Little Notes from the Chairman

[A tribute to the former chairman of my department on her retirement from that position--June 12, 1989]


Dear G.,
We hope you will accept the position at Bishop’s. You will like it here. Please come.
Sincerely,
Jane B.

Dear G.,
We’re very happy that you’ll be with us next year.
Sincerely,
Jane B.
P.S. Book orders are due next Friday. Let me know as soon as possible which text you want to use for sophomore English.

Dear G.,
Thank you for letting me sit in on your Period 8 class today. Don’t despair. It’s not your fault. They are the worst sophomores we’ve ever had. However, you mustn’t let them run the class. Perhaps quizzes will focus their attention. And may I suggest that next year you use a high-school-level rather than a college-level text?
Jane

G.,
Don’t forget to sign up for the video machines, to attend the department meeting on Friday, to take your classes to the library some time this quarter, to prepare you students for the SAT, to meet with the other teachers of sophomore, junior, senior English to establish essay-grading criteria, to come to the department meeting on Friday, to let me know what equipment you think we’ll need to purchase for the department, to get your second-semester book orders in, to teach vocabulary, to assess the attached AP qualifying essays, to come to the department meeting on Friday, to prepare your students for the Achievement Test, to get your fall book orders in, to get your final exams to the academic secretary early, to come to the department party on Wednesday.
Jane

G.,
Please let me know whether you have any objection to your teaching assignments for next year. Please look at the attached professional journal and pass it along. Please sign the attached birthday card and pass it along. Please be especially nice this week to poor Jean, Joan, John, who has a daughter in prison, a mother with gallstones, a pending IRS investigation, an irrational fear of bearded Jewish intellectual types. Please get some rest this weekend.
Jane


G.,
Your idea is a good one. Very idealistic. But we tried it six, eleven, eighteen, and twenty-two years ago and it was a disaster. My advice is to forget it—but it’s up to you.
Jane

G.,
I had a talk with the Headmaster today and made it clear that, what with all your other duties, you should not be asked to head the school’s Interplanetary Travel Technology and Moral Purity Committee, to arrange for all student lunar accommodations and karmic reassessment, to compose an astro-financial profile for every member of the school’s faculty, staff, and administration. He made no promises, but he did say he’d try to get you off lunch duty.
Jane

Dear G.,
Thank you for your chapel talk today. I can’t tell you how much you’ve meant to the school and to me.
Love,
Jane

Dear G.,
Happy Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah, Birthday, New Year, Passover.
Jane

Dear G.,
In the larger scheme of things, it doesn’t matter all that much. Don’t worry about it. All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Love,
Jane
P.S. Fall book orders are due on Friday.