Libby's New Job
It’s the first year of the toughest job she’ll ever love for a
businesswoman turned teacher
by Steve Jones
Libby Fogg has changed careers. She now makes less money, works longer hours, has a desk full
of paperwork, attends lots of meetings, and spends much of her time watching over other people’s
children.
It’s all in a day’s work for a public school teacher. And that is exactly what she wants to be.
It seems like only yesterday that the Maryville, Tenn., native was fresh out of college with a
degree in Political Science, a 23-year-old woman on her way to a career with the Xerox
Corporation. Today, she teaches French at West High School in nearby Knoxville. In the interim,
she studied, worked, borrowed, scrimped, commuted long distances, and gave the county school
system a year of her life for which she received not a dime of compensation.
After working at Xerox for a year, she realized it was not what she wanted to do with her life. She
wanted something more. So she returned to the University of Tennessee and spent two years
completing a masters degree in foreign language education. Then she interned for a year (without
pay) and taught her first classes while still a student herself. When the school year ended, her new
graduate degree and teaching credential in hand, Fogg set out to find her first job.
She interviewed with schools in several cities and states, but always hoped that West, the site of
her internship and student teaching, would want her back. Fogg had a positive experience there.
She appreciated the way she was treated, and liked the diversity of the student body at the
centrally-located school, which draws students from a variety of economic and social strata in
Knoxville. “I came to U.T. for diversity, and I found diversity at West as well.”
On August 9, she got her wish. She would be one of three rookie teachers at the school. The first
day of classes was less than two weeks away, and there was lots to do.
August 11: Room 119
The halls of West High School are all but empty, and an eerie silence is only occasionally
interrupted by a voice echoing between rows of hollow lockers, as teachers and administrators
scurry about in shorts, blue jeans and t-shirts, working to ready things for yet another academic
year.
Libby Fogg negotiates the maze of turns and corridors that brings her to Room 119, her first
classroom. She has not seen this room since last May, and was told that a local church group has
been using it over the summer. Turning on the room’s lights, she sees that they have yet to leave.
There are no chairs or desks for students, and in place of one for her sits a baby changing table
with detailed written instructions taped to a nearby wall on how to change a diaper. She smiles at
the irony of such a thing in a high school classroom, and decides there is little she can do until the
church people move their things out.
But she is itching to get her class ready, and determined to do something. So she decides to drive
to the county’s Teacher Resource Center, where there is already a beehive of activity, veteran
teachers walking around each other, drawing posters, laminating pictures, cutting big letters out of
bright construction paper. Fogg doesn’t seem to know where to begin, but before long she too
begins to accumulate adornments for her own class.
A colorful “Bienvenue” on the door will welcome her students every day. At the front of the room
over the whiteboard (the 1990s version of the traditional chalk and dust blackboard), stark cutouts
of QUI, QUE, QUAND, QU and COMMENT spell out the who, what, when, where and how of French
that her students will use daily.
Every now and then another teacher, her face lined from years of her own experience, asks Fogg
what she teaches or where. And with each time that she answers “French” or “West High School,”
she seems to grow more and more comfortable.
August 15: Interior Decorating
The church has finally moved out of her classroom, and although she now has a desk for herself,
Fogg still has none for her students, although she has been assured that there are several on a
truck somewhere that should (hopefully) arrive any day. She doesn’t have time to worry about
this, though; there’s plenty else to keep her busy.
A television mounted in her room is tuned to news and sounds from Woodstock II on VH-1 as Fogg
arranges pictures on a bare wall. This is just background music, though; she’s more of an
Aerosmith fan herself. But it’s good enough to keep her company as she begins to decorate.
“Now, do I want to be crazy or symmetrical?” A friend at Xerox has made some enlargements for
her of several postcards Fogg brought back from her trip to France last year, and now colorful
scenes of Notre Dame Cathedral, Le Moulin Rouge and other exotic locales adorn part of her class.
At the other end of the room, a bulletin board is papered with essays about reasons to study
foreign languages and articles regarding French-speaking countries currently in the news. “I want
this to be their place,” Fogg says, hoping her students will bring in more clippings on their own.
Later, after appropriating a file cabinet from the teacher’s workroom down the hall, her former
mentor (and the school’s other French teacher), Stephanie Rogers, stops by the see how Fogg is
doing and offer advice on such topics as where to place her desk (“How far out did you have
yours?” Fogg asks) and how to deal with an obvious shortage of textbooks.
