English Autoethnography.

Jack Sparrow

English 201

March 17, 2009

The Autoethnography
Throughout my life so far, I have only participated in public discourse a few times. Nothing dramatic, like defacing property, but I did hand out flyers and have signed two petitions. The petitions were not really effective, but I wish they had been. I signed a petition in high school to get a stoplight at this one intersection near the high school because two of my classmates, during senior year, got in a car wreck. One classmate died and the other one was severely injured, but he lived and has a feeling of regret by accidently killing his friend, who was also one of his teammates on the high school football team. The other petition that I signed was when I was in grade school in which the school and the local community tried to prevent three teachers from getting fired. This teacher petition is what I will write about and I chose this as my public discourse.
For starters, I went to a catholic grade school that went through kindergarten to the eighth grade. I was in sixth or seventh grade when this ridiculous fiasco began. Anyway, a new priest had arrived to replace the other priest because the other priest was retiring. The new priest seemed nice at first, but I soon found out that he was greedy, cocky, and selfish. He wanted big changes to be made to the school and the church that were too expensive, which made the teachers, janitors, and cooks mad because they needed classroom repairs, new books, and new cleaning and cooking equipment. The community was also mad at him for going over the budget he was given for these big projects and he asked the community to give more money to the church.
The grade school and church committee finally had a meeting to discuss what changes should be made that would benefit the school and the church and how much would these changes cost. Some of the teachers were at this meeting and gave their opinions and ideas. One of the teachers was a first grade teacher, that is a nun, said that some of the big projects were too costly and that the funds should be used to repair the school, instead of adding on to it. She also suggested free tutoring, more academic programs, updated books and a few new computers in the library, etc. Several people in the committee thought this was a good idea, but the priest, who was also at this meeting, did not like these ideas. He argued a lot with the first grade teacher about similar issues and he eventually fired her. It was his way or the highway.
Soon after he fired the first grade teacher, the sixth grade teacher, who was also the math teacher, suggested a few ideas and opinions. The priest ignored her for a while, but one day they got into a big fight about a big financial issue. The priest fired her the next day, which was totally ridiculous. Then a week later the school hires a substitute teacher; she was friendly and explained the material well. It was during recess when everyone saw this car drive off like it was in the Indianapolis five hundred race. When everyone went back to class, we found out that the substitute teacher was fired because she said to the class that the eucharist, which is a small circle wafer people eat during part of the church service, was a symbol of Christ’s body. It is true that it is a symbol, but the priest argued that it was the actual body of Christ.
Personally, I thought that these two teachers and the substitute teacher should not have been fired. They were excellent teachers and explained the material well to the students. They should not have been fired for giving their opinions, stating facts, and stating their personal believes about their religion. This is why I signed the petition, but it didn’t do much of anything. The priest only thought of the petition as a piece of paper with names on it that did not have any urgent importance.
After staying four years at my community’s church, the priest moved to a higher ranking position near Washington D.C. I guess sometimes scum does float to the top. Anyway, we have a new priest who is really friendly and is an excellent gardener. The teachers have new jobs and are doing fine. Sometimes I wonder if I could have done more to have helped prevent these teachers from getting fired. If I would have had more money, made flyers, or had a protest rally then I definitely would have had a bigger impact on the situation. However, you can’t think of the what if questions all the time or you’ll drive yourself crazy. What’s done is done and I can’t change the past, but I can focus on the present and I am looking forward to the future.