I am no saint. I am just the asshole behind the desk who isn't living, who isn't doing this for his own health. So what is Boston Public designed for? To educate us about the lives of our former masters, enemies and mentors, the teachers? That's the grist, see how teachers live. See how teachers handle insane situations like a teenaged girl prostituting herself for her dad, her pimp (which seems completely foriegn to any situation I might face). See a political student- walk-out get nasty and violent when the school's jocks try to force the discontents back to class. Watch young drunk teachers karaoke (including new star teacher and always member of NKOTB, Joey McIntrye). Of those, only the last of these situation seems familar, riduclous and cartoonish, like any group of people working together going out drinking. My weeknight drama is a mix of the banal and insane, like a TV show dominated by ordinary tasks. The real life of a teacher is staying awake at twelve with only five and a half hours to sleep, trying to decide if you should move a student's seat. The real life of a teacher is trying to decide what to do with a boy that you just heard say he wants to hang himself. You talk to him and find out a boy is dogging him, following him around calling him a "fag," spitting in his face as he boards a public bus. The real life of a teacher is wondering how to make people survive, obey and think (in that order) without exhausting yourself. My review of the TV show, promised in the premise: I used to not like Boston Public because it reminded me of work and what an asshole I am. I was always afraid I would see my own life in the characters. Thankfully that now happens so rarely that I enjoy it when it does. Most of the time I just sit back and enjoy how much fun, silly drama could take place in a school if there were about eight teachers and maybe thirty students total and they were almost all good looking, except Fyvush Finkle (a Jew straight out of Nazi Propaganda posters) and resident whigger Michael Rapoport. 
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