Losing Colleague & Friend Way Too Soon
A Teacher Remembrance
Kiss me goodnight and say my prayers Leave the light on at the top of the stairs Tell me the names of the stars up in the sky A tree taps on the window pane That feeling smothers me again Daddy is it true that we all have to die? —Billy Bragg, “Tank Park Salute”
For the 2010-2011 school year, Mr. Patrick O’Brien and I were hallway nextdoor neighbors.
“O’Breezy” and “O’Beasy” as students affectionately called him.
His many distinctions circled around his easy-going frankness, one severely tested early in his career as a student-teacher leaping into the classroom where a soon-to-be retiring teacher was physically fighting a student on the tile floor.
The uniquely bizarre incident solidified his desire to be just the opposite of the deranged teacher, to be a quietly strong advocate for students (as he soon became that sad teacher’s permanent replacement).
For Patrick radiated a remarkable calm, especially appreciated during an awkward school transition.
In 2010, he and I along with ten other teachers, had been transferred involuntarily to the middle school (with several eighth and ninth grade teachers forced to switch to the high school).
Earlier that year, the Michigan Department of Education unveiled a long list of marked school failures, based primarily on the proverbial mislabeled slide rule of high-stakes standardized test scores.1
Our high school, along with many others in majority African American districts, had made their State of Michigan List of Shame. Few options awaited the targeted parties, with conditional grant funding ($4.2 million) waved at us if the district took up a few more drastic measures to repair this identified inadequate education.
Chiefly, the aggressive state “Turnaround Model” ordered 50% of the teaching staff to abruptly switch buildings and grade levels, as if that would dramatically promote peace, love and higher test achievement data. Never mind about inherent economic inequalities. . . .
Not coincidentally, 2010 also began a district-wide pay freeze common to many less affluent districts negotiating contracts after the Great Recession.
No Cost of Living Allowance for us.
I quietly admired Mr. O’Brien’s consistently warm demeanor, how he could pivot so seamlessly from valid frustrations with some authorities to instant friendliness with all his students.
Although Patrick took the big trade and pay freeze much better than I, he did privately share his discontent. Like most of us, we felt an odd sense of betrayal after several years of often unsupported efforts, including when he enthusiastically coached the only two years our district fielded a small student golf team.
Yes, golf.
I quietly admired Mr. O’Brien’s consistently compassionate demeanor, how he could pivot so seamlessly from valid frustrations with some authority to instant friendliness with all his students.
So picture two goofy social studies teachers, one starting to bald, the other with a natural quiff, planted daily by their adjacent open doors. Updates about Michigan State football or basketball teams would dominate Pat’s early morning banter (it had taken him months to recover from the Spartans stunning loss to Butler in the March 2010 Final Four).
We also periodically engaged in friendly arguments about which band was better, his Led Zeppilen or my Clash.
Expecting 30 younger teenagers to shuffle into a classroom designed for 20, he would sometimes share his MSU fandom with puzzled students while we leaned chatting from a dimly-lit corner, at the farthest end from the main building entrance.
Our own educator world of woefulness and wonder.
Fortunately, we found a supportive administrator, which I soon discovered as the union building rep. After noticing an usually empty Large Group Instruction room with a sizable movie screen (the only alternatives were small TVs with DVD players on roll-in carts), Patrick and I proposed co-teaching US History with a modified film-heavy curriculum, which she trustfully approved.2
We didn’t have much prep that late August and early September. Coordinating the always challenging timeline over what units to cover in US History (only World History, by defintion, offers a more daunting editing job), demanded some level-headed creativity.
After deciding on the appropriate September 11 video, the 2002 documentary 9/11 (directed by Jules Naudet, Gédéon Naudet and James Hanlon), we plunged further into our film-based history units, evolving continually as our classes merged to view each designated American historical period, places and people.
Somehow, we also managed to use the large space for film prep and even short student-centered seminars after each movie.
Patrick’s listening skills, his steady patience and warm sense of humor dissipated much of the “How will this work?” trepidation common to what essentially had become a first-year course for two veteran teachers.
