The Final One Eighty: A memoir

by Dennis Donoghue

The Final One Eighty, a day-by-day account of author’s last year as a sixth-grade teacher. The memoir reveals what it’s like to teach in a public school these days, highlighting conflicts, frustrations, and successes with humor and introspection, all from the point of view of someone who’d been at it for 37 years. Each of the 180 days is a stand-alone chapter, an essay really, with a particular anecdote examined to reveal a deeper significance. Written after a full career of over three and a half decades, its perspective differs vastly from typical teacher memoirs which tend to document the first year (or else are authored by journalists who teach for the purpose of producing a memoir about the experience). Certainly, new, and veteran teachers would see themselves reflected in this work. And since most people have attended public schools and send their kids to them, they would also find it appealing, as it provides an intimate look at daily maneuverings of not only the teacher but everyone around him-- students, colleagues, administrators and parents.
Dennis Donoghue retired as an elementary school teacher in 2014. His work had appeared in various journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Blue Lake Review, Brandeis Review, Broad River Review, Full Circle Review, and Georgetown Review. He lives in Massachusetts.

328 pages, Paperback

Published May 20, 2020

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This journey of 180 days is brutal and honest. As an educator nearing my own retirement, the stories of Dennis’ students and his struggles to teach them what they needed while he himself struggled with the constraints of our public education system, certainly resonated. It’s clear that he cared for his students, but like many educators he was afraid of doing what he knew was right for them.

There are parts of this memoir where I found myself angry at Dennis for giving in/up, but there were more places where I nodded my head in agreement, especially when reading about the fear administrators place on teachers (those same administrators who quite often may have only balanced the demands of classroom teaching for a few years) Sure, there are teachers who need a kick in the ass, but in my almost 40 year career, and certainly in Dennis’ career, many of our colleagues are passionate about their teaching and their students. What page they happen to be on or what part of The Initiative they use matters little.

Maybe there will be readers who bristle at his honesty, but this book is beautifully written. It’s a book that really made me at times laugh, fist pump in agreement with Dennis’ observations, cry, and truly think about what we value for our children.

This book was especially powerful to read after these past few months of remote teaching. From my own experiences of daily meetings with students and conversation with parents and colleagues around the country, it was the connections that students missed while being away from school. The Final One Eighty certainly captures the true measure of a great teacher. It isn’t the workshops or new initiatives. It’s not the text book or new program. Its enthusiasm. It’s passion. It’s wonder. It’s the teacher.

[Steve Bzomowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a story/chapter in Richard Brautigan’s surreal novella, “Trout Fishing in America” titled “Trout Fishing in America Terrorists.” It involves sixth graders who during recess write in chalk the phrase “Trout Fishing in America” on the backs of bewildered but compliant first graders. The perpetrators of the puzzling but comic scheme windup, as all student scofflaws do, at the principal’s office to learn their lesson. In timeworn fashion, the principal asks the group, “Now wouldn’t it look funny if I asked all your teachers to come in here, and then I told the teachers all to turn around, and then I took a piece of chalk and wrote ‘Trout Fishing of America’ on their backs? Would you like to see your teachers walking around all day with ‘Trout Fishing America’ written on their backs, trying to teach you about Cuba? That would look silly, wouldn’t it? That wouldn’t do at all, would it?” The kids nodded their heads and giggled nervously and one kid’s eye started twitching, “blink, blink, blink”. They were asked if they had learned their lesson. They agreed that they most certainly had. In reading the novella or the story, no one for even a moment would venture the opinion that Brautigan was making a statement about education. All that can be gleaned is that this is what school can be like, banal and predictable, mischievous and original. And that kids are kids.

