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On the Road to Damascus

by Dr. Patrick T. Dougherty

64 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-0082; ISBN 1-4120-2254-1; US$12.50, C$14.50, EUR10.50, £7.50

What motivates you to teach students with life stories like third world children? How do you deal with their tragedies and triumphs? The reflections of an inner city teacher.

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

Doce ut discus, we learn by teaching. This is the motto of many an inspired teacher, but what, exactly, is learned? The subject at hand, yes, but even more, an insight into the heart of life.

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About the Author

Dr. Patrick Dougherty grew up in rural Michigan, in a small community, attending a peaceful set of schools surrounded by the same companions from nursery through high school. He attended college in Oregon and Austria, graduating with a BA in History. After college he decided to go to graduate school and attended Northern Arizona University. it was there that he decided on his life's work of education. Teaching some college classes and working with high school students through the bureau of Indian Affairs, he became convinced that teaching was his calling. He completed a teaching license program after finishing his MA in Modern American History.

Wanting to work with at-risk students, Pat opted for a tour of duty at a large school in south Phoenix, Arizona. His typical class consisted of students from six or seven ethnic backgrounds with a host of first languages other than English. The school population was largely Hispanic and African American, with large minorities of Asian and Native American students. The vast majority of the students were what was classically termed, "at-risk."

After ten years, two more Master's degrees, a Doctorate in education, two children, and a growing desire to have his children exposed to his wife's culture, Dr. Dougherty left Phoenix and took up a new career as a professor of English at a university in Japan. He resides in Himeji, Japan, living in an old section of the city, within view of its ancient samurai castle. Pat, when asked about his teaching experiences, always cites his time in Phoenix as the crucible in which his talents were fired and tempered. "Those were tough, beautiful, and fulfilling years," he says. "You couldn't just get by in that situation, you had to grasp these kids' attention, steal their thoughts away from the chaos that so many of them had to deal with in their personal lives. You learned to be an actor, steward, communicator. If you could maintain your sanity, the environment was thrilling in a way that extreme sports cannot duplicate," explained Pat.

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Excerpts

The first clash of my idealism with the reality of the streets came in my third week of teaching when I learned the sound that bullets make when they ching against brick and cement. I had finished a day of classes and the kids had been good. I was feeling satisfied that I was reaching more than a few of them there, in old room 210, in my ragged school south of the highway in Phoenix, Arizona. I had gotten a glass of water from the cooler in the office and was walking to the social studies supply room to get some drawing paper for an assignment that I was creating for the next day. I was walking along the side of the liberal arts building near the street when the gunfire erupted. Iconographic images played out before me. A young man dressed in white jeans and a white tank top was running, a silver car sizzled to a halt behind him, two young men in sunglasses flew from the gut of the car and pulled guns...the young man twenty feet from me, and then flashes and sound. Blood on the tank top and on the jeans, the two men disappearing from view as I focused on the fallen image on the sidewalk. I felt water on my hand and realized that I was shaking.

* * * *

I go to my room, old 210, noticing how dead the grass seems, parched and sizzled. Deserts. The Gobi. Sahara, Kalahari, Taklamakan sands, reg, rocky shores on the ocean of sand, the singing hills of far Asia, tales of Saint-Exupery, a haunted calling of the azan...lands of prophets and of madmen.

I click the door and let in Raul. Raul the wanderer. He comes into being with each dawn, reborn to stand by my paint-chipped door. Raul the lanky hermit, the poet-haired one immersed again in a novel of magic and kingdoms of ether, where dragons argue ideology with gnomes and are both slain with laser points--story lines that the captains of the Enterprise warping through space would welcome as home.

He glides to a desk, back corner on the right, the same as yesterday, and shall the same be tomorrow--constants. The sunrise, the sunset, the full moon, and Raul.

I splash out the remnant grounds of coffee from my cup out onto the parched grass. Three girls call gum snapping greetings as they flounce by, laughing and buzzing, flaunting the dress code with bare midriffs and skin hugging micro minis. The desert attire of stardusted teenage hearts on the prowl. The sneak each morning into gas station restrooms to metamorphose, paint on makeup, tug on miniskirts, and dangle jewelry--fruits forbidden by Mexican fathers, harsh fathers, who as young men, worshipped the girls who snuck into washrooms to emerge like new butterflies in the morning sun.

* * * *

I walk back into the room, enter the cave, looking for the truth behind the shadows.

My desk sits, a leaden lump, vintage military and old, perhaps, as the globe that was the sole adornment when I inherited this abode of learning. My House of Wisdom. My Sorbonne. Ah, the globe. On its yellowed vision of Earth, with its red pen marks and sea swirls rest images of countries that exist no longer; yet, I hold it still for to toss it away would be to forsake a senile aunt.

Past teachers who walked this faded carpet include one who left to die in Africa. Far away places, deams on the Serengeti, the shadow of Kilimnajaro, lions panting beyond the campfire. Eidetic images. Great Zimbabwe, Mansa Musa, the gold of the Sudan, Zanzibar...

From my dest I take my briefcase and remove its contents. An archeologist dissecting a mummy. Pens, slips of memos, papers and the poem. I glance at it, remembering. Its words bubble images into my brain.

When you hear the wind, call her name
and ask if she remembers me

The first bell rings, I hear the legions stir, moving voices, a battle commencing. And, as if distant thunder, my mind echoes the clash of ancient swords.

* * * *

The bell sounds its cacophony wail. The students resurrect, electric, charging, banging, out in the brilliant radiance of the sun.

"Remember the test! Force yourselves, study!"

In the distant regions of my memory, I hear the conch sound, calling in the darkness, above the black waters in the night.

I walk back to my desk, savoring the moment's peace, brief as a moth's wing against a flame. I pick up the paper and decipher again the lines of my poem...

"Hi Dr. D.!"

"Maestro! We are here!"

The tang of armor and sword, cries of anguish and triumph echoing from the palisade cliffs, blood mingles with tears, and the sands drink up the ebbing lives as they stream from broken bodies. I imagine scintillating souls pirouetting in the smoke about the now silent battlefield.

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Catalogue Information

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