“I’m doing everything from scratch and I don’t know if I’m doing it right,” Fogg says. “This job will
demand every skill that I have.”
August 17: Pep Rally
As one of about 3,500 teachers in the Knox County School System, Fogg attends its annual in-
service meeting at Knoxville’s Civic Coliseum. The key-note speaker is Dr. George McKenna,
superintendent of the Los Angeles Public Schools, and the whole affair takes on the air of a pep
rally, in large part because of McKenna and his talk.
“He said a lot of stuff that really boosted me up,” Fogg says. The theme for the gathering was
Touching Tomorrow Today, and the margins of her program of the event are jammed with many of
McKenna’s comments and her own thoughts about what she is about to undertake:
“The one thing that can set us free is education … You are frozen in the minds of this community
forever … If they’re in your class, they become a part of your world … Volunteer schoolwide … If
you let them slip away now, they’re gone forever … Include the parents … Everybody who’s anyone
had a teacher.”
School begins in five days.
August 19: Big Plans
Her students would be here Monday, but Fogg still has no desks for them. There is no panic on her
part, though; if the desks aren’t here on time, well, then, she’ll think of something.
Looking exhausted in her chair, leaning on her elbows, her eyes scan the empty class, as if to
visualize the roomful of teenagers and backpacks that will occupy that same space in less than 72
hours. Who will they be? What will they be like? Where will they be from? When will they try to
test her? And how?
“It’s so exciting to see the students for the first time,” Fogg says in a voice of equally measured
excitement and angst. And it is at this moment that she is drawn to reflect on her own academic
work in France, where she spent a month with 20 other university students from Tennessee and
Texas as part of the Normandy Scholars Program, a special studies course abroad sponsored by
the Veterans Administration to help Americans explore the legacy left from World War II. “It was
such a central and integral part of my education.”
Just as important, it was something that Fogg hopes has left a legacy that she can successfully use
in her own classroom. “It’s hard to make things relevant to students today....But (teaching French)
is actually a good vehicle for drawing parallels between what happened in World War II regarding
prejudice and the persecution of Jews, and the racism that exists today, both here and in other
countries.”
“Stereotyping, scapegoating, ignorance and racism occur everywhere,” Fogg says, who also
believes that learning multiculturalism is important. “I know that’s a real catchword these days,
but it’s true. We are living in a multicultural society, and the kids today are where we need to
bridge that gap. It’s important that we all learn there may be times when our way, the American
way, isn’t the only way, or even always the best way.”
“People talk about this stuff all the time, but I’m tired of talking about it. I want to start doing
something. So these are ideas that will be brought up in my class. I don’t care if they’re in the
curriculum or not; they’re in life’s curriculum.”
“I’m here to teach French; that’s my job,” Fogg says, “but, really, how much of a foreign language
are most of these kids going to take out of here and remember years from now? More
importantly, I’m here to be a role model and a positive influence in their lives.”
August 21: No Desks, No Disks
Less than 24 hours to go, and Fogg has given up on the desks arriving in time for the first day of
classes tomorrow. So she has improvised with a mélange of small folding tables and chairs to go
with the few traditional student desks she has been able to scavenge from other classrooms.
“I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” says the new teacher, as she affixes labels reading “Ms.
Fogg” and “Do Not Remove” on her stapler and tape dispenser. “I just need to print out my Student
Profile form and make some copies,” she says while looking through her bag for the computer disk
on which she composed the document last year.
But the disk is nowhere to be found. It’s getting on in the afternoon, and Fogg does not want to
retype the entire thing. Gritting her teeth, however, she realizes that’s exactly what she will have
to do. “It’s a good thing I have this new no-cursing policy in my life,” she says, barely able to
contain her frustration, as she heads toward the computers in the Library.
August 22: D-Day
It’s 7:30 a.m. and Fogg rechecks her class lists. Uh-oh. One of her classes has 33 students
enrolled, and, even with her makeshift seating arrangement, she still only has seats for 31. For a
moment, she considers borrowing two chairs from the teacher’s lounge, but ultimately rejects that
idea. While pondering this dilemma, she decides to get a Diet Coke, but the machine is out of
them.
