Class of 2010. A quasi-novel. Part I.

My students graduated yesterday. I am sad. I almost broke my no-crying streak, which is around 4 years now (last cry: my brothers wedding, June 2006. embarrassing. i covered it up by sucking down a helium balloon before i gave the best man speech.)  i mean, its nothing compared to the no-hiccups streak (since 1994), but still impressive. but i held strong.

Anyways. I don’t deal well with change. My students make fun of me all of the time for eating the same thing for lunch every single day (an everything bagel toasted with cream cheese and a dr. pepper). I have taught a lot of the students of the class of 2010 for 3 years now, and I have no idea what I will do with myself when they leave.

I’m still really annoyed with the Algebra 2 state test, and I haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that this group of students that I’ve come to love so much is leaving. I’ve tried to write a couple posts over the past two weeks, and they just came out really vindictive and angry, not snarky and acerbic as is my usual style. So instead of trying that, I’m just going to celebrate some of my seniors.

My first real teaching success in Brooklyn was with this weird kid in my 1st period class in my first year. This big kid came in every day and would almost immediately fall asleep. I would try to wake him up and wouldn’t get much more than a grunt out of him. One day, finally, I say, “Dude, you have got to wake up. Get a pen out, let’s go.” He says that he doesn’t have a pen. “How can you not have a pen? Its first period!”

“I threw it at a bum.”

“Wait. Did you just say you threw your pen at a homeless man this morning?”

Somehow, I convinced him to stay after school and make up some work. I am pushing him to give me something, but he is so deficient in skills that we aren’t getting anywhere. Finally, he says, “You know what would be awesome? I’m going to build the world’s biggest robot. Out of chocolate. And it will have lasers for eyes. And then I’m going to take it for walks around my neighborhood. And then I’m going to eat it. But don’t eat the electricity!”

My jaw pretty much drops. What the hell is this kid talking about? But I love it. So I keep having him stay after school, and we slowly get more work done, but he also continues to give me brilliant ideas. They all start with, “You know what would be awesome?” And they were awesome.

“You know how they have beer helmets? They should have ice cream backpacks.”

“I want to make glow-in-the-dark hair gel. Raves would be much easier.”

“They should genetically engineer an anteater to dispense cheese. Then, you could have a picnic, and eat nachos!”

He started to put more time into his schoolwork. His essays for history class were brilliant. He picked up some basic math skills. Most things he said in class were crazy non-sequiturs like, in a discussion about the internet, he says, “The internet. Where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents.” In a discussion in economics, he starts debating about supply and demand of Hot Pockets and Slim Jims. In US History, he asks about Halloween during the Great Depression. Surmises that the candy was lacking, but the number of foreclosures makes a lot of great haunted houses. He also really came out of his shell, and everyone found out that this kid was funny. He would bring a rubber chicken to school for no reason other than to hold it up in the hallway and say, “look, a rubber chicken.” He would draw comics, first about a kid who drank a lot of Windex and would go on magical trips, “kind of like the Magic School Bus.” Then, he started drawing a comic of the Waffle Ninja, whose parents were killed in some sort of pancake debacle, so he decided to become a vigilante, throwing frozen waffles to stop crime and jumping from roof to roof to give people free cable. I continued to work with him. After 2 years, he only had 11 credits. 44 are needed to graduate. Junior year, he really hit his stride. Passed every single class except 1. He became a presence in the school, staying after every day to do homework and then play monopoly with me and a few other kids. Then, one day, he got a great idea.

“Tomorrow, I’m going to start a coffee shop.”

He sat down at my computer, put together an amazing picture of a coffee mug that said “The Cup,” and posted like 40 copies around school, haphazardly hung in the hallway and on the principal’s office door. No word on when or where, just crooked signs of coffee mugs all over the school.

The next day, I had over 30 kids in my room. I don’t know how they all found out. He had 2 coffee pots brewing, selling coffee for 1 dollar to students, 75 cents for teachers, and 25 cents for the Pinball club, which was me and two other kids who used my Smartboard to play pinball many days after school. He had milk and sugar (with a pricing system: an extra quarter for more than 6 spoonfuls of sugar in your coffee), had hot water to make hot chocolate. I always have had 15 kids or so come in my room for some extra help during lunch, but this was out of control. They had rearranged my desks to make  a coffee shop atmosphere, and all of these kids were hanging out peacefully, reading or doing homework. I put on some Miles Davis, and it was awesome. My student raked in over 40 dollars from a lunch and after-school shift. I asked how much profit he made, when he admitted that he left Dunkin Donuts and forgot to pay for the coffee, so it was all profit.

This lasted much longer than I thought it would. A few days in, my principal came in and said that she didn’t know if we could keep having my room double as a coffee shop. I started to argue with her, saying that he was really figuring out some important skills for the first time. He had made a few adjustments to his pricing, had some staff working for him, cleaning out coffee pots and wiping down my desks, and really doing some real math for the first time. I said to him, “Isn’t that right? You are doing a lot of math, making change for people and stuff?”

He responded, “I’m making so much change, I should work for Obama.”

After about 3 weeks, he said to me, “I’m going to close down the Cup for a while.” I asked him why. He said, “I need to get my shit together right now.” And he does. He knocks out a couple of the state tests that he hadn’t yet passed. He more than doubles the number of credits that he has.

Then, senior year, I don’t have him in class anymore. I’m creating two curricula from scratch, am the Data Specialist for my school, I work for the NYC Department of Education so I have mountains of bullshit to put up with every single day that wastes my time, and I’m trying my best to keep the 120 students that I have from falling apart and not only learn to factor, but to factor trigonometric functions that involve double angle identities. Damn you, NY and your ridiculous standards! I lose track of my student, and he kind of disappears. Goes a week without coming to school. I try talking to his parents, but his immigrant family doesn’t seem to mind him missing school when he has a good job at a bakery that helps bring in money. I convince him to come back to school for a while, which he does, and then he falls off again. He goes from missing 2 days a week, to 4, to almost every day, and finally, he’s gone.

Yesterday at graduation, I was so sad to not see him there. I wonder what things would have been like for him if we were a better school. On paper, for a public high school in Brooklyn, we are amazing. 90% graduation rate! Everyone of those kids accepted to college! According to the numbers, top 5 in the entire city. But it has been so hard for some of the eccentric kids who have come through our doors to be successful, because our school is boring. 2 periods a day of English. 2 periods a day of history. Some kids have 2 periods a day of math. If there isn’t a required state test for it, you don’t take it. Art is just a credit you have to get for graduation, so it is basically a coloring class where everyone passes. We don’t offer a music class, although we live in NEW YORK CITY.

I don’t know how to fix it.