Montville Connecticut was a small, quiet farm town in the 1950's. It grew by leaps and bounds a few years later. In 1963, Montville opened its first 7-12 junior/senior high school. I joined the faculty in 1964 and retired in 1997 and moved with my wife to Florida, or the Republican burying grounds, as it is widely known here.

    When I tell people in my new home town of Palm Bay that I retired after thirty-three years of teaching at Montville High in Connecticut, they invariably ask "How did you ever survive that?" My one word answer is simple...HUMOR. If you could not laugh at some of the absurdities inherent in education and at yourself as well, you might as well head for early retirement. And many teachers did.

    During my tenure at Montville, I was bombarded by enough material to write several books. There was the town official who wanted to sue the President to get the Panama Canal back...my student who wanted to go to France by train...and the teacher who read the dictionary every night and didn't own a television set. The common denominator in the educational equation is the human element. No one is immune from doing foolish things. I include myself as well as you will see in this book. Inside you will catch a glimse of rural small town politics and personalities and hopefully learn how teachers and administrators fight to survive the stress they must deal with each and every day.

    A Beatnik in the 1950's was asked: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall, man?" The Beatnik of course replied "practice, practice, practice!" If somebody asks how to get to Montville High School, the correct response is always "head down Route 163 and turn left at the dump!"

                             CHAPTERS FOR TURN LEFT AT THE DUMP

    PART ONE-TEACHING IN MONTVILLE

Chapter 1-Wild Blue Yonder
Chapter 2-Just How Hard Can Teaching Be?
Chapter 3-Student Teaching at Lyman Memorial
Chapter 4-Montville's New High School
Chapter 5-Montville in the Early 1960's
Chapter 6-Montville Indians
Chapter 7-My First Year at Montville
Chapter 8-Send in the Subs
Chapter 9-Smokin' in Montville
Chapter 10-Yellow Card Nonsense
Chapter 11-Up Your Survey
Chapter 12-The Infamous Telerad
Chapter 13-The Kleptos Among Us
Chapter 14-The Big Tomato Strikes Again
Chapter 15-I Won't Stand For That
Chapter 16-Parents Night
Chapter 17-Adult Education
Chapter 18-Wind of Change
Chapter 19-Staff Parties
Chapter 20-Students, Teachers, and Anger Management
Chapter 21-Foreign Exchange Students
Chapter 22-Supersize My Study Hall
Chapter 23-You Fight Girl
Chapter 24-It's a Crime
Chapter 25-School Safety
Chapter 26-The Crash of '87
Chapter 27-Library/Media Center
Chapter 28-Sports Shorts
Chapter 29-Field Trips
Chapter 30-Conventional Wisdom
Chapter 31-We're Being Observed
Chapter 32-Faculty Meetings
Chapter 33-Things Left Better Unsaid
Chapter-34-Invention of Tech Education
Chapter 35-Teaching the Teacher
Chapter 36-Student Crazies
Chapter 37-Things We Were Never Trained For
Chapter 38-The "L" Files
Chapter 39-The Eleven Year Ph. D.

    Part Two-Famous Faculty by Departments 

Chapter 40-Science Department
Chapter 41-Monkey Business
Chapter 42-Physical Education
Chapter 43-Social Studies
Chapter 44-Math Daze
Chapter 45-English Spoken Here
Chapter 46-Shop Class...Let Me Count My Fingers
Chapter 47-Really Special Education
Chapter 48-No Dead Languages Here
Chapter 49 It's an Art
Chapter 50-Guidance

    Part Three-Some Administrators of Note

Chapter 51-We Have Our Principals

    Part Four-Suggestions for Parents

Chapter 52-Perscriptions for Navigating the Educational Minefield

         

                 

                 Critical acclaim from deceased people who might have enjoyed the book if they     weren't dead!Cical Acclaim Fro People Who Might Hav Read the Book If They Weren't Dead
" This book does not mention "dialectical materialism" even once.
Sounds like a Bolshevik story to me"  
             Karl Marx  

"What the hell is dialectical materialism?"
             Groucho Marx to Chico & Harpo

"More wisdom than a dozen Chinese fortune cookies."
             Confucius

"The section on how to serve your fellow humans really got to me."
              Idi Amin

"Well, gollllly! Now I know what it is like to go to school."
                Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.   

