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[25 Mar 2009|06:13pm] |
What is the your name? Callum Leavitt. I was ruthlessly cheated out of a middle name.
How old are you? Thirty, born in the summer of '77.
What type of house do you live in? Funny story, that. I rented an apartment sight unseen while I was still subbing in Boston, figuring that the world was filled with righteous people who would surely not screw over a single parent, trying to make his way in the world by molding the minds of our nation’s youth. But I was wrong, so very wrong, and three years after the fact, I'm still living in a one-bedroom cube of unrelenting beige walls centered around a courtyard that could double as an air shaft.
Who are the members of your family? What are they like? What do your parents do? I tackled this same question at least twice during my first year of teaching - elementary schools are wild about drawing your family members. My artistic talents don't really lend themselves to accurate depictions of anything (stick figures were not designed to be detailed), but my pow-wow with the third graders in Boston is probably the last time I've ever thought about 'the members of my family.' I have a mother named Elena who is unconventionally beautiful and embodies several Latina stereotypes, including but not limited to her ability to speak spitfire Spanish when the occasions strikes and her deep desire to be a stay-at-home mom who raises her son to become a doctor or a priest. I failed miserably at meeting these expectations, but I'm clean-cut and have no criminal record so she finds it in her heart to love me anyway. My father, Richard, actually is a doctor who, because he loves being an unconventional gent with a life that sparks many conversations, raises sheep in his spare time. He's a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander, complete with a love of the Patriots, and our relationship is often veiled in metaphors that revolve around football and/or my constant mockery of his chosen team. My son's name is Jeffery Dale Stephenson - at some point in the near future, I can see him calling himself J.D. - and he's twelve years old. He lives with his mom in Alburgh, Vermont, a ferry ride away from Isle de Motte and both sets of grandparents. I generally assume that he's going to develop a complex about being from a single-parent home at some point during his teenage years and deeply, deeply hope that he doesn't come to realize how miserably immature his father is. Hopefully, this holds off until he's ready for highschool and I can buy his affection by getting him into a top-notch private school, where all my students can then tell him repeatedly how very lucky he is to be the offspring of the rockin' Mister Leavitt.
Where were you born? Isle de Motte, Vermont. Population approximately five hundred people and several billion quarries of black rock.
How long have you been teaching? This is a long, detailed and incredibly interesting story, so make every attempt to listen closely in order to avoid being left behind. I started subbing at 22, in the great state of Rhode Island, moved up in the world to sub in New York City (including the infamous Dwight School, around which my entire resume now revolves), eventually got a job in Boston covering for a lady on maternity leave, and then, miraculously, was offered a job teaching Spanish in Southern California. Nowadays, I'm back at Dwight. Full circle, right?
What is the object in your bedroom that you love most? I've still got the Judas Priest Tshirt that I was wearing the night my son was conceived - and I tell him about it every time an opportunity presents itself. I left it in my girlfriend's bedroom that night - let us not contemplate what I wore home, because I'm almost certain that I walked out of there wearing one of her sweatshirts.
What object is in your closet that you never use but don't want to part with? The drum sticks that I bought in the seventh grade and practiced with on every flat, semi-solid surface right up until I graduated highschool. I never once owned or got within ten feet of a drum kit, but the sticks are very much representative of a time when I harbored rockstar fantasies and honestly believed that they could someday come true. Every teenager should be a rockstar in their own minds, and stretching that philosophy over into adulthood is how I've kept myself from acting my age all these long, lonely years.
Where did you go to college? The University of Rhode Island, where I gained a minuscule cult following as the DJ of the heavy metal block on 90.3 WRIU, URI's on-campus radio station. Screw the internet, television and film, radio is going to make a comeback.
How did you decide to become a teacher? When I graduated from highschool, I had no real options, no plans for my future, and a baby on the way. The faculty of education wasn't my ideal choice, but when I came to terms with the fact that my life as a rock'n'roll drummer was never going to get off the ground, I bit the bullet and went for the most logical choice. In all seriousness, if I manage to complete one task in my entire teaching career, I hope I'll have helped kids figure out what they want from their lives so that they don't end up in the same panicked state that I did.
What do you teach? I've taught everything and anything that was thrown my way, most notably a year of World Geography in Boston and Spanish across New England. Upon my triumphant return to California, I was generously awarded a position teaching the fifth grade.
What was the happiest day of your life? Three months after my baby was born, when I figured out that his existence didn't mean that my life had ended. I was a wretched human being as a kid, gotta say, and it still kills me that the day he was born made me so miserable.
What event made a lasting impression on you? The night that my girlfriend told me she was pregnant was the night of my highschool graduation. My thought process during the whole week prior had been gonna get laid, gonna get drunk, no more authority figures, lots of sex, life is sweet, and I had a hell of a time changing that when she dropped the bomb. My reaction to the news that I was going to be a father stayed with me, and will probably be in the back of my head until I die - specifically my insistence that she was not pregnant, no sir, and that she was obviously mistaken about the processes going on in her own body. I kept that up all night, and will never figure out how she refrained from punching me in my stupid face.
Are you married? Do you want to get married? I very nearly got married in Knoxville straight out of highschool, and probably would have if my bride-to-be hadn't been blessed with the good sense to say no to my ridiculous proposal. As for desire ...well, there's a ubiquitous misconception that women are the only ones to worry about being single in their thirties. I'm teetering on the razor's edge of buying a copy of Cosmo in order to glean some tips on how to land a life partner. Though I'm sure that my cleavage would be inadequate.
What is the secret you would tell a stranger, but not a friend? Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd never met my highschool girlfriend. Logically, I know that I would have continued down the road I was already on and become a complete burn-out, doomed to drink lukewarm beer in my friend's basements and wear musty-smelling band T-shirts for the rest of my days, but there's always the glimmer of regret that I never had the chance to prove that I could have made a mark on the world.
What is your greatest fear? That I'll somehow inadvertently get sucked into a sex scandal of some sort. Over the years, I've had a lot of my students try to hug me - males and females alike - and I know that they mean absolutely nothing by it other than grateful acknowledgment of extra help that I've given or being allowed to write make-up tests. I can't even comfort a crying student without keeping a desk between us. Being a teacher in a post-Mary Kay Letourneau world is no bowl of cherries, let me tell you.
What is your major regret? Not working harder in school. I was a bright kid, but somewhere in junior high I just stopped caring about grades and started in on a long period of doing absolutely nothing of value. I had to scramble at the last possible minute to find a college that would let me in with middling grades, which I could have avoided if I'd stopped being such a self-absorbed child earlier and realized that the adult world doesn't work that way.
What is your greatest flaw? Your greatest asset? I sometimes don't know when to draw the line between being friendly with students and taking control. I've always managed to figure it out in time to avoid any terrible disciplinary problems, but there've been a couple of times when I came close to screwing things up beyond all belief because I let the kids forget that I was an authority. It's not such a problem at college gigs, but it made my time at highschools excessively difficult. I've improved, though, which lends itself to my greatest asset - I'm not shy about admitting when I was wrong, and I don't think I've ever made a mistake that I didn't learn something from.
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