teachers are heroes, but they are people too

Baldwin High School stands tall in Texas, decades of students and teachers passing through its doors. It holds dreams and aspirations, mistakes and apologies, pasts and futures.

There is Mr. Lehrer who started at Baldwin as a young teacher right out of college. He didn’t know much at first, but he grew with the job. He taught with strength and compassion. He was loved. When the time came, he retired. But he became tired of watching reruns on television and came back to substitute, where he found he was still loved. Teaching was never a job for him. It was his vocation, and when he passed on the sofa in the third-floor faculty lounge during his free period, he left the staff and faculty at Baldwin changed.

Principal Kendricks wasn’t supposed to be there. He was going to be in a punk rock band. That was how he met his wife. His band had been playing at a bar, and she came up to him afterwards. She liked their songs, the ones he sang, the ones he wrote. He fell in love, got married, had a kid. He had to get the kind of job a responsible adult would get, and he’s worked his way up to principal of Baldwin. It’s a job that gets harder all the time, with Central Office making more rules, making it all about test scores, making them do more with less funding.

And when he gets caught out front of the school by the PTO president as he was scattering the ashes of Mr. Lehrer, per the late teacher’s specific request, the eyes of the district are even more focused on Baldwin, and on Principal Kendricks himself. Will he even make it through the school year?

But the school year rolls on. First-year teacher Ms. Sanderson gets caught in the small English department book room with Mr. Rayfield during a lockdown, and after an hour or so of not knowing what’s going on, they find themselves up making out like the teenagers they teach. Mr. Williams accidentally responds to a parent’s email with the frustration he thought he was forwarding to a colleague, and he almost gets fired. A guidance counselor dealing with personal grief crosses over into alcoholism, and a long-time teacher notices and guides her to help.

There is the Christmas party where the teachers all bring their tackiest holiday gift from a student or parent, and there is a system for who gets which gift, with the chance to steal a gift you like from someone else. There is the custodian who is an illegal immigrant, working hard because her sister had gotten her to the States with the promise of an easier job. There is the nurse who has seen it all, from the freshmen trying to get out of a test to the girls who end up in her clinic crying because of a missed period.

As the school year comes full circle, to graduation and then summer break, the teachers and faculty at Baldwin are reminded of why they do what they do. Teaching isn’t just a job. It’s a calling, a vocation. They make a difference every day they show up for work.

The Faculty Lounge is the first adult novel by acclaimed YA author Jennifer Mathieu. This character study of the teachers and staff at a good but underfunded high school is a reminder of how important teachers are, of how inspiring but fallible they can be, of how hard it is to teach and how rewarding when you reach the right student at the right time. These interconnected stories weave together a full picture of what it takes to keep a school together, even in times like these.

I really enjoyed The Faculty Lounge. It’s clear from these stories that Mathieu has spent some time in schools as a teacher, with these stories being a testament to all she has seen and to the good work she and her colleagues have done through the years. Filled with humor, frustration, and compassion, these stores speak to the heart of education, to how much these teachers want to do their best by these kids despite all the holes in our current education system. I was expecting more of a novel, where this book is more a series of interconnected stories, so I did struggle a little in the middle when it started to feel disjointed, but I thought the writing itself was lovely and the characters compelling, so I don’t really have anything else negative to say about the book. I did find some things resonate with my experiences with school, and it brought me some lovely memories to think about, because teachers really are heroes and I don’t think we say that enough (or pay them enough).

Egalleys for The Faculty Lounge were provided by Dutton through NetGalley, with many thanks.