The Very Orderly Sacking of a Teacher in East Addled Hope Where Everyone Believes in Jesus and Hell is Real

By St. Dustin of Borealis

this is the true story of a teacher charged with disorderly conduct for trying to maintain order in her classroom. names are fictional but all testimony is verbatim. using acerbic satire and humor, the author dismantles the "evidence" that authorities, from school officials to police to state investigators, constructed to force the termination of a tenured teacher who previously had no mark on her record. it exposes the difficulties teachers confront, for which they receive little or no support from administrators or parents, thereby costing engaged students not only their opportunities to learn, but sometimes the loss of their favorite teachers, as some students thought of this one. the story also explores the increasingly boisterous behavior of children in the U.S.

• Language: English
• Publisher: St. Dustin of Borealis
• Release date: May 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301815500

St. Dustin of Borealis

I began writing poetry when fifteen and have continued with it my entire life, which is now quite a number of years, as I was born in 1949, My novel is a late-in-life creation but holds many of the same concerns as my poetryI grew up in southwestern Minnesota, in the small town of Marshall. Living on the edge of town allowed me easy and long walks into the country. I’ve always loved the prairie, the fields of corn and beans, the expansive sky, the wooded areas and rivers where I could commune with nature. These meditations as a child and teenager meant I could absorb the rhythms of nature, its seasons and inhabitants, into what would later become my poetry. From these walks I came away with a sense of ancestry with the earth.My poetry has also been influenced by human sources, of course. No doubt my father’s patience and precision with craft (he could fix anything) carried over into my use of words. I was always fascinated with words. Walking home from school, I often saw a truck with the letters SURGE printed on its side. I guess it was the name of a company, but I wondered at the power of that word, how rivers surged during floods (which Marshall knew about), how wind might surge through trees, how fire could be unlocked and surge from the coal my grandfather burned for heat. Words were discovery long before I thought I would write.I am fortunate to have been a long time friend and student of the poet Thomas McGrath, whose encouragement and belief in my work remains incalculable. I've managed to publish ten books. My poetry is influenced by many poets, but significantly by foreign poets such as Neruda, Lorca, Ritsos, Brecht, Rilke, Saint-John Perse, and I suppose I have to admit, on the home front, Whitman. Mostly, though, I have imagined an audience that wanted the truth to be told, and this is also an influence that might be traced both to my father and to McGrath, and perhaps Meridel LeSueur. The truth is not made up of the factual world, though that helps. Being true to experience, to history, to our deep feelings has been a guide to me. In that sense, poetry is a means of trying to access what is most genuine within ourselves. I've always believed in social and political poetry, though that has meant more to me than the laudable task of exposing injustice– it also meant revealing our potential collective connections to one another, ultimately, our social fabric for caring for one another..

Book preview

The Very Orderly Sacking of a Teacher

in East Addled Hope Where Everyone

Believes in Jesus and Hell is Real

by Saint Dustin of Borealis

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 978-1-301815500

Copyright 2013 by the author

Saint Dustin of Borealis

For all teachers, who suffer not just the children

Introduction

This is a roman à clef, which means fictional characters are depicted committing real actions. The names have been changed to protect the ... well, you know... the too-big-to-fail people (the other obesity problem in America). If the too-big-to-fail people fail, we are told that everyone dies. It will be Ragnarok, the end of lutefisk as we know it. Whether they are bureaucrats or politicians, they are too important to be accused even if their decisions make bad stuff happen. They like to remain invisible, behind the scenes, not because they are shy but because they don’t want to be held responsible when things they are responsible for don’t work. However, I’ve included a picture of them having a meeting:

Notice that they are all very profound and dignified in appearance. They ahem a lot. They are always on top of things, in this case, a dead log. The one on the extreme left is keeping a log of the log. This particular photograph finds them deep in thought, planning a fishing expedition.

I am a fictional saint. I’ve always been ambitious and wanted a metaphysical title. But even more, I wanted to fit in, which is why I became a fictional saint. Being fictional, I can’t do much that is real, for example, give absolution because absolution is absolutely true and fiction isn’t. I could pretend to give absolution and if someone is only pretending to be contrite, that would work I guess. Even so, as a fictional saint, I’ve decided that fiction can be a good tactic for revealing truth. Sometimes there’s even some actual, not just fictional, truth to it. But sometimes the truth is even stranger than fiction, in which case no one believes it.

Fiction can also be a good tactic for creating the appearance of truth without any truth whatsoever, in other words, blatant lies. There is a news channel that uses fiction a lot. Fiction is a wonderfully versatile device that can allow corruption to roll on like some clattering World War I vintage tank while everyone pretends the old junker is a streamlined futuristic technologically-advanced hope-machine that really works. For example, banks. Many people have been led to believe that banks have lots of technical financial expertise. The fuel of banks is money but now they have a new fuel that makes them go faster, something no one comprehends called derivatives, which some people believe are pure fiction. But if the fuel doesn’t really exist, if the financial speed-machine is really running on empty, then it is a successful business model, until no one believes it anymore. Then it becomes what we call a fiction. And when a bank can’t outrun the people who want their money back, which wasn’t fiction when they deposited it, this is known as a run on the bank. Then the government steps in to protect the people’s money. This is also fiction.

Fiction can be applied to anything. It can explain how dinosaurs existed at the same time as people; how childrens do learn, and how if we teach a child to read, he or her will be able to pass a literacy test. On the other hand, no one can take the high horse and then claim the low road. When we want to explain why education is failing, all we need to do is consult the aphorisms of the former President of the United States where wings take dream, who has advised us that the human being and fish can coexist peacefully. Until I heard President Bush make this remark, I was worried about fish declaring war, but I’m happy we were able to sign a treaty with them. I do like the idea of dreaming wings.

But the real problem with education isn’t the President’s proclivity for malapropisms. It isn’t fish, or grammar, or high horses: it’s teachers. You can get a lot of mileage out of teachers! They make great fuel for any fun fiction machine. Grind them up and the jalopy keeps rattling along. If students fail, take money away from their schools and fire the teachers. That’ll teach ‘em.

Oddly, we don’t apply the same logic to banks. I wonder why that is. Even big banks that launder drug money face no criminal prosecution, because the myth says they are too big to jail once we’ve convinced everyone they are too big to fail. Attorney General Holder said so. Banks involved in drug trade? Everyone agrees that the truth is stranger than fiction and so that kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Nothing is the banks’ fault. Ever. The quiet is overwhelming. Here, just listen to it for a moment: ( ). Even the near collapse of the world economy was the fault of the poor, those who applied for the loans, the people with the least financial experience and wealth.

Banks win, teachers lose. Priorities. Four hundred people have more wealth than half the nation. Blame the poor for the failing economy because they got in the way of the wealthy making more money and it is reasonable that half the income of the nation is hardly enough! It’s not as if our educational system could benefit from some of that money. Blame teachers for the shoddy shape of education, not those who actually run the schools: that would be the principals, the superintendents, the school boards, the State. Bad teachers. Bad teacher unions. Someone should make a dart board. Teachers should be pilloried with all kinds of vegetables and maybe some road apples.

This is the story of a small event that had enormous repercussions for one teacher. As a fictional saint, I want to