Monday, 8/18/08 (b)

Matt hadn't really been sweating the educational part of his new adventure. (He'd spent about 90% of his time after accepting the job thinking about how to install a zone press for the basketball team to run.) He'd thoroughly enjoyed his student teaching last spring and his advisers had told him, essentially, that he was a natural-born educator. He was able to maintain a controlled, learning-conducive environment while relating to his would-be scholars in a friendly peer-to-peer basis. (He didn't view this a particularly noteworthy characteristic given he was only about five years older than some of them.) Plus, he'd always been good at math. Dominated it. And his load was pretty light. He was teaching Algebra to two 9th grade classes and then Honors Algebra II to two 10th grade classes. Then in the spring he'd be teaching Honors Economics to seniors.

It was because of the Econ class that he was in Sean Perlozzo's classroom with four other teachers on his first afternoon at CVHS. It wasn't entirely clear to him why Economics was grouped in with the English department, but he wasn't looking to make waves on his first day. In fact, he was just glad to be out of Perlozzo's crosshairs to this point. He'd spent the first 20 minutes of the session absolutely blistering the two other English teachers who didn't show up for the meeting and the next ten blistering Principal Tierney for not running a more efficient school. The subsequent 60 minutes were as tedious as any he'd ever spent inside school walls as Perlozzo started listing individual writing assignments that a CVHS student should write from week one of his/her freshman year to the time he/she graduated. Matt was deep in thought about potential under-the-basket in-bounds plays when the sliver of his brain tasked with minimally paying attention issued an alert.

"Matt, I'm sure you're wondering why you are here."

At that moment, an older, heavily-bearded man slowly sauntered into the room causing Perlozzo to stop talking for one of the few times for the last hour and a half.

"Sean. Gotta a call. Said you ... weren't at cross country practice this morning."

"Well J.T., why would I have been there? I'm not coaching cross-country this year."

"Nobody told me that", the older man responded after some thought.

"I told Gene a couple of weeks ago. He was supposed to tell you. I'm too busy now that I'm chair of the English department."

Perlozzo impatiently started to turn his attention back toward the teachers.

"Nobody told me that you weren't coaching."

Perlozzo sighed heavily and rotated back to face J.T. and muttered,

"I think we've covered that."

Meanwhile, the four veteran CVHS teachers who'd been held captive over the past 90 minutes, and who weren't going to let a second chance for escape go by, used the distraction of their jailer as an excuse for an ipso facto adjournment of the meeting.

Perlozzo now traded in his previous condescending tone for one of agitation.

"Arrgh. Can't that old fool Tierney do anything right!" "All right. Let's go see him. But it's a waste of your time and it's definitely a waste of mine, because I'm not coaching this year. You might as well start looking for someone to babysit that mollycoddled squad of so-called runners."

With that Sean Perlozzo stormed past J.T. near the door, with the older man in tow, en route to the principal's office.

And just like that Matt found himself all alone in the classroom. After a few moments reflecting on the sudden squall that had just passed and left only sunny skies in its wake, he got up to return to his classroom. Turning left out of the door, he immediately found his path blocked by the grizzled figure of J.T. Weber.

"Matthew, right? I need to talk to you."