It was the eighth and final period on a Friday afternoon in 1973 at Tompkins Square High School on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.* I looked out as my thirty-one students – almost all Hong Kong immigrants who had arrived within the last month or so – settled into their seats. The class was “Social Studies Fundamentals,” history for students learning English, and I had no lesson plan. I intended to read with the kids from the text of “Exploring American History,” one of those easy reading social studies books with numbered paragraphs and simple exercises at the end of each chapter that became best-sellers when teachers in the ‘70s realized their students couldn’t read traditional texts like Todd & Curti’s Rise of the American Nation.” As the period began, I saw the school’s principal, Marvin Rosenthal, beckoning to me at the door.
“Do you mind if I observe you teach this period?”
“Of course not,” I lied. Any teacher not completely insane minded if the fearsome Rosenthal observed his class, but in that year of “The Godfather,” it was an offer I most definitely could not refuse.
Mr. Rosenthal was one of a generation of autocratic New York City high school principals who came of age during the Depression and World War II and ruled the city’s high schools with an iron hand from the fifties through the seventies. He had been a social studies teacher and department chairman and considered himself a master teacher and trainer. Failure to have a lesson plan was a capital offense for Rosenthal, so I had to think fast.
Fortunately, the passage I intended to read with the class concerned immigration, a sure-fire topic of interest for a class full of actual new arrivals, so it wasn’t hard to improvise a lesson plan on the subject. The standard form of teaching in New York schools since the 1930’s was based on the “Developmental Lesson,” and Marv Rosenthal was its champion and chief proselytizer, spreading the gospel for four decades. It’s sort of a controlled Socratic method with four essential components: An “Aim,” a “Motivation,” “Pivotal Questions,” and a “Summary Question.”
For Mr. Rosenthal, an Aim was a Chopin prelude; a Motivation, a Handel oratorio; a Pivotal question, a Beethoven sonata; and a Summary, a Schubert lieder. He’d written many pamphlets like “The Art of Questioning,” and “101 Foolproof Motivations,” and held forth at countless faculty meetings on the nuances of each element of the lesson.
Knowing at least this about Rosenthal, I thought of an obvious and simple motivation: “Why did you and your families come to this county?” I asked the sea of earnest faces as Rosenthal settled into his seat in the back of room 208.
“To get jobs,” said one eager new American.
“Better life,” said another.
Plunging on, I asked, “Where did you come from?”
Most answered “Hong Kong,” with a couple responding “Taiwan,” or “Singapore.
Feeling more confident, I asked, “Where do you think my grandparents came from?”
Before the class had a chance to answer, an adult voice boomed from the back of the room, calling out “Russia! And I’ll tell you what part of Russia!”
I looked up, momentarily stunned by this unexpected participation, then recovered and whispered, “Where, Mr. Rosenthal?”
“Near Estonia,” he said.
Actually it was closer to Ukraine. But rather than correct the man, I saw an opening.
“Perhaps the class would be interested in knowing where your parents came from.”
He looked puzzled, then pleased.
“Do you think they would?”
“Of course,” I said.
Rosenthal rose, strode toward the front of the room, and proceeded to deliver a 30-minute lecture on the migration of European Jews dating back to the twelfth century. Expounding at length on the Diaspora, the role of the Jews in the Middle Ages, the pogroms and other well-known and arcane Judaica, the principal and former social studies chair was clearly thrilled with this opportunity to deliver a lecture on Jewish roots.
Of course, his dazed audience of new Americans hadn’t the vaguest idea what he was talking about. Nonetheless, they sat clear-eyed and seemingly entranced by his performance, looking as if they were totally involved in the lesson even though they were completely lost.
There was one exception. A girl in the first row dozed off as Rosenthal described the contributions of Maimonides. He gently tapped her on the shoulder, asked her if she was all right, and continued his oration.
When he finally got to his own family, only fifteen minutes remained in the period. He described his parents’ arrival here and their upbringing in abject, yet nostalgic poverty in the Bronx.
“And we didn’t have guidance counselors to tell us what to do, and ESL programs to rely on,” he ranted, a pre-Fox News Tucker Carlson in full cry. “We were on our own. I had to wear my brother’s hand-me-downs.”
After a few more reminiscences about dark depression days, he finally relinquished the floor and left just before the end of the period, hardly having observed me teaching at all.
At his departure, the class (and I) heaved a collective, audible sigh of relief, mixed with awe and befuddlement. When the bell rang and the class was filing out, I asked the brightest girl in the class, “How much of that did you understand?”
“About five percent,” she giggled.
I asked Terry, my favorite kid in the class, what he thought. Smiling his widest grin, Terry said, “I think he’s a little bit crazy.”
*The name of the school and principal have been changed. Extra credit if you can identify either or both.
© 2009 Peter Janovsky
Just a guess, Peter, was Rosenthal really Fred Trump?
No idea, but charmed by the glimpse of you as a teacher.