The one bright light in that burnt-out beacon of middle education was Fred Holtby. He taught English and literature to the officially "bright" kids. Now 68, Holtby is still at Uni, though it's been four years since he's taught English. Holtby oversees the referral room. It's where kids are often sent before they get to Dean Eiseman. These days, instead of decoding poems and magazine ads with his students, Holtby gets down to basics with the "bad kids": the baseball-cap wearers, the gum chewers, the talks-back-to-the-teachers and especially the tardies. Being late to class has become a big deal at Uni. An "on-time" policy guarantees Holtby will have some of his desks filled. He says what he's doing now is "more real" for the students. They need to figure out how to stay out of the referral room; he aims to help them. Holtby wears a team jacket. Where the Uni emblem would be, there's a theta appliqued instead. He explains that it's to represent Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom and magic. "Not sleight of hand," Holtby emphasizes, "but real magic, and learning and language."
Both Sides Now
Three Decades After Graduating From Uni High, Karen Michel Returns to Find That Her Alma Mater Has Changed--and Stayed the Same. Students Still Bridle at Dress Codes, but Their Fears Are Different From Those of the '60s.
INSIDE STORY
In the '60s, Holtby would write on the chalkboard in Greek letters: Ta pathemeta mathemata, "the suffered is the learned," and poiema pathema mathema, which he translated as "purpose, passion, perception." Holtby believed we could talk about Prufrock and Olaf, semiotics, semantics, worlds in collision, the Iliad and William Saroyan. He's not entirely sure about the students he encounters now. The ways students express themselves have changed, as Holtby sees it, because "nobody has a dinner table." Kids and parents don't do stuff together and talk about it afterward. It makes getting through to them harder. But once he does, he's discovered--indulging in some hyperbole--"There is genius there that is just as smart as you guys."
He means me and my former Uni school, and especially out-of-school-mate, Randa Haines. We've come to visit him together, as a surprise. Randa's a Hollywood director. Her first feature film, "Children of a Lesser God," was nominated for five Academy Awards. Her recent film, "Dance With Me," didn't do well at all. She was just finishing it when we went to see Holtby. Randa and I agreed that he taught us about storytelling. About codes and breaking them and making them, too. Stuff we use in our work now.
