No Distance Between

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

The accusation came early—shockingly early, much too early—a crocus showing its pointed bud before the passing of winter in violation of Nature's order. It stunned me, angered me, numbed me, hurt me, and broke me. It sure as hell wasn't a fuckin' joke.

Like a dagger, that accusing finger was unwavering, swift, piercing, and, in many respects, final. It was no accident, no mistake, and no veiled or cloudy threat of mysterious origin or questionable intent. That accusing finger was direct and cutting, a weapon of lethal impact. Let it be certain—the person behind that accusing finger wasn't kidding around. She was deadly serious.

For me to be on the receiving end of that pointing finger was no light matter of painless consequence. It wrenched my family, severed me from many dear and long-time friends, exacted its toll on my physical being, and scrambled my brain. It damn near cost me my job. It said I wasn't a very good teacher or counselor. Even worse, it said I wasn't a very good person. How good a teacher, counselor, or person could I be, after all, if I were playing around with a student—a thirty-six-year old teacher, counselor, and married man fooling around with an eighteen-year old female student?

And that was the accusation.

* * *

"What the hell's the matter with you?" I shot back with infuriated rancor, my eyes bulging in disbelief. "You think I'm fuckin' crazy?"

"I'm just asking," she said stabbingly.

She wasn't apologizing, I knew that for sure.

"You're fuckin' crazy," I raged.

"The way things look, I just—"

"I don't give a shit how things look," I interrupted with sting and disgust as I turned to leave. "You're sick, woman! 'Am I after her body,' " I repeated with caustic scorn. "What kind of asshole question is that? If you had any idea what that kid's been through, maybe you'd do something to help instead of running off at the mouth and being so suspicious." I hardly stopped to take a breath. "Christ, she's been in this school since September, and you still don't know one fuckin' thing about her."

I threw my hands up in despair. I was steaming, my blood boiling like a tea kettle of provoked water enraged to furious turmoil by a scorching flame. I wanted to keep ripping into her, make her pay for it, and return the insult. Like an unfairly blamed schoolboy, pounced upon by a playmate for having allowed the ball to hop over the playground fence, I wanted to punch her in the face and beat the living crap out of her. But I wanted to get out of there, and away from her, even more.

Fran had whisked me into the closet we had converted to use as a darkroom for our photography class and had confronted me with the accusation. Was she speaking for herself or for all five of the full-time teachers who, with me, comprised the professional staff of our Alternative School? It didn't make any difference. I felt sick. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

I flung the door open and left her standing alone as I stepped into the chilly hallway and looked around. The afternoon was late, and most of the kids, except the "regulars," had left for the day. Julia, Lois, and Dawn were engrossed in animated conversation on the stage, our lounge area. Marlene and Freddy were playing ping-pong in front of the stage, while Arlene watched from the sidelines.

"Hey, Charlie, watcha doin'?" called out Arlene. "Ya want winners after me?"

My heart was pounding, my thoughts in ragged disarray, fractured and scattered like an elegant piece of Limoges China dropped on a tile floor, but I still had enough wits about me to sweep together the necessary words for a disguising response.

"Yeah, maybe a little later," I answered in hollow-hearted reply.

Two staff members, Marilyn and Lisa, were working at the table in the side conference room. I instinctively looked for Ann. That was dumb. I knew she already had left. But I looked, anyway—a habit. Then I turned quickly and took the few steps to the office. I closed the door behind me and flopped heavily into the chair behind my desk. I just sat.

How the hell could this be happening to me?

* * *

I had met Ann for the first time the previous spring. It was mid-May. I remember it vividly. It was Monday, May 14, 1973, downstairs on the first floor of Teaneck High School in Teaneck, New Jersey. I had come down from the Guidance Office on the second floor in search of a student who had cut Mrs. Heafy's physical science class the Friday before. Heafy wanted me to talk to the kid and see what the problem was.

The bell had just rung for sixth period, and a tall, slim girl in jeans rushed down the corridor toward me. An attractive girl with long, shiny, brown hair almost to her waist, she had a worried look about her.

"You're Mr. Sullivan, aren't you?" she inquired intently.

"Uh huh," I nodded.

"You think I'll get accepted into the Alternative School? I turned in my application, but I haven't heard anything yet. You know when they're gonna decide? I really wanna go, ya know. I hope I get in," she spurted in quick, begging sentences before continuing with a frown. "I'm gonna be a senior next year, and I can't take another year in this place. You know when they're gonna let us know?"

