When Teachers Were Teachers

January 4, 2021 William A. Gralnick

The eighth-grade PS 217 graduating class of 1959 or ’60. That’s Bill Gralnick, right-hand side, fourth row up, fourth boy in. Photo courtesy of Bill Gralnick

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With so few teachers teaching in school, I’ve been thinking about the ones who taught me, and my generation. Mostly old-timers, they did it by the book, and it was a different book used for our kids today. Discipline was king and if you challenged the system too much you could end up, at least at PS 217 on stage, bent over, backside facing the Assistant Principal who was holding a canoe paddle. They were hard-core dedicated to the task, but in every batch was one or two who stood out for the wrong reasons, like these two.

Miss McNulty:

“Bones” McNulty was in a category by herself. Miss McNulty taught seventh grade math. She had gray hair, but she was so terrifying to look at, her hair could have been puce and I’d not have noticed. Miss McNulty was about five feet eleven inches tall. She looked to weigh about fifty-three pounds. Her fingers were as long as yardsticks, all boney with protruding joints, and blue veins coursing along her skin. When she wasn’t happy, she pointed a finger at you and lightning flamed from its tip burning holes right through your shirt into your chest. She was often not happy. The only thing I learned in seventh grade math was to duck.

Mr. Proshan:

With the accent after “Pro-“, he was a sad but almost comic figure. A veteran of WW II, he was, in the parlance of the day, “shellshocked.” The manifestation of that was when he heard a sudden, sharp, loud noise like the backfire of a car he would blurt out “Woo-woo!” and then go on teaching as if nothing of the sort had come out of his mouth. The science classroom window overlooked four lane Newkirk Avenue. Need I say more?

Mr. Proshan had a closet full of brown suits or just one. In either case, that’s what he wore every day. And the same near-sighted tailor made them all. His pants were too short, and his sleeves were too long. The shirt was of no consequence. And he either had worn the same socks every day or also had a drawer full of them too. The sleeves, however, were another story.

These were the days of blackboards and chalk, erasers, and dust. By late in the day, the tray under the blackboard would be full of chalk dust. Mr. Proshan was a short man, and invariably, after writing on the board, he would sweep around to face the class, and in so doing, scoop up copious amounts of chalk dust between the jacket sleeve and his shirt cuff. At that point, you could assume one of two things would happen. He’d either point to a student as he turned, or a car would backfire; he’d throw up his hands and go . . . well, you know. Either way, he would suddenly be enveloped in a cloud of white dust. Now, clearly, for dopey eighth graders, this type of daily comedy sketch was bound to test the restraints not already tightly laced into those of that age group.

One day they broke. It was report card day. Everyone was nutty with anticipation. I had been doing very well, and was expecting an A. I didn’t get it.

Poor Mr. Proshan was hit with a double whammy. While he was collecting chalk dust in his cuffs, a truck backfired. He spun around, and what happened next seemed to be in slow motion. His sleeves, like Mickey’s in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, billowed out. His “woo-woo!” seemed to hang in front of his lips where it was enveloped in the growing cloud of white dust. There was a gasp, a moment of silence, and then some thirty-five students just fell out. It was mass hysteria. Tears rolling down cheeks, palms slapping desks . . . Had we been the audience for a comedy, it would have been wonderful. We were not.

Mr. Proshan went crazy. He turned a color I had never seen on a human being before. Roman candles shot out of his eyes and ears, and very un-teacher-like phrases exploded from his mouth. My best recollection is something like, “Laugh at me, will you? I’ll show you, you little b!&*!!ds.” He scooped up all the report cards, a red pen, and proceeded to flunk the entire class. Having handed out the last card, he said, “Now get outta here and go home!”

Going home with an “F” in science was not a good thing. My mother sat me down in the kitchenette and, stone-faced, listened to my story. She then turned the same color as Mr. Proshan had with similar pyrotechnics to accompany the twisting of her face into a contortion of anger she didn’t match again for years. The Exorcist comes to mind. She was looking at straight A’s except for this work of Communist-red art in the middle of the line. “HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? WHAT ABOUT THAT PROJECT MR. COHEN HELPED YOU WITH??”

I explained as best I could. She was fuming, but fortunately not at me. She was sputtering mad and sputtered all night ‘til morning when she said, “Get in the car!” Not only had she hardly ever driven me to school, but she also rarely ever saw numbers on a clock before ten. Now this same lady who verbally assaulted a gang and promised to call in air strikes if they didn’t get off our block, parked her car and was headed missile-like straight for Mr. Proshan’s door with me in tow.

“HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? THIS IS A STRAIGHT A STUDENT! YOU COULD RUIN HIS ACADEMIC AVERAGE!! DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THIS F WILL FOLLOW HIM THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL?”

While this tirade was going on, I was under a desk somewhere wrapping myself in humiliation, or wishing I was.

The bell rang, she left, I went to class and awaited with dread, seventh period. I walked in and sat down in a now deathly silent classroom. Mr. Proshan called on me and asked me to give the report I didn’t give on F-bomb day. He waxed rhapsodic, took back my report card, which had to be turned in with a parent’s signature, scrubbed out the star-spangled “F” and over it put a big blue “A+”, however with no asterisks.

And the other students?

Let’s just say it was a good thing it was the end of the second semester and the next year I’d be in the Midwood building. The greater numbers protected me from being assassinated by the kids whose grades weren’t changed.

We learned later, though, that Saint Mildred the Mother wasn’t the only complainant, only the most threatening. The principal investigated the “grade slaughter” and mandated all the grades be re-evaluated and re-posted. We heard through the grapevine the following year school was Proshan-less; he had retired.