The Teacher Next Door

Matthias has been stopping by our classroom in the afternoons.  I think he does this for two reasons, the most obvious being that he shares his classroom with another teacher, so during sixth period (our “free” period) he doesn’t really have a home.  I also think that he’s lonely.
    He’s new to the school, and he’s teaching a strange collection of classes; technology (and I cannot figure out for the life of me what a “technology” class is about: computers? threshers? bows and arrows? fire?) and one section of social studies.  He’s part time, and he teaches another class in the morning at another school.  He’s cornered me a few times--at the copier, in the parking lot--and I found myself in both situations trying to find graceful--and then not-so-graceful--ways out of the conversation.  He’s a white guy like me, round in the belly, with a tendency to sweat too much and to overstay his welcome.  He wears these little fedoras and floral print shirts that make him appear like he’s always about to go on vacation.
    Two days ago he came in while Laura and I were debriefing a particularly disastrous class, and he just sort of sat down at a desk, listening to our conversation, chiming in with suggestions from time-to-time.  That his suggestions weren’t terribly helpful is sort of beside the point.  That he talked down to me, as though I hadn’t taught a day in my life was also beside the point.  The point is: his presence signaled a kind of violation of the space for Laura.  If she had been a cat, the hair on her back would have risen to the ceiling.
    She said something about it to me the next day, how she just didn’t have time to chit-chat and socialize with the teacher next door.  And I nodded in my sort of neutral, vaguely affirming way, and thought no more about it until I was driving in this morning and it dawned on me that since I had been at Edison, I hadn’t really thought about a single other teacher in the school--other than ones whose classes I observed, but I wasn’t really interested in them; I was interested in what the kids were experiencing.  I really could have cared less about them.
    And so I wonder what happens to the teacher like Matthias.  Yesterday when he stopped by Laura looked real busy, turned her back to him, engaged me in a pretty intense one-on-one conversation.  He came in, picked up some trash from the floor (“It helps me unwind; I was a custodian for 13 years.”), moved some of our desks around and, I suspect, sensing he wasn’t entirely welcome, moved on.
    And I have to say my heart goes out to the man just a little this morning, because he’s extremely isolated, and he spends his entire day with children who, I suspect, don’t really want to be around him either (the way he talks about kids, I’m not sure I would want to be around him).  And then he sort of wanders the halls, a little aimless, looking to connect, like these kids, perhaps, not knowing exactly where his place is in these echoey halls, which, when they empty out, have the soul-crushing feeling of a ghost town after all the gold has been ripped from the hills.