“How long have you been teaching?’ a student asked me at my last job. He didn’t know that I had dealt with the same question at many other jobs over the decades. There had been times when I took a job at the lowest rate possible for the position by filling in “zero years of comparable experience” when I could just as easily have put in ten years or eight and the answers would perhaps have been more truthful. But I had many problems with records and certifications and other things — in the sense that records were messed up or misplaced in ways that were hard to believe. But even if I had not had such bad luck my path was a very complicated one and not easy to record on a form. ” I first got paid to teach when I was fifteen and I am now fifty-nine. I can fill you in on some of the details, but last year I taught at New Iberia Senior High School and earlier this year I was at a Catholic school in Lafayette.”
i cannot teach for a living any more. But I want to tell my life story even if it perhaps closer to the end of my life journey than I hoped it might be. The future if I get the Social Security Disability award may involve me living a better life for a longer period of time. But overall my life is about wrapping up and making the most of the closing scenes one way or another. l hope that it will be with the dignity that the SSDI award would provide for Clara and I. If I don’t get the award then spiraling into ruin is going to happen pretty soon and that is an outcome that I have known before.
This is a retrospective on teaching and learning before collecting on hoped for disability income award and simply try to live out the remaining years as a decent human being with a little dignity and comfort is what this chapter is about.
As I discussed in the opening chapter of this version of my life’s story, my expectations of this book are very low. I stated this memoir can only be a D minus or below memoir on the traditional American grade scale of A+,. A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D- and F. That is probably overly ambitious. More likely, any objective measure would rate it a total and complete failure. Both as a student and a teacher I have gotten and given grades that were above average. Mostly the grades I earned were very good. But there were some telling and key periods of underperformance. In addition, I rarely felt that I was on track to securing a life in the path of merit and effort by which I secured almost all of my good grades. It is not hard for me to accept that my story would have almost no interest to anyone and if it does get read by anyone actually reading as a reader of a literary text, it will not monetize in my favor. That sense of futility is not new to me. I am accustomed to the sense of deep futility. It has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. The occasion for writing and posting this particular version of my life story is that I am applying for Social Security DIsability Income. That in itself is an admission of a kind of deep futility in my life. The application itself may be futile.
I have recently been a long-term contract substitute teacher at Erath High School until a very severe set of spasms related to another incident motivated me to file this application. Before that I was an as needed (and mostly very short term) substitute teacher in a kind of hybrid position that I had held off and on since the year 2000 with the Vermilion Parish School Board. In August of last year I started as a Social Studies Teacher at Holy Family Catholic School in Lafayette and before Christmas break rolled around there was an incident that showed me many weaknesses in the society we live in but also weaknesses in my own ability to see, hear, track and perceive what is going on in a classroom with more than a few special challenges. In the previous year, I successfully completed a year of teaching at New Iberia Senior High as a World Geography teacher for High school freshmen or 9th graders. I had a satisfactory professional assessment although I was treated for severe vertigo, gout, sleep apnea, COVID, gastro-intestinal disorders, anxiety, impaired vision and ear canal problems that school year. Overall, the year (one in which I got married) was a year of unusually good health for me. I can remember other years when I dragged myself along the ground from my car to the door after a hard day’s work. Yet I have evaded the kind of diagnoses that would make it impossible to get regular work up until now. I am going to devote this chapter to my life in education in a somewhat different style and approach than my discussion of education in the first chapter. There will be no famous events or deeply moving human tragedies or great achievements. Some of the events briefly visited here will be discussed and reviewed again in later chapters. But I can take these liberties with a D- memoir. There is no potential critic or reader to alienate in a D- memoir and no list placements,shelf space or accolades to fret about losing prematurely.
It is therefore evident that I have almost nothing to lose. That emboldens me to defy some conventions. Having the fourth chapter sort of shift the the tone and style of the memoir is fine since it could never have been successful under any circumstances.
I have substantial research, writing and teaching experience. However, it varies greatly over time and space and I will not seek here to give a thorough accounting of it all or to show how it all applies.
I have been paid for writing and related journalistic work for the Abbeville Meridional, the Daily Advertiser, the Vermilion, and Bonnes Nouvelles. All of which are newspapers of varying examples of the American newspapers. They are all located in the Acadiana region of Louisiana. None of this really seemed to count as writing related to my role as a pedagogue and none of my pedagogy really seemed to relate to deepening my insight and voice as a writer.
