Goodbye, Mr. Fitz: a new teacher challenges the limits on his students' creativity and takes on their school.

It should be obvious to me that this isn't going to work. I've always had problems with authority figures. And I'm certainly no good at pretending to be one. My struggles with authority are a prime reason for my graduating from college thirty years behind schedule. But in May 2004 I finally succeed in earning a bachelor's degree in print journalism from Jacksonville University in Florida.

Though facing a limited, low-paying market for professional writers, I luckily stumble on an opening for a creative writing teacher at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville. My schoolteacher friends swear it's a plum gig: D.A. is the most progressive school in the Duval County school system, plus it's a magnet school--students have to really work to get in and there are few discipline problems because they want to be there.

Since D.A. is a performing arts magnet school, I figure I'll fit right in. Ironically, I fit in a little too well--with the students, not the staff. At one of the preseason faculty meetings I hear some discussion about the dress code. One teacher wants to know the exact definition of open-toed shoes as opposed to sandals. "We have more important things to worry about here?" I want to shout, but I manage to stifle myself.

I find myself in front of a classroom of mostly fourteen-year-old girls, and it's easier than I expected. I sense a tacit consensus to cut me some slack and I'm grateful. Apparently they like me or feel sorry for me--or a little of both. And not only are these kids kind but some of them are great writers. Reading one girl's first paper, I feel a twinge of jealousy. "There's not much I can teach this kid," I tell my wife.

If the kids are the best part of D.A., however, the worst is the bureaucracy. As a twenty-year teaching veteran tells me, all the kids combined don't give the teachers one-tenth the hassle the system itself does. Parents, legislators, school board members, business leaders, pundits all think they know best how teachers should to do their jobs, and the resulting policies are a crazy-quilt of contradictions.

D.A.'s principal, Jackie Cornelius, is sweet as pie, but by November I've stretched her patience. After being here only three months I've, according to her reckoning, generated at least eight calls from parents. Parents' concerns carry a lot of weight at D.A. When I mention this to one of my students, he replies, "Are you kidding? The parents are running this school."

A real Southern charmer, Cornelius explains she only wants what's "best for all concerned." She suggests I might be better suited to teaching college. I don't argue with her. Finally she offers some context: Douglas Anderson is under fire. There are parents in the community who want to destroy the school. Why? Because it's a haven for nonconformists--particularly gay kids. And the students are being exposed to really sophisticated stuff. Parents who don't want their kids exposed to this side of life--or who don't believe the school system should permit such havens--are organized, she says. They have lawyers. Hell, some of them are lawyers. And some of them want to destroy the entire public-school system.

It turns out that she's not just paranoid. In October 2003, a substitute teacher at D.A. played a videotaped installment of PBS'S Art in the Twenty-First Century, showcasing award-winning photographer Sally Mann's work. The video contained photographic portraits of Mann's own children playing naked, not an uncommon sight in the mountains of Mann's Virginia home.

But Mann has long been a target for conservative-values groups such as Focus on the Family, and complaints against her work have been lodged in courts in Alabama, Tennessee, and Louisiana. A D.A. student mentioned the video to his parents, who called the Jacksonville sheriff's office and demanded an investigation. The sheriff's office ultimately decided it wasn't a criminal matter, but the battle lines were drawn.

Cornelius defended the school's right to show the video, but parents must now sign a permission slip before students can view it. This is the type of environment we're in now, she tells me. The school is under a microscope and so are teachers--especially me. The message is clear: if I want to self-destruct, that's my business, but don't drag the school down with me.

A former D.A. student offers evidence of just how much the climate has changed over the years. Nelline Zilberg, who graduated in 1998, recalls that her creative-writing classes read sexually explicit Allen Ginsberg poems. Though the content might have been deemed offensive, she says, "Those who didn't want to hear it were advised to walk out. I would never have imagined D.A. of all places would give in to conservative pressure," she says.

In case I've forgotten, I'm reminded rather quickly that D.A. is still in the Bible belt. Of course our school isn't as conservative as some others in Jacksonville, where even Ginsberg's less-controversial--and widely acclaimed--poems have been a source of controversy. The best advice I get comes from a veteran teacher and former army grunt: "Don't stick your head out of the foxhole." What he means is, don't call attention to yourself because once you get it it's hard to shake.

But I still learn this the hard way. I stupidly garner the administration's attention early on when I use a risque double-entendre in one of my English classes. Examining Latinate word roots, I jokingly define dictator as "a cross between a penis and a potato." This unfortunate comment is made within earshot of a librarian and two evangelical students whom I'd overheard proselytizing. My students seem relatively unfazed; most students merely groan at the bad pun. But the librarian's eyes bug out and she hyperventilates, almost crying. Naturally news reaches the principal in record time and I become someone to keep an eye on.

To make matters worse, I start making waves. I send memos to my department chair and the principal complaining about creative-writing majors who literally can't put a literate sentence together. Why are they here? Who approved their admissions? How can I address subject-verb agreement in my editing class when a fifth of my students literally don't know a verb from an adverb? Since Duval middle school teachers are no longer allowed to dissect grammar in English classes (it's supposed to be taught only in the context of overall usage), I find myself teaching basic grammar to ninth graders. This is not what I was hired to do. I request special tutors for these students and in return get a couple of snarky memos suggesting I mind my own business.

Getting called on the carpet for using stupid double-entendres I can understand, but my next run-in is over something I couldn't have foreseen. There are a few utterly brilliant students in my creative-writing classes who are getting bored with what they consider the lame assignments I'm handing out ("describe a family member" and the like). I want to get them invested in the process, so I decide to let them pick the topics. I turn it into a game: the first student to answer a Trivial Pursuit question can pick the week's topic. Talk about engaged: they're jumping up and down for the privilege of assigning writing topics to their peers.

