14. Throw One Back

Teachers with Tequila, 2007

"Pencils Down, Bottoms Up" is a brilliant opinion piece for all teachers and former teachers to enjoy. Alexander Nazaryan discusses a ritual of many teachers, young and old alike: visiting the local bar and throwing a few back. Why do teachers drink? Nazaryan explains...

The classroom is the bully pulpit from which we articulate an ironclad triumvirate of maturity – attention, organization, responsibility – that the real world renders pretty much unrealistic. In the bar, we finally loosen our ties, and life’s beautiful imperfections return.

Nazaryan, a young teacher himself, scouted out a local establishment close to school where he and his colleagues could throw a few back. That was, until his students spied him through the windows. The teacher group relocated to a darker, drapes-drawn type of bar in the East Village. That was, until the squirrelly TFAers drove them away...

But the bar was near a large middle school, and it routinely filled up with the feisty teachers who braved those hormone hurricanes. The wear showed in their drinking habits. Teach for America became Drink for America. Spill Your Beer for America. Shout and Shove for America. Many of these fresh-faced pedagogues sported golf shirts emblazoned with their school name, disconcertingly similar to the uniforms students often wear. They snapped triumphant pictures of empty bottles, turning the bar into Spring Break: Costa del Bushwick. Our timid, slightly older group felt like the unpopular kids with nowhere to sit at lunch.

So they settled on a more anonymous, dim-lighted sort of bar where they offered to help set up in order to enter before the bar technically opened. 

This piece reminds me of all our southern establishments - Zippy's (southern punch margarita please?) and Superior Grill (happy hour two for one margarita hold the salt please?) and Bistro Byronz (raspberry vodka freeze please?). But, best of all, it reminds me of the adventures, the escapes, the frivolously planned excursions involving glittery costumes and Ragini's accessories and really really big sunglasses. 

The NYTimes piece is more about the community than the booze. It's about the little hideaways and long conversations that have nothing or everything to do with the chaotic confetti that spewed about your classroom that day. It's about being in those proverbial trenches with others and then hoisting yourself out of those trenches, plopping down on a stool or a porch, decompressing, and filling up on good conversation and, if you choose, a stiff cold one.

Cheers!

Teachers with Margaritas, 2005