Dennis Donoghue, a veteran teacher of thirty-seven years has written a thoroughly captivating, artfully crafted memoir, “The Final One Eighty”, of his last year of teaching at a public school north of Boston. Broken up into one hundred eighty sections, one for each day of the school year, he guides both his students and the reader through scenes at times hilarious, heartbreaking, heartwarming, and, often, frustrating. His particular group of sixth graders isn’t writing on the backs of first graders but, in the opening of the book, there is a parent hidden in the bushes with a video camera capturing evidence for a complaint. Welcome to school. Honest in his criticisms of what teachers are required to do, he leans on his interactions with his students. The best moments of the book, and there are so many that you windup rooting for school to go year-round, are the dialogue between him and the students. And the glimpses into their home life (if they have homes) of these kids. Their resilience. Or as the author says, “in my best moments . . . the light in the kid’s eye releasing me from the playacting of being a teacher”.

This book is great because it is ultimately about human connection, whether kid-to-teacher, teacher-to-kid or you-to-me. It may be about a teacher in his last year of teaching and the anxiety he feels – blink, blink, blink - about being released from fifty years of being on a school calendar but it is, in the end, about how we all deal with each other.

[Jacalyn Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Final One Eighty ~ I imagined I would read one day-by-day account at a time, but I could not stop. I had to read at least a week of Mr. D's stories before I could close the cover until the next night. My attention was captured like the hundreds of kids who were lucky enough to land in 6D, to be guided by Mr. D. who supported them as they navigated their young, curious, challenging, complicated lives.

A teacher who knew children don't belong in seats and rows all day long, but need to move and explore, to experience calmness and the beauty of nature, to be fit with play, exercise and whole food, to feel free to ask questions, to listen to books read to them by a true story teller and to be allowed to express themselves with the freedom that creative writing requires. A teacher who always stepped up to support his professional colleagues within an educational environment that came with many rules and regulations, often making it nearly impossible to educate the whole child. A teacher who wove his day to day accounts between his professional life as an educator and coach with his joys and challenges as a husband, father of three daughters, son of aging parents, brother, friend and athlete.

On Mr. D's last day, I felt as if I was one of his colleagues, one of his students, not wanting to say good bye. I did not want his memoir to end. I will read it once again, each day by day account with an even greater focus on the details within each story, feeling his heart and humor along the way. I can't wait.

Mr. D's story telling took me on a journey, through memories of my first career as a teacher with all the commitment, idealism, determination, frustration and hope that comes with loving kids, teaching them, and learning with and from them. His memoir has inspired me to recall my experiences over the last four decades in my second career as a counselor. His reflections have inspired me to trust that I will know when it is time to retire with intention and courage while having faith to allow my next chapter to unfold.

I can only hope that Mr. D. may give us the pleasure to read his Next One Eighty. Mr. D. is the sort of guy I would have loved as a teacher when I was a kid and would have been so grateful to have had as a colleague when I was a teacher. Everyone should have a Mr. D in their life, a treasured storytelling best friend who makes you love your life with all it's challenges, who gives you the reassurance and courage to face your fears, who makes you cry from the heart, laugh out loud and believe just about anything.

~Jacalyn Newman

[Mitchell Waldman · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his book THE FINAL ONE EIGHTY Dennis Donoghue details the last year of his career as a sixth grade teacher at a public school.

The book is written as a sort of journal, day by day, as the title indicates, of the last 180 days of his teaching career, as he is heading towards retirement. The book is written with both humor and thoughtful criticism. Throughout the book we see the author’s love for his students, as well as his frustrations with a school system that is rigid and has failed many, it seems, and is run more like a corporation than a facility focused on the individual needs of its students. And, the author recognizes himself, as he is headed toward the end of 37 years of teaching, that he feels somewhat like a prisoner heading toward life in the outside world, wondering how he will manage life in that world, recognizing that he has become somewhat institutionalized by the very system he finds fault with.

The school he teaches at brings together children from various social strata, many of them from poor and broken families who obviously love their teacher, who returns their affection, as much as one can within the school districts restrictions and guidelines.

