It was a dark and stormy night

Every now and then... say, when I'm walking down Route 80 at midnight on Halloween
because my employers have locked the gates to the parking lot, and it's raining, and there's
a full moon somewhere behind the clouds above me, and there's a foul mood hovering
around me like flies on a carcass -- it's times like those that I begin to wonder about
some of the career choices I've made.

I'd spent the evening working on the school newspaper. I'd sent my students home (I
think it's cruel and unusual punishment for anyone to have to work on Halloween). As
usual, everything took longer than I'd expected, partially because I was so tired. Slap-
happy, in fact: I caught myself singing along to Jimmy Buffett at the top of my lungs at
around 10 p.m. I'm glad there are no longer nuns living at the school.

Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time I finished -- around 12:30. It was a good
kind of tired, though, the kind you get when you feel you've accomplished something.
Not only was the paper a good one, but there were two stories in particular that I felt
achieved what I'd come back to my old high school to do.

Growing up, I'd always thought of my high school as kind of a backward place, a difficult
place to be if you thought or acted differently from everyone else. It wasn't until years later
that I found out everyone feels like an outcast at one point or another, and that schools
like mine were the norm, rather than the exception -- it seems to be in the nature of
institutions.

I still thought I could make a difference, though. I thought I could be the kind of teacher
who would inspire students to be themselves, to love literature, to express themselves in
writing. I thought I could make the school newspaper the kind of hard-hitting,
authoritative source of information I always thought it could be -- as well as a place to
hang out for people who felt the way I did in high school.

Turns out being a teacher was tougher than I thought. Most days I'm thrilled if I don't end
up putting my classes to sleep. The newspaper's gone well, but that's mostly because
I've been lucky enough to end up with a creative, curious, dedicated group of students.
Still, it's never really lived up to the potential I'd imagined.

Until now. There were two stories going into this issue -- both daring, both well-researched,
well-written, well-organized, and controversial (at least by the standards of a suburban
Catholic school). One was about junior high kids playing on junior varsity teams (doesn't
sound like much, but the relationship between our junior high and high schools is less
than cozy, and the topic ruffled a lot of feathers). The other one was about stem cells.

I was particularly proud of the second story. The reporter had knocked herself out
gathering information, making sure her story was balanced, writing and re-writing the story
until I was sure she was ready to strangle me. It read like a professional piece, and yet
even our seventh-grade students would have understood something about the stem cell
controversy by the time they put the paper down.

Of course, I expected some flak from the administration -- they're more than a little touchy
about anything that smells of controversy, especially religious controversy. But I'd left a
copy of the story with my principal, and hadn't heard anything about it during the days and
nights my students and I scrambled to put together the paper. I felt elated -- this was
finally going to be the kind of paper I wanted it to be.

I knew, of course, in the back of my mind that my principal would never let us publish the
story. I also knew that she'd wait until the last minute to tell me, that she wouldn't tell me
face-to-face, and that she'd avoid me like the plague for days afterward. I was right.
When I checked my mailbox at 12:30 this morning, I found a little yellow Post-It note
reminding me that ours is a Catholic school, and that any stories about stem cell
research would have to emphasize the Catholic -- and only the Catholic -- point of view.
As I told her today, that's not what news stories do. It didn't matter.

I wasn't in a great mood when I left the school. I decided I'd better get some sleep before
waking up to whatever confrontation awaited me in the morning. I climbed into my car,
switched the radio on, headed for the gates -- and found them locked.

As luck would have it, I had my running clothes in the car. I didn't like the idea of getting
changed in the parking lot -- I imagined a carload of kids coming to egg the school and
finding me between outfits -- but I figured I'd reach my parents' house a lot faster
running than walking. Besides, I needed the exercise.

After a couple of miles, I crapped out. (Hey, I'd had a long day, and anger wears you down).
I called my brother, who was incoherent; my mother came to rescue me. I crawled into
bed, appreciated but ignored a phone message from Trish, and thought about what to
tell my reporter the next day.

If I was proud of her for writing the story, I was even prouder of her for refusing to re-write
it as a piece of Catholic propaganda. (I have nothing against the church, understand, but
I'm a journalist; I don't do PR). I know I'll never get through to the school administration
-- and I'm beginning to wonder if teaching in a Catholic school is really such a great idea
in the first place -- but the students, at least, seem to understand what good journalism
means. At least a few of them do. And even if it's only one or two -- and even if it turns out
I had nothing to do with it -- it's still a good feeling.

And right about now, a good feeling is exactly what I need.