A smile had begun to crease my face before she had reached the midpoint of her exuberant burst. I toyed with the idea of pulling her leg and telling her she had been rejected because she was too excitable, but I just laughed.

"I'm pretty sure you'll be accepted," I said with designed reassurance. "If all our applicants are as enthusiastic about the A-School as you, we'll have one heck of a group, right?"

"Oh, that would be super. I'm so excited! When will we know for sure?" she pressed.

"It won't be long," I answered. "I think everybody will be notified very soon, probably by the middle of next week. We're still takin' applications, ya know. The deadline isn't 'til Friday."

"Yeah, I know, but I'm really anxious. Okay," she sighed with a spin, apparently resigned to another week of wait. "Thanks a lot."

"Hey," I called as she was about to hurry away. "What's your name? I don't know—"

She turned back with a quick, effusive motion that spoke silent appreciation for the opportunity to identify herself, to say who she was and be recognized, be remembered.

"Ann Jordan."

"Ann.....?"

"Jordan—Ann Jordan. Yesterday was my birthday. I'm eighteen now."

"Oh, wow, that's really neat," I exclaimed, not quite certain why such detail had been offered. "Happy birthday! See, now, next year, I bet we'll be celebrating your birthday in the A-School," I laughed.

With crossed fingers, we were looking for a hundred students, give or take, to start our new school. The way our applications were coming in, I expected we'd be close to our target number by week's end and probably accept everyone who had applied.

"Oh, I can't wait," she bubbled. And she was gone.

* * *

There was still a heck of a lot of work to be done through June and the summer months before the Alternative School could open in September. But we had come a long way from the time the original proposal had been put on the table before the Student-Staff Senate almost fourteen months ago, and there had been three months of preparation before that.

I was involved from the beginning, but it hadn't been my idea. Credit for introducing the alternative school concept to our school district belonged to Paul McGarvey, a young man who recently had joined the high school faculty. He had just completed a summer of intensive graduate-level course work at the Institute of Open Education at a small college outside of Boston.

Paul introduced the concept of alternative education to our school district in an in-service workshop offered to interested faculty members. Not many were interested. The response was.... underwhelming. Little more than a handful participated and all, including myself, were generally ignorant of alternative education concepts.

While Paul may have been the general contractor for the Alternative School foundation, or at least the footings, Marilyn Franck, an energetic and spirited social studies teacher who enjoyed an excellent rapport with students, was the bricklayer. At about the same time Paul was conducting his in-service workshop, Marilyn, a more active member of the Student-Staff Senate than I, had been involved in a number of gripe sessions with students. Out of these informal "Why do we hafta....." and "Things would be a lot better if....." free-flowing exchanges emerged a resolute conviction shared by all: "There's gotta be a better way."

Marilyn cradled this infant idea, conceived in expressed student need, and carried it to the workshop where the handful of participating teachers wrapped it in the swaddling clothes of Paul's concepts and turned it back for nurturing and development to a newly organized Senate Committee on Alternative Education.

While Marilyn received some degree of unsolicited recognition for her work and effort, Paul never got any credit for laying the conceptual foundation, for providing the skeleton around which the meat would be fashioned, and for stimulating the imagination and motivation of others, including myself, who eventually took the ball and ran with it.

The widespread development and proliferation of Alternative Schools in the early 1970's was an outgrowth of the free-school movement of the late 1960's, with a few notable differences. Alternative Schools were the publicly funded, defensive, Johnny-come-lately trailers of the privately financed free-schools that had been the vanguard of academic change. Alternative Schools were the public sector's acknowledgment, most often reluctant, that schools within "the system" had to do something about the shocking degree of tension, alienation, and apathy that the increased social awareness of the times had revealed to be rampant throughout the nation's public schools.

This sorry state of affairs had found expression in the disturbing and frenzied protests, unrest, and violence of the period. Those who recognized the problems that faced public education urged changes in the school environment as well as a review of traditional educational goals, objectives, values, and processes. They also advocated the adoption of alternative learning concepts. One of the popular ideas was to establish Alternative Schools as small learning communities which would encourage students to exercise initiative and assume responsibility, provide them with a greater role in determining their own educational destiny, and give them choices from among a variety of learning experiences. These innovations all were designed to help students understand what education was supposed to accomplish.