I have done legal research for a number of lawyers and law firms as well as for abstractors and landmen. This all follows on or is interspersed in time with the research and writing I did in my studies. In addition to studies in the strict sense I also worked on projects such as helping to translate the Papeles Procedentes de Cuba while in undergraduate studies. For that project I did research on various subjects to assist with translating the reports and papers related to the Acadians in that massive collection of Spanish Colonial documents. I don’t think the research was really ever credited to making me a better writer or teacher. But I think one could argue that here is a good C level of research in my paid work and there are huge numbers of unpaid projects that arguably add something.
In teaching I can readily account for having taught at Saint Thomas More High School in Lafayette, Louisiana. Also I taught at the Shandong Institute of Business and Technology in Yantai, Shandong in China. FInally as regards easily documented work I was a substitute teacher for the Vermilion Parish School Board for several years.
However, much of my teaching was among small groups and classes in short and less well documented courses and lectures over the decades, this included a number of unique positions. Tutoring a grocer in the Cuchilla del Tesoro section of Mexico City in return for groceries. Leading a large youth group in San Pedro Atzcapotzaltongo– Villa Niicolas Romero near Mexico City, Teaching an informal English circle in CIte, Santander del Sur, Colombia among members of a Catholic farming commune. Tutoring my now good friend and lifelong associate, my mother’s godchild Louis Philippe Boudreau when he transitioned from local schools to study at Portsmouth Abbey I received a generous lunch expense account and a dollar over the minimum hourly wage at a time when that was significant. It included leading the Maranatha Youth Group in Titahi Bay, New Zealand near Cook Strait on the North Island. It involved leading a number of youth and young adult ministries and having a youth Conference in the Province of Bukidnon in the Philippines. It involved being a director of religious education in Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Lafayette, Louisiana as well as St. Theresa Parish in Duson, Louisiana and being a youth minister in Saint Mary’s Parish in Lafayette. It involved being a catechist at St. Mary Magdalen Parish in the Diocese of Lafayette and Saint Jude’s Parish in the Diocese of Baton Rouge.
I was not without training and certification in those years I was formally commissioned as a Lay Evangelist by the Diocese of Lafayette in the auditorium at Vermilion Catholic High School, I was certified as a Scriptural Exegete by the East Asian Pastoral Institute’s Scripture Venture Programs at the Ateneo de Manila University in Manila, Philippines and I was certified as a Catechist in the Diocese of Lafayette and a teacher of Religion in the DIocese of Baton Rouge.I received the Sophomore Class Award at the Franciscan University of Steubenville where I double majored in English and Theology. I was on a sterling committee, in a Youth Services organization and in a household. In addition to all this, I attended, staffed and planned many retreats. Those were days and years when I was very serious about such things. I think at one point I could have written a C- memoir of just those years alone.
Among other things those were days when I continued through rereading and recommending and informally reviewing a huge amount of reading, shared prayer and discussion about what Christianity meant when it was lived out. I was building on what had started when I was 9 and my parents had a religious conversion from an agnostic and an atheist lapsed Catholic – to Catholics who would soon be pioneers in a path of lay missionary work in their church. I explored in an experiential way the popular and prayer group based forms of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, the Sword of the Spirit form of the Covenant Community model of very ecumenical covenant community Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church and its connection to other churches in the movement. It was a time when I honored the stories and movements and Protestant ministers involved in popular “testimony” books like The Cross and the Switchblade, Run Baby Run, For this Cross I’ll Kill you, God’s Smuggler, Tortured for Christ, Is That Really You God?, the Hiding Place and Through the Gates of Splendor and other stories of the twentieth century that were usually tied to American experiences even if the people were not American. During my early adolescence, I lived and worked with my Parents and Father RIck Thonas who was the central subject of the book Miracles in El Paso. He is now the subject of the biography A Poor Priest for the Poor. My own life is chronicled in part in my mother’s books Go You Are Sent and Our Family’s Book of Acts. To understand these books fully one has to know something about the other books I mentioned and also about books we read aloud as a family in mission. Those books included A Penny a Copy by Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day,The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, When You go to Tonga written by a Marist Missionary before we joined the Marist Missionaries in Tonga ourselves and others by leaders like Cahterin de Hueck Doherty, who wrote:Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude, Prayer, Not Without Parables: Stories, and some others we read together and others we dabbled in alone from her numerous books. We had lived in a YWAM house with the organization described in the book Is that Really You