One week a student comes up with, "If you wanted to kill someone, how would you do it?" Right away, a hand raises. "Umm, my mother's not going to like that." No problem, I tell her. Write something else. That evening I ask my wife what she thinks of the situation. She reasons that, since murder fiction is one of the most common genres, it shouldn't be a problem.

It turns out reason doesn't count for much. A few days later I'm in the principal's office again. The student's mother told administrators that someone in her family had been brutally murdered so it was a very sore subject. Exempting her daughter from the assignment wasn't enough. Unbeknownst to me, a drastic climate change blew in with the Columbine killings of 1999: if a student writes about murder or suicide I'm to report him or her for psychiatric evaluation.

Principal Cornelius patiently explains the legal liability: if a student writes such a piece and then does commit a murder, the school must show it made every attempt to intervene. I suggest this is the price our society pays for having too many lawyers but ask if other topics are off-limits as well. Other than murder and suicide, students can write anything they like, Cornelius says. They just can't discuss certain things in class in front of other students who might get offended.

Whoa. My speech class is not going to like this. In fact, the previous day a tenth-grader had led a discussion on abortion. I suspected perhaps I should have stopped her, but I couldn't bring myself to do so. Oh, that's bad news, Cornelius replies. You can't discuss anything inappropriate or controversial in class. I point out that "controversial" could apply to anything. Just use common sense, she replies, and avoid hot-button issues--abortion, religion, party politics, gay marriage, and the like.

My students don't welcome the news. I've already approved their paper proposals, and I feel like a jackass when I tell one student she probably shouldn't do hers on the Church of Satan after all. I explain to them that I'm on their side and am not comfortable being the "morality police."

It seems like I spend more time in the principal's office as a teacher than I did as a student. In a matter of days Cornelius gets wind of my "morality police" comment and thinks it's a personal dig at her. To her credit she's not angry or defensive; rather, her feelings are hurt.

I'm amazed my exact words get back to her so quickly and accurately. Someone is feeding her good information but taking it out of context and distorting it. Obviously, one of my students is reporting every suspicious move I make to a parent or a faculty member who in turn reports it to the principal. In any case, I see that there are at least two parties conspiring to keep me on the hot seat. As Woody Allen says, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

The free speech issue becomes a growing source of contention for my speech students. To illustrate that it's not just school policy but that their free speech rights are legally limited, I assign a research paper on student speech as outlined in famous cases such as Tinker v. DesMoines (1969) and Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988). I'm quite proud when one student cites in her research Alexander Meiklejohn, a First Amendment scholar who teaches that free speech is the cornerstone of democracy.

The students complain that they want to address topics they're passionate about. "If we eliminate potentially controversial stuff, what's left? What are we supposed to discuss--littering on campus?" they ask. "You're singing to the choir," I tell them and suggest they write the principal a letter inviting her to class to explain the issues and to answer their questions. These kids are looking for answers but I don't have any to give them. I don't understand the situation any better than they do. This is not your typical good-guy bad-guy storyline.

My creative-writing students are equally irate. "This is retarded," one girl complains repeatedly. "I guess the 'liberal' school isn't so liberal after all," says another.

Ultimately I feel vindicated when one of my most taciturn students, who has rarely turned in an assignment on time, scratches out a wild, six-page tale about grinding up his father and feeding him to his mother in the meatloaf. It's a riot. If it takes my getting in trouble to get this kid excited about writing, it's worth it.

But the final straw breaks soon enough. My creative-writing students have been hounding me about starting a webzine to showcase their work. After weeks of lecturing them about getting their stuff published anyplace they can, I decide it's a good idea.

They are perfectly capable of doing this themselves. A couple of students already know Web design and where to get free server space (www.freewebs.com/thesparkler). I meet with four or five volunteers to offer suggestions and encouragement. When one astutely asks if the school will own and control the site, I tell him, "Not if you do it entirely on your own time and off campus. It can be your own private project."

"That's what we want," he says. The others agree. So I pull out of the project but make a point of announcing it in class so the rest of the students can take advantage of the opportunity and start building their clip files.

Two days later I'm in the principal's office. This independent webzine project is seen by the administration as my "leading an insurrection." "I'm not instigating anything," I tell Cornelius, "I just happen to agree with them." I'm on their side, and have been from day one. And that, apparently, is the major problem: I'm teaching my students to question authority. I see nothing wrong with this; it's what I was trained to do as a journalist. I never stop to think that the first authority they will question is their school.

Cornelius offers me a chance to stay on at D.A. as an "expert in the field," holding monthly workshops for student writers, but it's obvious I'm persona non grata. I've crossed some indelible line and gone over to the other side (like my Fitzgerald ancestors--aristocrats who made the mistake of siding with the Irish).

On November 11, my next-to-last day as a teacher at D.A., a bunch of kids come to school with T-shirts emblazoned "Viva la Fitz!" I'm stunned. This might be the kindest, most thoughtful gesture anyone has ever made on my behalf. They've also made a card that says, "We'll miss you, Mister Fitz!" I realize I'll miss them, too. For a moment, I'm a hero to a few kids and it feels good.

I've always stressed that if there's one thing students should take from my class it's how to spot a story. They're right in front of you, I tell them.

Michael Fitzgerald has written for the Jacksonville Business Journal, Folio Weekly, Left Curve, JAM Magazine, and the Musician's Trade Journal. He no longer teaches creative writing at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida.