LOUISVILLE, Kentucky –I know “Father” and “Ginsberg” don’t seem to fit together, but the nuns at All Saints Elementary School in Buffalo, NY, assigned me that title, and you don’t say no to nuns, even if you’re Jewish.
The sisters and I were colleagues during the 1969-70 school year, when I taught sixth grade at All Saints. Since then, I’ve spent 30 of the past 51 years as a teacher, but that year is still my favorite. Go figure.
In May 1969, I graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo, with a history degree and no idea what to do next. My girlfriend, Susan, had one more year of college in Buffalo, while back home in Brooklyn, I had nothing but heat. It seemed like every second song on the radio was the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” and the back of my neck really was “getting dirt and gritty.”
It was a miserable summer, with only one highlight: My July 20 flight to Buffalo coincided with the Apollo moon landing, which meant I was a small step closer to Neil Armstrong than 99.9 percent of the world.
Back down to earth, my lethargy turned to worry, heading toward panic, as the summer was coming to an end. I had done some volunteer work for the Buffalo Diocese, so I called about teaching. “Talk to Sr. Mary Edwina,” I was told. Two hours later, with only a phone interview, Sr. Edwina, principal of All Saints, hired me, the first male and first Jew to teach at All Saints. With no experience and no education courses, I decided $3,800 was a good deal. It was my best – and only – offer.
When I checked out my classroom, a week before classes started, I quickly learned I was not in synagogue anymore. Above the chalkboard, a long, narrow strip of corkboard, covered by what looked like pre-World War II magazine pages of autumn leaves, and plastic lettering reminded me to “Spring Into Fall With Jesus.” And Jesus was there, too, just below the clock on the front wall, next to the red light that turned on when Sr. Edwina was about to announce something . . . or eavesdrop. I never found out if there was a direct connection to the Vatican, but my students learned to signal me whenever the light flashed.
The morning of my first class, I threw up in a panic, as I did each day of the first month. I knew nothing about teaching and was convinced I was ruining each of my 38 students. I also knew, on Day 1, that Father O’Conner, the 80-year-old pastor of All Saints, was convinced that I didn’t belong. About 15 minutes into that first day, he walked into my classroom, unannounced, as my students were whispering messages to each other, down each row, to demonstrate the limited accuracy of oral communication. Father O’Conner assumed my students were simply out of control, and he walked up to one of them and berated her for talking in class. She was in tears by the time I pulled him out of the room and explained what was going on.
Father O’Conner returned, stood over the sobbing student, and called her “Cry baby.” I almost threw up for the second time that day.
Father O’Conner never warmed up to me, never invited me to his legendary late-night poker games/drinking parties. On several occasions, when he passed me in the hall, talking to one or more of the nuns, he walked up to us and announced, “He killed Jesus.” He also cornered my sole Black student and told him to stop thinking he could get away with misbehavior because of his race.
Father O’Conner aside, I gradually felt at home in the school, which I discovered to be an integral part of a church community. It was a poor parish, with many of the students living in a housing project, and the school served as a safe place.
For me, there was a bonus: The nuns insisted I take off on Jewish holidays, even though I was not particularly observant and I was already taking off for a number of saints’ days, when the school was closed. I didn’t argue.
Sr. Edwina, a tall, obese woman, ran the school – and me, in particular – in an authoritarian manner, but I learned to respect, fear and genuinely like her. We got along well enough for her to ask me to teach religion to the public school students who came after their classes. When I asked her if she had any problems with a Jew teaching religion, she shrugged, “Just stick to the Old Testament.”
I declined, and she immediately countered with, “OK. You can coach baseball and basketball.” I suspect that was her plan all along. Of course, I said yes. (Remember: You don’t say no to nuns, especially a big nun in a black habit.)
Religion never got in the way. I ushered my students to mass once a month and started every day with morning prayer. I even discussed the contextual meaning of “trespass” with them. I asked Sr. Edwina for advice when the science class was approaching a unit on evolution. “No problem,” she said. “Just explain that you are teaching science, which sometimes clashes with religion. It’s up to them to decide what to believe, and they don’t even have to choose between the two.”
It worked. And religion rarely caused any conflict. In fact, I participated in one of the few classroom events that merged religion and sports. It happened during the NCAA basketball championship, when St. Bonaventure, a nearby Catholic university, made it to the Final Four, largely on the back of Bob Lanier, an All-American from Buffalo.
