Monday, March 08, 2010

Once Upon A Time...I Was A Teacher. Part 2

The rest of the week....Friday came and went with my cleaning out my desk at 76 O'Farrell Street in San Francisco and wandering off to a nearby newstand for a detailed map of Union City, California and the environs. Map in hand I headed home to enjoy a quiet weekend with my family.
I had been instructed to be AT the Union City "school" BY 8 am as that's what time the students-to-be, MY students (!) would begin arriving. Frankly they knew more about what was actually going to happen than I did at that time. I was going to be met by the landlord for the rented space with keys and instructions galore. In reality, an envelope was taped to the door with a scrawl "CDC" written on the front. It contained the key toi the front door. That was IT. Standing around the perimeter were upward of 20 middle aged persons smoking, chatting and paying very little attention to my efforts at openning the reluctant door. Finally after many tries the key slid into place and we were in! An empty room except for several folding tables and 25 folding chairs which were quickly set up and the group found their seats and stared me down. I gathered my thoughts and began to describe what was to be their training for the next 6 months...the length of the contract at that time. All of this information was given by my boss and I had been told to deliver this info as soon as they were in the door of the new Fair Break Training Center.
This done, I feilded questions based on that information and I quickly learned that
they were smart, charming, skilled at various tasks related to the production of automobilesd at the now defunct General Motors plant nearby. They were about evenly divided 50/50 men and women. I had them fillout paperwork I had gotten from headquarters on Friday, they were now my Official Student Body, eventually I had 24 sign on to the training.