In the mail room, teachers are scampering about, high on adrenalin and caffeine, picking up class
rolls and last minute mail. By chance, Fogg meets a teacher who can spare a few desks; she
borrows five of them.
It is now 8:15 a.m., and school starts in fifteen minutes. Fogg decides to make a quick field trip to
the Ladies Room. “One thing about being a teacher,” she says, “you had better visit the restroom
before the kids get here.”
The bell rings at 8:30. Each grade assembles in a different area of the school to be divided up into
homerooms. Fogg gets all the freshmen whose names begin with H. Back in her room, she finds
herself calling out a roll of unfamiliar names over the din of 35 noisy 14-year-olds.
“Here,” says a meek boy sporting a Pink Floyd shirt and new haircut, although Fogg has trouble
hearing him.
“Raise your hand loudly,” she says, immediately smiling at her own syntax error. But that and
much else is soon forgotten as the homeroom group leaves and her own classes file in and out
over the course of this first school day.
Because classes only meet for a half day on this Monday, each one is only in her room for a short
period, just barely time for Fogg to pass out her list of class rules and student profile forms, give a
brief description of the class, and introduce them to a little French.
“Bonjour” she says to students who pass through the door. “Bonjour” answers most of the French II
students, some of whom Fogg recognizes from her internship last year.
“Bonjour...” answers some of the beginning students, although it seems as though they may be a
little unsure of what they just said.
By the end of the day, Fogg realizes she has forgotten to pass out the rules to one class, and the
profile sheets to half the others. Oh, well, she thinks sitting in the teachers’ lounge, comparing
first-day notes with her new colleagues, there’s always tomorrow.
August 23: Down to Business
It is the first full day of school in Ms. Fogg’s classroom, and she is already working at establishing
a routine. She has more than a hundred students in her five French classes (not counting a home
room class when it meets), so she wants to get in as much teaching as she can. Each day begins
the same, no matter how everyone’s feeling. “Bonjour Classe” Fogg says.
“Bonjour Mademoiselle” the class responds.
“Comment allez-vous aujourdhui?” she will ask.
“Tres bien, merci, et vous?” they say in return.
Later, she will lead them in the American Pledge of Allegiance–in French. She will leave it on the
board for a few weeks, but eventually everyone will have to recite it for a grade. Some students
seem to have their doubts about the whole thing.
August 24: Different Languages
“Le seat, et vous?” Fogg asks a boy entering her second period class.
“Huh?” he says. “What that mean?”
“Something about a chair, I think,” says another.
Later, during her fifth period class, Fogg is talking to some students at her desk, when she
overhears part of a conversation she obviously considers inappropriate. “Excuse me,” she says,
looking up, “but whoever said ‘suck,’ that is not a good school word. I don’t want to hear that in
here again. Okay?”
And that’s the end of that.
After her last class of the day, Fogg headed downtown to sign her contract, drove home to
Maryville, where she has been living with her grandmother for the past year to save money, took
a quick nap, and then worked on lessons for three hours. Somewhere in the day she even found
time to go over a stack of student profiles. She reads each one, often adding thoughts of her own,
private messages back to each person.
One boy remarked that his favorite band is Guns-n-Roses, to which Fogg added in red, “I saw them
in concert; their music is great!”
Fogg asks her students in their profiles of themselves to name one thing that they think she should
know about them. Last year, when she was student teaching, one boy wrote, “I think you’re hot.”
Another girl wrote that she was pregnant.
August 25: Special Delivery
Fogg is busy teaching a group of beginning students to spell their names in French, when the phone
rings in her classroom. It’s a message from the office. She is quiet for a moment, then lets out a
yell of joy. Her students suddenly snap to attention; what’s up? they ask.
“The desks are here” she announces, enlisting all present to help carry them in from the waiting
truck, and dissemble the temporary arrangement of tables and chairs. By the time the new desks
have been arranged in rows and the other furniture moved out, however, only a few short minutes
remain in the class period. But Fogg has not forgotten about the scheduled quiz.
“Everyone get out a sheet of paper … come on, we don’t have a lot of time.”