We were also juggling newer roles with our own day care kids, often laughing at our lack of sleep with restless babies and toddlers. My two boys were six and two, with Patrick only a couple of years behind me with two girls and eventually a third daughter — some time after we teased each other about our limited knowledge on how males ultimately determine the gender chromosome.
Our principal expressed confidence in our few actual lesson plans — yet much lesson planning — making sure we shared a lunch and a planning period at the end of the day.
Typically exhausted but equally determined to review that day’s lesson and weekly film selections, always ready by the next morning, with Patrick’s grin usually a bit wider than mine.
Working with O’Breezy made it seem like a breeze.
Since the discipline of social studies demands relevancy to current events, he and I built room within our improvised curriculum for the inevitable major news stories.
We also vowed not to replicate our own too incomplete US history experiences, where June arrived before the class had a chance to really cover the Vietnam War and the 1960s.
Sure enough, in that 2010-11 school year, around the end of our World War Two unit, the May 2 US SEAL team killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan became the loose bookend to our vigorous work.
The disturbing event presented us with a timely opportunity to hold informal, energized classroom debates on international law, war crime trials and capital punishment.
And we still made it back to Vietnam and the ongoing War in Afghanistan before closing out in June. . .
Being the easy going, affable team player, Mr. O’Brien stayed the rest of his career with ninth graders and US history. My restlessness (and a grievance on the mandatory placement) pushed me to return to the high school, to teach slightly older teenagers debate, government, economics and eventually civil rights and drama.
Still, O’Brien and I enjoyed at least one extended lunch during professional development days every semester until the infamous Covid year of 2020, his Michigan State enthusiasm unwavering, as if we were heading back to our respective posts, waiting for the students to arrive, as if we’d be doing this for at least another 20 years.
A horrible tragedy hit him and his daughters with the loss of his wife to an aggressive cancer at only 46. Teaching would never quite be the same for him after that loss, although he rarely showed his grief after the funeral attended by much of the sympathetic staff.
Many of our department had gone to each other’s weddings, simply never expecting funerals to happen before any of us reached at least into our 70s.
Patrick died peacefully in his sleep April 1 at age 59, leaving behind three beautiful daughters and a long thread of sad student and colleague condolences and appreciations.
One old friend and fellow teacher, Joel Ciccone, reminded me how Patrick “never held any hidden agenda or ulterior motives with people,” his sincerity, simply always sincere.
Driving away in silence from the funeral, I drove the same 35 minute morning route he took to school for 25 years. With freeway signs for Lansing in the rear view mirror, an electronic billboard flashed an MSU basketball coach Tom Izzo promo for the annual Izzo Run/Walk/Roll.
For a minute, I rolled down the window, pretending I had his thick hair to lean into the wind, to be O’Breezy on a Friday, wrapping up another week of meaningful teaching before a weekend of meaningful family time.
As if no teacher could ever be left behind.
A truly dedicated family man, Patrick and I only ended up making it to one Tiger game together — he always preferred to be with his gals than with the guys. I wished I could have met up with him at more festivals, or just more lunch outings, to hear the latest about his favorite team — and his life away from school.
Since the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, politicians and the general public had embraced a cold war on teachers, with a running simpleton narrative of teachers making too many bad choices, that with less autonomy and more authority, we could simply overcome a lack of resources and related economic injustice.
The Obama administration intensified the peculiar assault on the profession with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, aka “Race to the Top,” making $4.35 billion funding a highly competive groveling on a national level for 18 of the most compliant states (Michigan failed in this bid at mass servility and higher test scores).
The 12 films shown in part or in their entirety that school year: Little Big Man (Arthur Penn, 1970) , Thunderheart (Michael Apted, 1992), Incident at Oglala (Apted 1992), Matewan (John Sayles, 1987), City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931), Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932), Tora, Tora, Tora (Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku, 1970), The Big Red One (Sam Fuller, 1980), White Light, Black Rain (Steven Okazaki, 2007), Panther (Mario Van Peebles, 1995), Born on the 4th of July (Oliver Stone, 1989).
Such a sweet tribute to a wonderful teacher, family man and friend. What an amazing collaboration you two were able to work out! I'm so sorry for your loss as well as the family and students. ❤️