God?. I had also read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s the Cost of Discipleship, the story of Charles Foucauld’s ministry and prayer in the Sands of Tamanrasset, Butler’s Lives of the Saints, Billy Graham’s Peace With God and everything C.S. Lewis ever published. This was on top of many other readings on theology, scripture and ministry. I had a hope to make a difference for the same Kingdom of God that Jesus preached millennia ago and which I saw in the struggle of so many. I also found meaning in books like the collection of writings Martin Luther King collected in different volumes. I was especially influenced by Letters from a Birmingham Jail, a sermon and a collection called “Tough Mind and Tender Heart” as well as the more famous “I Have a Dream” speech delivered at the Great March on Washington. I read fast, deeply and well and that could be proved objectively by ever relevant standardized test I ever took related to reading comprehension. As much as I read about Christianity I read many other things as well. I read entire encyclopedia of wildlife and many volumes of standardized collections Like the Harvard FIve Foot Shelf of Books, almost all the Classics Illustrated comics, the Syntopicon, all the works of Chalre Dickens that had been published as books and all of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Kipling, Hawthorne, Tennyson and most of Jane Austen before I got.married the first time. Even that leaves out huge swathes of Tolkein, science fiction and most of Tolstoy, much of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Robert Ludlum and so many others. It seemed that I could not have done much besides read. But I did do other things. My memoir will have thematic chapters and I am going to write about outdoor life and sports in another chapter.
I will say that I somehow realized that I was never going to become a great saint in any path that lay clear and true before me. I also realized that I would not be a great missionary or religious leader in any likelihood. The reasons I felt that way were complicated. It was a very gradual and painful adjustment. But in that process I thought of all the secular teaching that I had done and I thought that I could do it in the future as well. But I never felt a passion or a sense of potential greatness that approached the aspirations of my very Christian religious dreams of youth. . . .
I studied Literary Theory and Criticism in English 459 at U S.L. I studied Christian Morality in Theology 259 at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. I studied Structuralism and Semiotics in Anthropology 7909 at Louisiana State University. But although I have a lot of experience tackling big questions I find it hard to say big sweeping things about teaching and education. Maybe my philosophy of teaching is personalist phenomenological philosophy. Stuff happens and people need teachers.
But in terms of learning and study, I am ashamed that I do not have a single credit from a College of Education, I do not have one from UL or anywhere else. I am asking you to help me get certified to be able to make a better life for my fiancee and myself who are getting married in November. But I look forward to learning and being formed by the experts in education for a little while. My philosophy is to develop my philosophy with your program. I have worked at teaching a lot in my life – help me do it better and make a better living.
I taught Plato to my relatives between enrollments under the trees on our family lands. I have tutored the young rich and privileged, improving their reading comprehension scores to go to elite boarding schools. Other times I tutored needy students struggling in public schools. Most of this was unpaid but some paid very well. These things I did happened in Louisiana. My philosophy is that teaching is necessary in the real world.
I am an NEA member for years and have more formal experience. I have taught at the Shandong Institute of Business and Technology in Yantai on the Yellow Sea in China. I have delivered three lectures at the Gulf South History and Humanities Conferences and been part of an academic panel with Warren Perrin and Dr. Barry Ancelet at the Louisiana Historical Association Annual Meeting. In the nineties I taught at a Catholic High School for which I was qualified by specific catholic forms of teacher certification. Those include certificates in Exegesis, Catechesis and Evangelism. Since I first began working as a substitute teacher in the public schools in the year 2000, I have read lesson plans, studied curriculum objective papers and discussed the teaching classes certified teachers had formerly taken and those student teachers were in fact taking while they were chatting with me. I would like the chance to receive certification as a teacher in Louisiana. My philosophy is that I have something to contribute, so do other people.
I don’t think anything I can write here will do justice to all those who bothered to teach me and to give me credits that are supposed to indicate that I would be qualified for a program such as this. I cannot even really write anything that will do justice to myself as the younger but not very young man who held down two longer term substitute teaching positions for the Vermilion Parish School Board in the aftermath of Hurricane Lili when schools had been destroyed and there was a platoon system. I taught J.H. Williams Middle School students for one school day and then stayed in the same room and taught Abbeville High School students for another school day. I have a lot of self respect and I cannot pretend that I have not done and tried a great deal in my life. My philosophy is that teaching is a demanding vocation.