Unfortunately, Lanier fractured an ankle during the semi-finals, which ended St. Bonaventure’s run. When the news broke, Sr. Edwina interrupted classes to announce Lanier’s injury over the loudspeaker. She asked everyone to kneel and pray for Lanier. It was the quietest my class had ever been, and I knelt with my students. (I did not, however, cross myself.)
I loved my students, and I think they appreciated me, after six years of strict obedience to nuns. I was no gifted teacher, but I was real, in a way that they would never view the nuns. They learned that my boundaries were wider than they were accustomed to – and they learned to test them.
One day, we were discussing Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and I asked why the narrator had stopped. Joseph shouted out his interpretation: “He had to take a leak.”
Another time, a struggling student turned in an essay that was impossible to understand as prose. So I read it to the class, as a poem. It worked quite well, and the class applauded. They asked who had written such a beautiful poem and spent a few moments calling out the names of the most successful students. I finally announced who the author was, and the surprised class stood up and applauded him. That’s the kind of kids they were.
My favorite moment came when I was called down to the office in the middle of a discussion of metaphor in “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and left my class alone with the Simon and Garfunkel vinyl album and my record player.
When I returned, a few minutes later, I quietly re-entered the room and found my students – all 38 – huddled around the record player, one of them lifting the needle and repeatedly returning it to “Cecilia,” specifically to these lines: “Making love in the afternoon, with Cecilia, up in my bedroom. I got up to wash my face. When I come back to bed, someone’s taken my place.”
I finally cleared my throat, and 38 students scattered to their seats. Not a word was ever spoken about it.
My students took a personal interest in my private life, despite my efforts to keep it private. They somehow found out that I had a girlfriend, Susan, and took it out on her. Susan was an education major, and she subbed for me a few times. Bad idea. She told me that the students brutalized her with their behavior – well past typical misbehavior with substitute teachers.
Susan was convinced they were jealous. She was right, and I quietly appreciated their antics.
These were good kids. A number of them lived in dysfunctional families, and school often served as a safe place for them. A teacher told me she suspected that one of them was an abuse victim. The girl was a superb student, but she failed one test, and I always required my students have a parent sign any failing work.
This student’s parental signature was clearly forged. I asked her to stay after school and showed her the signature. She broke down in tears and confessed to the forgery, explaining that she was, in fact, afraid her father would beat her. I thanked her for her honesty and added that she had earned an exemption from the signature rule. She didn’t ask me to elaborate, but she never failed again.
That student’s saga illustrated one of the problems with crossing religion and education. I approached Sr. Edwina about reporting the girl’s father to the authorities, but she said no. “We’re working with the family,” she explained. (If that had happened today, I would have reported the parent.)
Overall, Sr. Edwina and I developed a warm, mutually respectful relationship. As the end of the school year approached, my experience convinced me to continue to teach, and to seek some training. I was accepted in a Teacher Corps program in Louisville that combined teaching, a masters program in education and social services in rough neighborhoods with failing schools.
When I informed Sr. Edwina, she cautioned me that I would find teaching far different in such an environment and recommended I stay at All Saints. I appreciated her concern and her unspoken endorsement of my teaching, but it was time to leave Buffalo.
(Sr. Edwina was right about the difference between All Saints and inner city teaching. I lasted two difficult years and never taught below college level again.)
One of my final memories of All Saints was the student-faculty basketball game at the end of the school year. I made the starting lineup, along with four nuns, all in habits. Up against seventh- and eighth-grade boys, we were terribly mismatched, but the atmosphere in the packed gym was good natured.
Two minutes into the game, I dislocated a shoulder and was accompanied out the door and to the hospital by Susan, with my back hunched over and my winter coat draped over my shoulders. (It was late April, still winter in Buffalo.)
I found out later that I was replaced by the school janitor in a rout.
On the final day, I said goodbye to my students, distributed personal letters to each of them, and hurried to my car, barely maintaining my composure. I was heading back to Brooklyn, to visit my parents on my way to Louisville.
As I drove out of Buffalo that day, my mind was still in the classroom with the 38 young friends I had fallen in love with. Although the air outside my car was dry and the windshield clean, I soon had to pull off the highway.
I couldn’t see the road ahead.
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Michael Ginsberg is a retired teacher and freelance journalist based in Louisville, Kentucky.
I loved your beautiful story. Thank you. Signed, Catholic girl from late 90s schools who loved her Orthodox Jewish roommates at college