Published: March 1, 1995

A Career Worth Fighting For

According to a recent news item, 2,000 beginning teachers quit the Los Angeles schools each year. Small wonder. All of the ills of society--unemployment, broken families, teenage pregnancies, youth gangs, and drug abuse--are bound to be reflected in the classroom.

When I tell people that I survived 40 years of teaching in the New York City schools, they usually comment, "Things were different in your day.'' Different, yes, but hardly easy.

When I began teaching, 56 years ago, the Great Depression was still festering. It wasn't a time for dreams. You grabbed any available job. For beginning teachers in New York City, openings were mainly in vocational schools, the runts of the educational litter. Three weeks into the 1938 winter term, the board of education assigned me as a substitute teacher of English to the New York Vocational School in...