(One week later)
And now the climactic battle is over. After the events of last Thursday morning, I had spent the remainder of Thursday and Friday having conversations with students – not just the Origami Rebellion, but any students who were interested – in the library during breaks and before and after school, and lesson times talking with any teacher who had a free period (especially the homeroom teachers who had had to supervise the Funtime sessions, and any teachers who might be interested in temporarily running elective classes).
Over the weekend, Gorman and I discussed matters, and plotted. We also found time to watch some Star Wars prequels on DVD, and Gorman emailed me a link to a parody comic in which Palpatine is a Jedi, not a Sith, and isn't inherently evil, but just manipulated into making increasingly bad decisions. Then again, in that version, Han Solo is evil (we first see him cold-bloodedly murdering a freighter pilot in order to steal his ship), so perhaps I should be worried about Gorman's Dark Side leanings!
Over Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week, I went on with the consultations and the plotting, along with trying to contact the parents of some of the key Origami Rebels to ask them to come to the school board meeting in the high school library on Thursday evening, where, of course, Charles Beckerman would be in charge. I had mixed success, even though most of the parents already knew from Gorman's presentation at my last meeting with them how dire the FunTime videos were (frankly, if I'd had a chance to preview them before ordering them, I wouldn't have ordered them), and I hoped they would want to turn up to discuss what we should do instead. But this didn't mean that they all wanted to attend a school board meeting. Either that, or they didn't trust that I was going to make things any better.
Mr and Mrs Lomax initially assumed that Thomas was in trouble, and lost interest in attending as soon as I assured them that he wasn't, and therefore that their presence was not obligatory. Thankfully, Kellen Campbell's parents were attending, and were willing to offer Thomas a ride. Mr and Mrs Coley had initially said they were coming, but then rang up to say they had a church meeting that night, and that Michael couldn't attend either because he needed to go to the church youth group. Mr Cunningham did attend the meeting, and before it started, he collared me to criticise my unscientific approach to testing whether the FunTime videos were an effective way to raise educational standards, saying that he didn't allow Harvey to turn in a science fair project that showed such sloppy methodology and he certainly expected better from an adult. I tried to explain that I had become aware of my error, but it was difficult when I couldn't get a word in edgeways. Sara Bolt's parents and grandmother were there to support her, all wearing Bart Simpson T-shirts, which I presume was an inside family joke: another symbol of rebellious spirit (even though it's Lisa Simpson and her grandmother Mona who are rebels with a cause).
Mrs Tharp was there, wearing the strained please-don't-do-anything-embarrassing expression towards Dwight that you usually see on teenagers embarrassed by their parents rather than the other way round. She looked deeply uneasy when Harvey and Thomas started talking in Star Wars references and Dwight brought out Origami Yoda to join in the conversation. She was just starting to tell him off for antagonising me with Star Wars origami, when I cut her off by announcing, 'I brought mine, too,' and showing Leia Origami to her. After that, she just looked puzzled, which was understandable.
Foreseeably, with so many students present to discuss the same issue, Charles asked for just one of them to act as spokesperson. I had warned the students about this being likely to happen, and reminded them about the five-minute rule. Remembering the school board meeting last fall where Thomas Lomax and Harvey Cunningham had come to speak against Dwight's expulsion, and Harvey had spent most of his five minutes talking about video games before dramatically revealing evidence that proved Dwight's innocence, they had managed to settle on letting Thomas be the spokesperson this time. I hadn't asked to see his speech beforehand, as Leia had warned me that he must choose his own path. But I knew that he had been working on it, editing and revising it for days.
I hadn't warned the students that I had let the local papers know that this meeting might be worth attending. After all, the students were here to convince the school board, not the media, and I wanted them just to be themselves and not be overawed (and I particularly didn't want a recurrence of Harvey's drama-queen tendencies). But I was fairly confident that the publicity wouldn't do any harm – or at least, that it would have good results for children and teachers, even if it was humiliating for me personally. After all, if I looked a fool at this stage, it was entirely my own fault for being one.