"Latin...who needs Latin. I tell you I couldn't have conquered Gaul without it!" 
                Julius Caesar   

"It is definitely no 'War and Peace' but it is a heck of a lot shorter and easier to read."    
                Leo Tolstoy

"If I had only known some of the pearls of wisdom found in this book, they never would have been able to pin Watergate on me."   
                 Richard M. Nixon

We don't need no stinkin' stories about no stinkin' school. It didn't learn me nothing, ya know."
                  Joe Bag O'donuts, Disgruntled & deceased member of Class of '65

If you read only one book in your next ten incarnations...make it this one. It certainly enlightened me."
                   The Buddha

MONTVILLE'S FIRST HIGH SCHOOL

    Montville High School first opened its doors for students in the fall of 1963. Before its completion, students from Montville could choose to attend either the Norwich Free Academy or New London High School. At the time, Montville was a rural town with a few factories. As the Submarine base and Coast Guard Academy were close by, Montville became the reasonably priced bedroom town of choice for many of our military. At one point, over half of my seventh grade class had dads who were on the Polaris “Boomer” subs that went out on patrol for three months at a time. I would see a change of behavior as some of the boys in class started acting out and became rowdy. I would corner Billy and say something like: “I see your dad’s out on patrol again, Billy.” He would look at me and wonder how the heck I figured that out. When the sub returned to port, Billy’s behavior improved overnight! Using the GI Bill, a soldier or sailor could purchase a house with only about a hundred dollar down payment. When the developments known as Montville Manor and Oakdale Heights were completed, the town grew by leaps and bounds necessitating a new school for the post-elementary students in town.

    Montville High was a public school that had a unique feature in its inaugural years. Students were required to adhere to the strict dress code. Boys wore ties and dress pants and girls wore dresses or skirt and blouse, even in winter. Clothes with holes in them were forbidden. Non-compliance with the code meant that your parents would be called to come to school and provide you with the proper attire. If you refused to comply, you could be given a three day vacation also known as suspension. Students often griped about the strict dress code but the faculty and administration thought that it promoted orderliness and more civilized behavior. It only lasted a few years before it was challenged and students were allowed to wear almost anything.

    For the initial years that the school was in session, there was a tremendous faculty turnover. Pay was low and science and math teachers often jumped ship and returned to the private sector. Some years saw a third of the faculty moving on to greener pastures. Besides the low pay, morale was greatly affected by many teachers’ perceptions that there were anti-education people out to get them. Year after year, teachers’ contracts would be brought to a town referendum where they were usually defeated. Few townspeople wanted to vote to increase their property tax (a great weakness of the system was that most of the town budget was related to education and most of the money came from property taxes…even though a Connecticut court case said that reliance on this tax created rich and poor school districts that didn’t give students equal opportunity for educational success). Finally after a few months had passed and threats were made to cancel the seasonal sports (usually the most effective ploy as teachers could not legally strike), the contract would be passed and teachers would receive their September raise in October or November.

    Montville High School first opened its doors for students in the fall of 1963. Before its completion, students from Montville could choose to attend either the Norwich Free Academy or New London High School. At the time, Montville was a rural town with a few factories. As the Submarine base and Coast Guard Academy were close by, Montville became the reasonably priced bedroom town of choice for many of our military. At one point, over half of my seventh grade class had dads who were on the Polaris “Boomer” subs that went out on patrol for three months at a time. I would see a change of behavior as some of the boys in class started acting out and became rowdy. I would corner Billy and say something like: “I see your dad’s out on patrol again, Billy.” He would look at me and wonder how the heck I figured that out. When the sub returned to port, Billy’s behavior improved overnight! Using the GI Bill, a soldier or sailor could purchase a house with only about a hundred dollar down payment. When the developments known as Montville Manor and Oakdale Heights were completed, the town grew by leaps and bounds necessitating a new school for the post-elementary students in town.

    Montville High was a public school that had a unique feature in its inaugural years. Students were required to adhere to the strict dress code. Boys wore ties and dress pants and girls wore dresses or skirt and blouse, even in winter. Clothes with holes in them were forbidden. Non-compliance with the code meant that your parents would be called to come to school and provide you with the proper attire. If you refused to comply, you could be given a three day vacation also known as suspension. Students often griped about the strict dress code but the faculty and administration thought that it promoted orderliness and more civilized behavior. It only lasted a few years before it was challenged and students were allowed to wear almost anything.

    For the initial years that the school was in session, there was a tremendous faculty turnover. Pay was low and science and math teachers often jumped ship and returned to the private sector. Some years saw a third of the faculty moving on to greener pastures. Besides the low pay, morale was greatly affected by many teachers’ perceptions that there were anti-education people out to get them. Year after year, teachers’ contracts would be brought to a town referendum where they were usually defeated. Few townspeople wanted to vote to increase their property tax (a great weakness of the system was that most of the town budget was related to education and most of the money came from property taxes…even though a Connecticut court case said that reliance on this tax created rich and poor school districts that didn’t give students equal opportunity for educational success). Finally after a few months had passed and threats were made to cancel the seasonal sports (usually the most effective ploy as teachers could not legally strike), the contract would be passed and teachers would receive their September raise in October or November.