Three-Legged Bears

Three-Legged Bears
Baxter is an emotionally bankrupt high school where truth and honesty have lost the battle against lies and political posturing. Death, deceit, murder, suicide -plagues of the twentieth century- erode and chip away at Jim as he tries to put meaning into his life. A short, balding, out of shape teacher who drinks too much just wants to teach. "I want to tell kids stuff, you know?"
During a visit to the zoo with his girlfriend, they watch the antics of a three-legged bear. The bear, he suddenly realizes, is Baxter. The school, and everyone associated with the system is handicapped -crippled by lack of enthusiasm, imagination and humanity.
His only solace comes from teaching a group of mis-fits, a group of kids intellectually deprived and emotionally handicapped. These kids, so labeled by a society crippled by rules and convention, are the real people, a true cross-section of humanity. They are his awakening. “Are schools failing?” he asks. Does the system fulfill its obligations? Who, in fact, are the mis-fits?
After a quarter of a century, quixotically tilting at windmills, Jim fights to survive in a system slowly destroying him. Three-Legged Bears, ten months in the life of Jim Andropoulos.