James Morgan:
CLASS OF 1994
Chelmsford High SchoolClass of 1994
Chelmsford, MA
James's Story
Life
Life's been interesting. I'm currently living in China. Not quite sure just how I got here but I like it. I spent most of my life living in a small town and never really leaving it. I lived like a monk all through college, never even went out drinking. Then I got a job teaching at a boarding school in New York and fell in love with teaching. For my first vacation I remember vaguely driving across the US in a pickup with a mattress in the back as a poor man's RV. I found I loved traveling and yearned for more. I taught another year and then tried a 6 week teaching gig in China. That was almost six years ago and I'm still here.
China's interesting, I recommend it to anyone who likes a hearty mixture of adventure, MSG, and chaos.
I spent 3 1/2 years in the city of Wuhan. If you don't know where that is, then you're like most people in Wuhan. Its a massive village of 6 million people in central china. It was a great life. I don't speak more than 100 words of Chinese and they didn't know any English other than "hello" (such a friendly bunch!) Its the only time in my life I ever considered myself rich making only $400 a month. 2 years ago I relocated to Shanghai and began teaching English to Koreans living in China. Its fun. The kids are great and I have a lot of freedom with how I conduct my classes.
Workplace
I haven't "done it all" but I have done a lot. I paid for college flipping burgers for BK for 18 months, worked as a janitor at 2 different bakers, and survived 3 1/2 years of retail at Caldor and then Target when Caldor bankrupted. I miss the retail, especially working the toy department. I think I was always a kid at heart, so walking around a toy department with a ticket gun in one hand and a battery operated lightsaber ($19.99 on sale) suited me just fine. I had some good times hanging with my coworkers, supervisors, and occasionally actually doing some work. We had a few rough days during the Christmas season in 2002 when we ran out of Tickle-Me-Elmos and had to barricade ourselves in the stockroom to avoid the angry customers tearing us to pieces, but most of the time it was fun.
Later I moved into security and serious responsibility: I had to monitor the air conditioners at a computer company. Officially I had to insure that the 12 million dollar computer core didn't melt down, but it was essentially watching the AC all day. Two years of that gave me plenty of time for doing schoolwork but played havoc on my sleep schedule (can't be a full-time day student and do full-time night shifts and not pay a price), but I lasted long enough to graduated with honors and the biggest bags ...Expand for more
under anyone's eyes in the entire graduating class.
Now I was ready for some serious work, work that utilized my skills and abilities to their fullest: I became a substitute teacher. With my youthful looks and easygoing attitude I went into my first assignment with gusto and high hopes. I was eaten alive! Resilient as concrete I tried again....and again...and again...I learned a lot that year, though remembering tends to trigger violent flashbacks.
I was hired at a private boarding school for troubled students in New York which had effectively collapsed in all regards. The year I was hired they replaced 50% of the administration, 90% of the teachers, and 55% of the student body. What remained was a blank slate.
Never before nor since have a I ever committed myself to anything like I did that school. We lived, breathed, and existed only for the job. We established a curriculum, behavioral guidelines, disciplinary codes, etc. We basically built or rebuilt the entire system from scratch. I am proud of the work I did those two years, but I wonder if I could ever do anything like it again.
Boarding school is a 24-7 job. You're always on duty and the problems never fall conveniently between 9 and 5. Its always at 2 in the morning that some kid decides that they really need someone to talk to, and I did make myself available. My easier times I averaged 90 hours a week, on my harder shifts I cleared 120 hours with the kids. I like to think I made a difference there, and I really had a good time with the kids. My greatest triumphs were with "nerds" "geeks" and the other "Losers" who found themselves on the outskirts of the in-crowd. Having suffered bullying myself I made a point of taking them in and offering refuge from the taunts and cruelties of the crueler kids. I had an apartment in the dorm basement and maintained an open-door policy, and was willing to cook a simple dinner and talk or just play a board game with kids who needed a place where they felt safe. I think I succeeded, because they came back, a lot. In time the constant nerd/geek gaming became called the "Dungeon Club" in honor of the crude stone walls that formed my apartment. It had rules and traditions like watching GIJOE the Movie and drinking low quality ginger ale (I was on a budget) The greatest compliment I ever got was being called "Peter Pan" and the kids I was helping were my "lost boys". In some ways I think we were all lost and found something in common. But after 2 years I was burned out, and needed a change. I joined a cultural exchange program that sent 350 teachers to China for 6 weeks. A few of us never came back.
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