It surely didn't take me long to latch on to the concepts. I had graduated from college with a Bachelor's Degree and a teaching certificate and had started my first teaching job a few days before my twenty-first birthday. Initially as a classroom teacher of social studies, English, and journalism, then as a counselor, and later in an administrative role, I had ample opportunity to witness the sterility, the rigidity, and the irrelevance of the system. I saw how the autocratic bureaucracy of the system turned kids off of education instead of on to it, made kids hate learning instead of love it, caused kids to close up instead of open up, and put more emphasis on passing and failing than on learning and growing. More often than not, the system fostered—even demanded—conformity, and stifled—even punished—originality. Worse still, it unconsciously conditioned students to function as if all learning began and ended with the ringing of a bell (in school), in small groups called classes (in the daytime), between eight in the morning and three in the afternoon (on weekdays only—but not during the summer), if they all dressed properly (no shorts or jeans, please), and if they were acquiescent, quiet, and obedient—particularly quiet. I mean, how the hell could bodies learn anything if they didn't keep their mouths shut? Learning always takes place in silence, right?

I not only witnessed the crap, I was part of it. I wasn't happy about being part of it, but I was part of it. It took a long time before I would admit to my role as an abetting agent, even to myself. Hey, I had seen the other side, too. I had seen good teachers who cared about kids and knew, understood, and empathized with the complexities of what it was like to be a young person. I had seen teachers stand as excellent role models for young people. I had seen students respond to teachers and emulate the noblest of their character traits. I had seen teachers work tirelessly to pull the best from students, to motivate and stimulate their young minds, and to instill in them an everlasting curiosity for discovering and trying new things. I had seen teachers help kids develop confidence in their abilities and in themselves.

In the best of times and in the best of places, however, the percentages weren't good. There were far too many instances when education, or what was being done in the name of education, missed its mark. The process often became so impersonal, perfunctory, and perfidious that it alienated those it should have been inspiring. The architects and engineers of the process often became so mired in stagnation that their clients choked on the stale air and clamored for an open window.

The time was ripe for change. What worked for some, even if they were the majority, didn't work or wasn't working for a lot of others. And they were the ones who started rattling the bars. The quiet ones copped-out, walked out, and dropped out. The louder ones cut classes and raised hell. They protested, sat-in, and took over. They yelled and were violent. They cursed and spat. They marshaled their forces, recruited supporters, and swelled their ranks with the disenchanted, the disillusioned, the disappointed, and the angry. They yelled "Fuck you!" out the windows. They wrote "Fuck you!" on the walls. They told teachers and administrators who evidenced difficulty hearing their complaints to go fuck themselves. It was Vietnam all over again. But this time it wasn't a rebellion against the politics of a government. It was a protest against the school as an institution—as they saw it, a tired, old, deaf, intransigent, insensitive, and bureaucratic institution.

Students petitioned for semester courses, mini-courses, and relevant courses. They wanted fewer requirements, easier requirements, or no requirements. They pushed for a say, a stake, a role in their own education. They demanded their teachers be human and humane, interested and interesting, motivated and motivating—people first, teachers second. They insisted on people who weren't so engrossed in their subject matter and so pompous in their learned state that they often forgot what they were supposed to be doing with their acquired knowledge. They wanted people who didn't consider history, chemistry, and mathematics to be ends in themselves; instead, they wanted people who understood the unique historical, chemical, and mathematical needs of the uncultivated and unsophisticated adolescents—many with limited tolerance and less enthusiasm—who sat before them each day. What all these kids really were saying was, "There's gotta be a better way."

It was a simple, yet ironic, message with which the educational establishment had to grapple. For years the professional literature and journals had gushed their educational jargon of sanctimonious goals—recognizing individual differences, meeting individual needs, teaching the whole child, and individualizing instruction. The not-so-sanctimonious fulfillment of those goals hadn't gone much beyond "tracking" the smart kids in smart classes, the slow kids in slow classes, the middle kids in middle classes, and all of the kids in "group guidance." So much for individualization. Even pinning a sweet-sounding or sweet-smelling label to each elementary school group—bluebirds, robins, daisies, butterflies—couldn't cover the stink of an unfinished task carelessly left too long unattended on a back burner until teachers and parents, and even the kids themselves, could detect the unmistakable stench of rotten eggs.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from No Distance Betweenby Charles A. Sullivan Copyright © 2011 by Charles A. Sullivan. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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