Bible teacher Cal VanderMeer sat alone on a Monday morning, enjoying a quiet cup of coffee before school began. He had just opened the newspaper when the door to the faculty lounge banged open.
Cal looked up, prepared to scold P.E. teacher Rex Kane for another of his boisterous entrances, but he was stopped short by the sight of Jon Kleinhut standing in the doorway. At least, he thought it was Jon. The normally staid and steady librarian, Cal was convinced, owned a closet full of matching outfits—shirt, slacks, and striped tie—that he wore in a daily rotation unaltered since the Reagan administration.
But today, something had changed. Jon was sporting what Cal had heard students refer to as “skinny jeans,” though he was wearing the waist much higher than the kids at school. The cuff on his mustard-colored pants, hovering just slightly above his ankles, revealed black dress socks which disappeared inside neon-orange Chuck Taylor All-Stars. On top, he wore a red and black plaid flannel shirt and a beanie cap. His traditional striped tie was there, draped loosely around his neck like a scarf. The lone holdovers from his usual look were his decades-old, thick-lensed, horn-rimmed glasses, which, ironically, had come back in style.
Cal took this all in and stifled a chuckle. Just this morning, he had taught the verse from Ecclesiastes that there is truly nothing new under the sun.
“Don’t you start, VanderMeer!” said Kleinhut in his usual combination of a growl and a nasally whine. “It’s not like I enjoy wearing this clown suit.”
Cal held his lips together for a moment until he was sure they would not betray him. “Okay, I admit it. I’m curious. What’s with the get-up, Jon?”
Kleinhut usually wore a sour grimace, but in moments like this it grew deeper and more twisted until he looked like some kind of villain in an action/adventure movie. He looked back and forth as if scanning the room for eavesdroppers, then his voice dropped to a raspy conspiratorial whisper. “This ‘get-up’ as you call it, is my insurance. It is my ticket to a better pay grade and a golden parachute. You know how much stock our tenure committee puts in those student evaluations. Well, the comments in my last set of evaluations kept saying that I wasn’t relevant enough. And VanderHaar supported the notion. He said I was in danger of falling behind the times. Well, if he wants relevant, I’ll give him relevant. Once the kids get a load of this, they’ll know that I can keep up with pop culture as well as the next guy. And this is only the beginning. I plan to spend some time this weekend watching Portlandia, finding really obscure but contemporary record albums on vinyl, and learning how to like Chai tea.”
Kleinhut’s whisper had gotten so quiet that Cal jumped when the door to the teacher’s lounge flew open and Gregg “Rigor” Mortiss, Bedlam’s erstwhile art teacher, walked in. “Hey guys.” He took in the spectacle that was Jon Kleinhut. “Oh man! Did I miss another announcement about spirit week?”
Cal responded, “No, Kleinhut’s tenure review said the kids don’t think he is relevant enough. Apparently he did some research to fix that.”
Mortiss walked over to Kleinhut and put an arm around his shoulder. Kleinhut visibly winced and scowled at the same time, simultaneously casting a sidelong glance at Gregg’s arm as if it were made of rancid cheese. Mortiss, oblivious, began speaking. “Jon, Jon, Jon. . . . We talked about this after the tenure committee meeting. The concern is not about you. It’s about the material you are teaching and the way you are teaching it.”
“What do you know?” Kleinhut snapped. “All you do is put in those Bill Freshler How to Draw videotapes and your kids do the rest. That’s not even teaching!” Cal could see that Kleinhut was so angry he wasn’t thinking straight. He thought he might have to break up a fight. Mortiss remained calm, though, and just smiled his peaceful and sometimes infuriating smile.
“See, that’s what I mean, Jon. You are living in the past. I haven’t used videotapes for years. I don’t even think we have a VCR in the school anymore. I do my best to follow best practices and keep up with technology. Besides, you are changing the subject. This isn’t about me. This is about helping you to improve your teaching.”
“My teaching is fine!” Kleinhut snapped.
“Is it?” Gregg asked. “You have a unit you teach to make our freshmen familiar with various media available in the library. You spend a week teaching them how to thread filmstrips, where to access microfiche, and how to use the card catalog. Yet they will never, ever, use those skills after they leave this place. We on the committee were just trying to encourage you to think differently about what you teach when you teach media literacy and research skills.”
“Hey, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” Kleinhut said defensively.
“No,” Cal said quietly, “but there is a reason to put your suitcase in an automobile rather than a covered wagon for the family trip out West, right? The world changes, Jon. We have to change with it.”
“Look at me!” Kleinhut said in a voice half-pleading, half-angry. “I am trying to change. And I don’t like it. I don’t like the assumption that everything new is better.”
“And it’s not,” Cal said. “But some things are better. We need to discern the difference. And we need to teach our students to do that as well. We cannot do that by burying our heads in the sand. . . or in the necktie-made-hipster-scarf, as the case may be.”
Kleinhut dispiritedly pulled the beanie cap from his head and crumpled it between his hands. He sighed and said, “Fine. You win. I guess I’ll see if I can rework some of that unit.” He walked toward the door. Mortiss intercepted him and clapped him on the shoulder. He said, “And at least you won’t have to come to school dressed like this anymore.” Kleinhut didn’t even glare at Moriss’s arm. He just walked quietly out of the room.
After the door clicked shut behind Kleinhut, Cal looked up at Mortiss. “Gregg, can I ask you a question?”
Mortiss smiled. “Sure. Ask away.”
Cal smiled a wry smile in return. “You told Jon that you don’t use those Bill Freshler videotapes anymore, right?”
“Of course not, Cal. Seriously, I haven’t even seen a videocassette in years.”
Cal nodded. “But isn’t it also true that the whole Bill Freshler How to Draw series, in all its 1980s glory, is available on YouTube?”
Mortiss was quiet for a moment, then stood abruptly. “Sorry Cal, I’d love to chat longer, but I have to go get ready for class.”
After Mortiss left, Cal rinsed out his coffee cup in the sink, then also headed for the door. “As do we all,” he muttered.
Jan Kaarsvlam is currently acting as a self described financial consultant to several Christian liberal arts colleges that have sailed into difficult financial waters recently. As a shrewd money-manager (his own description), Jan suggests that the colleges cut most of their arts education, classics, philosophy, and other frivolous majors from their curriculum and that they add football majors. After all, he muses, doing so will advance the institution’s mission to create well-paid and well-rounded professionals who spend Sundays planted on their couches and glued to their plasma television sets.
