Party Time

What could I do? I had to do something to earn more money. My husband was working round the clock! I couldn’t get back into a school system where I wanted to be. I even had applied to New York City Public Schools. They were thrilled to have me and I made the mistake of saying I spoke Spanish. I was hoping to be placed in Queens. At least there the commute would be reasonable, or so I thought, but no! I was assigned to the Bronx. The anxiety to drive each day across a bridge and then through the Bronx to get to the school made me a wreck. I gave it a shot to go to the school for an interview. I knew immediately that this was not for me. I withdrew my application. I took another job in a private kindergarten. The atmosphere was different from the Montessori school, but everything else was pretty much the same. It was fine, no problems, but it wasn’t home either.

To supplement my extremely low income, I started selling Tupperware in the evening at parties. The party aspect appealed to me as I loved to create games. I started with family and friends and then started to branch out to strangers. It was a legal pyramid scheme. Tupperware was a great product. For years I had more Tupperware than I knew what to do with.

I didn’t have to worry about child care, I only had parties when I knew my husband would be with the kids.

The Tupperware meetings were a carnival atmosphere. I could see how easy it was to draw people in. Everyone was rewarded for something, who doesn’t like to be rewarded? After a couple of years, everyone had enough Tupperware to fill their lives. My sources near by dried up and I was off again to find something else. I tried some other local nursery schools . I was fired from one because the Principal said, “I didn’t like children!” That did it! I needed a regular school.

When I wasn’t particularly looking, I saw an add for a Social Studies teacher in an Episcopalian School in Queens. The commute was not terrible, but the neighborhood was questionable. I called and got an interview.

The school was in session when I went on that visit. It was an old brick and stone building across the street from the Church. It looked so out of place. It belonged on some hillside in England. A beautiful old building. The school building was old but had the possibility of being renovated and brought into the present time. I noticed two things immediately. All the teachers, with the exception of physical education, were white and middle aged to elderly. All the children were either Black or Hispanic. The children wore uniforms. It was eerily quiet in the school. The Principal was an elderly woman who talked quickly and never gave me much of a chance to speak. The children showed great reverence to her. She was absolutely someone you didn’t screw around with. The Head Master of the school was an Anglican Priest. He had a booming voice and a ready smile. I noticed that there was no science taught. The explanation I received was, “they will get enough of that when the go on to High School.”

I told them my certification was in early childhood and they didn’t care. The position intrigued me because after all those years with the little ones I had the need to speak in paragraphs and dig deeper into content of material. The position appealed to me, and of course the salary was paltry, but not as terrible as the nursery schools.

The Head Master seemed oddly pleased that I was Jewish. I would find out why later on.

I was hired, and I accepted. Over the summer, I took home the curriculum and learned about the equipment I might have or the possibility of class trips. The equipment was none, and classtrips had to be free or extremely cheap.

This school, in it’s heyday catered to wealthy white families. They were members of the Church and active in their kids education.

By the time I got there, perhaps 40 years later, the people who sent their kids to this school in most cases scraped together the money to do so. They valued education and discipline. Most of those parents had neither in their childhood.

It was great for me, I had a stage, so to speak. I loved history and I was going to make things come alive for these kids.

I made a friend there too! This woman was another teacher coming to the school for the first time. Oddly enough, she was the new Kindergarten teacher.

I was finished with Tupperware for the time being. During the summer before I started in school, I saw another add in the local paper for a salesperson, ( party plan of course) for a company called Sarah Coventry. It had been around a long time, although I had never heard of it. I called the woman who was the area manager and I made an appointment to speak to her. My son was somewhere that day, but my daughter was with me. I made sure it was fine to bring her and was pleased that this woman had a daughter the same age.

I hit it off with the Mom and the kids became very good friends.

Sarah Coventry was my introduction to costume jewelry. My mother didn’t have much jewelry, but what she did have was “real” jewelry. She wore her wedding band all the time, and perhaps a little wrist watch. My dad wore his wedding band too. When there was an occasion to dress up, mom would bring out her “good stuff” and then pack it away for the next opportunity to wear it.

I thought the Sarah Coventry was interesting. I sold to people who enjoyed embellishing themselves without breaking the bank. I started to like it. While there is no replacement for real gold and silver and gemstones, it is much more fun to buy fake and have more to go with daily outfits. I stopped selling Sarah Coventry when the group leader, my friend, stopped. It just wasn’t the same without her.

I had learned lessons from each place I taught and from each job I had. The Priest who was headmaster used to hold “ meeting for worship” each morning. It would bring up something in the Bible and try to apply it to the present day. The problem was he had no idea how the kids sitting in the audience lived. He loved having me as a foil. For example, one day he started his lesson with “ Mrs. B. if you had a dinner party at your house and after all your guests had gone, some of your silverware was missing. Would you think one of your guests took some?” I was shocked at the question. I knew the answer he wanted but he had no idea that these kids had no inkling about silver dinnerware!

After I was there awhile, I would get calls at night from the Police, including that one of my students went through a plate glass store window trying to loot the place, He had the cops call me! It wasn’t my place to bail him out.

Father was unaware of incidents outside of the school perimeter. One little kindergartener asked her teacher why she teaches during the day when she could make more money doing “night work.” The kids were great, but they reacted naturally to what they saw and heard in front of them everyday. In my eighth grade, many of the children had to collect their siblings at dismissal time. I became aware the 5 siblings often had different surnames. The straw for me was one evening toward the end of the school year, I took my 8th graders to a baseball game. I couldn’t get any parents to help chaperone, so some of the of the other teachers came along. We had charted a bus and off we went. I know that I read them the riot act and they had to stay together. For the most part it went well. The kids had a good time. After the game, as I counted and recounted. I was missing one child. I contacted the stadium security and left them with any number I could think of. We took the bus back to the school where adults were waiting to take home the kids. No one was there to claim the missing child.

I tried to leave notice for the Principal and the Priest, but no one answered . The next day I went to school early. There sitting at his desk was the missing child! I asked him where he was and he said, “I met my neighbors there so they took me home!”