22. LIVING IN HAPPY VALLEY, PART 3 (a unique experience)
THE HAPPY VALLEY SCHOOL EXPERIENCE As for the classes I taught, it's now all a blur. I think I was in shock much of the time, being way in over my head and not really having been prepared to be a junior high and high school teacher...in such diverse areas from my background education. For example, my big ideas for biology were to drive my students down to Santa Paula to visit the little zoo and watch the animals, or drive to Santa Barbara for a whale-watching cruise out in the channel. I loved it and, I think, my students loved it, but whether it did their biology education justice is questionable. I was definitely in danger of becoming The Music Man's Professor Harold Hill. I wasn't pleased with that prospect. And I began to remind myself of my high school history teacher who repeatedly told underwhelming and uneventful anecdotes of his 'wartime' experiences to fill up hours of class time with empty air. But what I remember most clearly of my Happy Va