As a Student: My Educational Experience
Has Been a Long Story
I remember something about my mother using the product she bought called “Teach Your Baby to Read” . Certainly, I remember the flashcards being around the house after I got a year or so older than when I was taught by her using those cards. The number of schools since then and other educational opportunities has become a very large number. I think there is no substitute for a list in this case:
- Happy Howards Nursing School
- Soho Parish School
- Mount Carmel Elementary
- St. Hilda’s and St. Hugh’s Episcopal School.
- Mount Carmel Elementary
- Tonga Side School
- Calverts Correspondence School test program.
- Home School in Navajoland
- Mount Carmel Elementary
- The Lord’s School
- Institututo De Esudios America Latina
- Estudios Casa de Oracion
- Estudios Justicia y Alabanza
- Lay Evangelist Formation Program, Diocese of Lafayette
- Bishop Viard High School
- Apprenticeship to Master Craftsmen: Bert Farquarh
- Alagad Training Program
- Scripture Ventures Exegesis Program at the East Asian Pastoral Institute.
- University of Southwestern Louisiana
- Franciscan University of Steubenville
- University of Southwestern Louisiana
- Tulane Law School
- Catechist Training and Formation. Diocese of Lafayette
- LSU Graduate School
- SYSCO Agent Training
- Tulane Law School
- Insurance Specialty Training of Louisiana
- Exam FX Insurance Licensing
- Woodmenlife Agent training
- WebCE
- University of Louisiana College of Education, Alternative Certification Program
It seems like the list is more complete than many would wish it to be and yet it certainly does not nearly exhaust the totality of courses in which I have been enrolled. The list does not include all the writers conferences and writers seminars and writers meetings. It does not include the Press Association meetings, seminars and conferences. It also does not include all the sales seminars and conferences. It fails to touch on all the Charismatic, Social Justice, Evangelism, Liberation Theology, Conscienticization, Conservative Reform, and other spiritual-poltlical movements as seminars and conferences. But then as I do not really know if the assignment is mostly about experience as a student or as a teacher – that makes me wonder.
As far as Teaching Goes: It’s a Long Story
I am not really sure when I first began to teach. It seems like I have been teaching in different ways for a long time. But I suppose not as a baby. There was no “Teach Your Baby to Teach” box of educational aids that my mother used. I remember however, volunteering to lead groups in classes and other little tasks for students to teach when those opportunities came up. I had given many talks in various movements and groups, had a lead role in a school play, and read to and instructed my two oldest (still much younger than I) sisters when I completed the Lay Evangelist Course and was commissioned in the Diocese of Lafayette in 1980. Preaching, witnessing, focused listening, and sharing personal experiences were ore central than teaching. But teaching was included – it was my first teaching credential and I was born in 1964. So I was about sixteen. After that:
1981 – taught in Maranatha Youth Group (Titahi Bay, New Zealand)
1982-1983 taught guest lectures etc. Central Mindanao University, San Isidro College and Bukidnon State College and others.
1983 – tutored students at USL privately.
1984 – More FIlipino College lectures etc.
1984 &1985 taught at group level informal University of Steubenville.
1985 Director of Religious Education, St. Therese Parish Duson, Louisiana.
Also started writing high school sports and dealing with coaches.
1986-1989 Taught catechism and tutored at USL.
1990-1991 Taught Theology full time and advised student TV at Saint Thomas More High School. Involved with sister’s speech tournaments for first time. Also first basic certification as a teacher of religion.
1991-1993 Board of Regents Fellowship, earned M.A, at LSU stating it is a teaching credential in paperwork. Earned second basic certification as a teacher of religion. Taught at Travel Talk Language Academy and taugh Catechism.
1996 taught my brothers at home when they returned from overseas late in the school year before they returned to school the next year.
2000-2003, 2012, 2018-2022 Substitute teacher for the Vermilion Parish School Board.
2004-2005 Taught at SDIBT, Yantai China.
2018 to 2023 Presented at five peer-reviewed academic conferences. Worked with peers and alone.
2022-2023 Taught at New Iberia Senior High School
2023 taught at Holy Family Catholic School
2023-2024 Varied contracts with the Vermilion Parish School Board.