I hadn't known for sure what Charles was planning to do, but it was fairly obvious that, if we were preparing for battle, so would he be. I'd expected the Edu-Fun promotional video, and the free gifts of merchandise stamped with the Edu-Fun logo (in case someone thought, 'Gosh, I needed a new shopping bag and coffee mug so much when they keep telling us not to use disposable ones – I'm forever in your debt, Edu-Fun!'). But I hadn't expected him actually to manage to get Dr Karl Blonsky, CEO of Edu-Fun, to visit in person. I certainly hadn't expected the school board to be so overawed by Blonsky, or to applaud so frantically at his jargon-gibberish speech.
Still, it was all to the good. Gorman had already prepared his 'Worst of Professor Funtime' mixtape, but he'd been expecting to play it on his own laptop. As it was, though, while Dwight, Harvey and I were arguing with Dr Blonsky (all waving our puppets around), Gorman had time to get hold of Blonsky's laptop and play the video on that – with ten-foot-tall images of Professor Funtime on the overhead projector.
That might have been nearly enough to win the hearts and minds of the school board (and the journalists). So might the quotes that a student had managed to find from the actors in the Funtime videos about how much they despised the series. So might Thomas Lomax's speech. I could see how nervous he was, and when one of the school board confiscated his Obi-Wan puppet, he looked as if he was on the verge of losing hope. But instead he spoke up, passionately and eloquently, ignoring the script he had carefully prepared and speaking from the heart.
But perhaps it wouldn't have been quite enough to tip the balance, if I hadn't spoken up, too. Like Thomas, I didn't strictly follow the script I had prepared. I had meant to remind the school board that, as principal, it was my decision and not theirs whether any student was kept back a grade, but I hadn't planned to promise that no student would be kept back this year, regardless of their test score. I had intended to announce that the FunTime project was suspended permanently, and that the elective classes and the field trips were back on, but I hadn't known that I was going to say, 'and not to Craphole Plantation,' until I heard myself saying it.
The one thing I had meant to say in public, and which I didn't, was that I am resigning at the end of this term. It's true – but it would have been misleading. In the context of this meeting, it would have sounded like, 'I'm resigning because I'm useless at being a principal' (which is true, but I could improve) or even, 'I'm resigning because I'm so embarrassed at having said a rude word in front of the school board,' (not true – I was too high on excitement to be embarrassed), but, worse, it could have sounded like, 'I'm useless, so you can disregard everything that I and my students have just said.' Under the circumstances, nobody could have been expected to believe that I had started to realise how much I missed being an actual classroom teacher. Yet this is the real reason.
By the time I'd finished, and the school board had voted 5-4 to shelve the FunTime project (and I had managed to retrieve Obi-Wan for Thomas), I felt too drained to comment to the journalists. Besides, this was about our students, not about me. I did manage to steer the reporters in the direction of Sara Bolt, as the student most likely to be able to explain the connection between origami models of Star Wars characters and protesting against unpopular educational videos in a way that would make sense to an adult. Dwight Tharp or Michael Coley would have convinced them within a couple of sentences that our students are insane. Harvey Cunningham would have convinced them within one sentence that our students need a thorough thrashing.
But then, after Sara had talked to the journalists and let them photograph her Han and Chewie puppets (since it wouldn't be legal for them to photograph Sara as she's underage), she came to talk to me in private, and asked, 'Are you going to lose your job?' I explained that no, the school board weren't going to fire me, but that I wanted to resign and go back to being a regular teacher, and that I was going to be a math teacher here from next August, as well as drama coach. Sara hugged me, and it was just as well that there was no-one around to photograph that. After all, Sara may be one of the most emotionally mature seventh-graders, but she still doesn't seem to realise that if anyone had seen me in physical contact with a student, it would be regarded not only as a Public Display of Affection, but a Public Display of Paedophilia, and probably get me banned from being anywhere near anyone under eighteen ever again.