The parallels between work within a corporate environment and the school system in which Dennis teaches are quite striking. The rules and rigidity of the system, all aimed at making the employees’ methods uniform and structured, without taking into consideration the individual skills/knowledge of the employees/teachers, or, in the case of the school, the individual needs of the students, ignoring, in fact, what will work best for students based on their individual needs. And, for Dennis and his fellow teachers, they are subject to this season’s new “breakthrough” teaching system, entitled “The Initiative,” a system which all the teachers must follow and will be evaluated on following, not allowing them to stray with what they have learned from their experience works best in teaching their own students. In fact, they will be punished for their own initiative in trying to tailor their classes and teaching methods to what they know from experience will work best, contrary to the strictures of the mandated “Initiative.” In this way “The Initiative” almost seems like an evil monster from a dystopian novel, imposing itself on the mental and physical health of all that dare to object to or question its strict application.

In addition, there is the administration of the school, another impediment to the teachers and the students’ learning. The administration official seem more like business executives than public school administrators, concerned most about efficiencies, some of them with very little teaching experience themselves, but, still, without such experience, setting the rules for those working in the system, and expecting, no demanding, that they follow their edicts.

That said, Dennis, the sixth grade teacher in his last year, no longer under the control and subject to evaluation in his final year of teaching, feels he can teach without strictly following the mandated “Initiative,” and takes some apparent pleasure in doing so, assigning books to read that he chooses, that he knows his students will like, while at the same time working as a building representative, questioning why he doesn’t object, stand up to a system that has seemingly failed so many children who really need more individualized attention, but knowing that the answer is his own, in a sense, institutionalization in the school system, having learned during his 37 years to follow rules, be a good worker, to earn his positive evaluations and administrative pats on the backs and raises.

Through it all we get a look at the daily processes and struggles that a teacher goes through on a daily basis. We get to learn about Dennis as a teacher, his compassion for his students, his role, as he says, an entertainer of his students daily, despite how he may feel on any particular day, which is complicated by his own general anxiety disorder, and his frustrations with what he feels, and very much feels like a broken system. And we see glimpses of his own home life, and family, although this is not the focus of the book. We get a bird’s eye view of the struggles of his students who often confide and have no problem relating the problems and traumas of their daily lives to Dennis, the teacher – for example, the girl whose mobile home burned down and who matter of factly tells his teacher, snapping her fingers, Just like that, we got out but our cat died, and then, after being questioned whether they’d managed to save anything else, answers, These, tugging at her clothes.

While Dennis expresses his criticism of the school system, and his frustrations are clear, reflecting on how teaching is no longer what it used to be when teachers were in control of their teaching methods, but is now a structured system leaving little choice to individual teachers, he also sees a glimmer of hope, thinking maybe things will change, improve over the next fifty years (although sardonically noting that if the past fifty years are any indication, maybe that is a pipe dream).

In short, this is an intimate story of a teacher’s final year of teaching, chronicled on a daily basis, which dives deep into a system that many of us, in truth, know little about with regard to its daily workings, and relating with humor, empathy, and critical analysis, but a system that all of us, having children and grandchildren should know more about, and be concerned about, as the students of today are the nation’s citizens of tomorrow. (And, incidentally, we wonder, as does the author, what will he do with himself when he doesn’t have his classroom to return to at the end of the year?)

We highly recommend this eye-opening book about the educational system as essential reading to all who want to learn more about what actually goes on in our schools, and what needs to be fixed to make them better for our children. --Mitchell Waldman, for Blue Lake Review (author of, among others, BROTHERS, FATHERS, AND OTHER STRANGERS).

[Jane Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A look inside a teachers life.

Shine’s a light into a teacher’s world. There is more to it than numbers and letters. Some students dealing with every day struggles of life, poverty, hunger. Teachers having to deal with students who are at different academic levels, how do you divide your time and effort. I really enjoyed it, it opened my eyes.

[Naomi Deutscher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this memoir!!! Wonderful details and crisp stories about everyday classroom life in a very direct and honest style. You don’t find this much in the field of education, but this master teacher gifted us with his keen observations and wry humor in situations we’ve all faced in the workplace.