September 8: Real Life
Libby Fogg found the living room set she wants at a local furniture store for her as yet unfurnished
apartment. The only problem is the price: $1,300! Coincidentally, the school’s administration asked
her the day before to be the Girls J.V. Basketball Coach, which would earn her an additional
$1,400 in annual income. But it would also have meant nightly practices, in addition to all the
games. Fogg is already in charge of the school’s mock trial event and Y-Teens, a girls civic group,
and decides that she doesn’t want to spread herself too thin, especially in her first year.
“I finally said, to heck with it; I need a life outside of this place. I’ll finance my couch, or get a
cheaper one.”
September 21: The Future Now
It’s College Day at West High School, and Libby Fogg walks amid a cluttered array of desks
sporting a gray t-shirt boosting her own alma mater, juggling a tic-tac candy in her mouth, while
giving instructions to 30 teenagers standing about murmuring simple phrases in broken French
amongst themselves.
This is cooperative learning in action, where a class breaks up into smaller, task-oriented groups,
solving problems with each other, creating questions for the whole class, some of which might
even find their way onto the next test. It’s more of a team approach to learning, Fogg says. “It
gets everyone talking and more involved. And that’s good, because when you're learning a foreign
language, you need to speak it every day.”
Fogg likes to use this technique as much as possible. She’s also excited about the new
concentrated curriculum teaching format concurrently being tried in pilot programs at three other
local high schools, and expected to be adopted on a systemwide basis next year. Instead of the
traditional six 50-minute class periods each day, this new way of teaching will mean four 90-
minute classes, in which, Fogg says, more can be done and learned.
“Education is beginning to come to grips with the fact that it’s got to change. We have to adapt the
way we do things … and I’m excited about that.”
September 23: Payday
It’s a big day for Libby Fogg: More than six weeks after she was hired, she receives her first
paycheck as a teacher. Now she can finally afford to move into her own apartment. It will be close
to school, too, which means no more long commutes to and from her grandmother’s house every
day.
September 28: A Difficult Concept
Frustration is beginning to set in during Fogg’s second period French I class. She has been trying
for much of the hour to explain the complex and confusing concept of adjective/subject agreement,
and the seemingly arbitrary designations of masculine and feminine. Why is the door “la porte”?
Why is the desk “le bureau”? Unfortunately, there is little rhyme or reason to it all, and the class
is having trouble grasping such a concept.
“Do you see how you just have to comprehend what’s going on here?” Fogg asks her bewildered
students. “It’s not that something is male or female; there is no reason that one thing is masculine
and another feminine. There is no magic formula. You just have to know, and learn it along with
the French word. You can’t just fill in the blanks.”
A roomful of glazed eyes stare back at her. “Hey, come on, y’all, speak up. Don’t make me do all
the work.”
Finally, the teacher resorts to the one thing she knows will wake them up. “Okay, gang, everybody
up! Let’s do our exercises” And to a still-alien cadence of French, Fogg leads her kids through an
array of stretching and knee-bends.
September 29: Open House
“I really don’t have anything special planned,” Fogg says as she prepares to meet her students’
parents, or at least the ones who show up on this night. Indeed, as she remarks later, “there seem
to be fewer parents here than last year.” But the ones that do visit Room 119 at West High School
this evening get to see essays on the wall their kids have written about themselves and their
families–and all in French. The teacher will even help them find their individual child’s work and
translate it.
And Fogg insists that all the parents recite the same little dialog their kids do at the start of each
class — “so you can get a feel for what they go through every day,” she says. It seems to work.
One by one, a parent approaches the young woman, only four months out of college, herself, and
asks how their son or daughter is doing in class. The answer is almost always the same: “Just
fine.”
Later, after the parents have left, the halls are once again quiet, and the new teacher finds herself
part of an impromptu gathering of colleagues in an empty classroom. Everyone is comparing notes
about students, parents and how it went when someone else remarks on the evening’s curious
phenomenon: Almost without exception, the people who asked about their children that evening
were parents of good students. They were all doing “fine.”
And though this is just her first teaching job, Fogg knew the reason along with all the seasoned
veterans. When you think about it, she said, it’s really not all that strange. “Those are usually the
only parents that show up.”
But it was late, and everyone was exhausted. So the teachers slowly made their way to the dark,
nearly deserted parking lot, which, they knew, would be full again in only a few hours. Now it was
time to go home.
For Libby Fogg, that meant another drive in her worn 1983 Nissan down Highway 129 to her
grandmother’s house, where she could rest up for the next day of her new job.
It was, after all, a school night.