by Marc Skelton
With traditional education and high-stakes exams, there is an imposition of middle-class values and an erroneous assumption about what education really is. Progressive education teaches us that memorization doesn’t sprint alongside knowledge. It succeeds only in resembling true understanding. There’s a pitfall in standardization. It ruins the individual. I enjoy the other side of the educational coin, the side where the beauty is in the discovery of something new.
Progressive education embraces the individual. All schools need multifaceted teachers who care. At Fannie Lou, there are two dozen classrooms operating with students who are driving longer and diving deeper into topics. We have the ingredients for a solid education. A large industrial-size high school, in contrast, is fertile ground for kids to be anonymous, for teachers to burn out, and for apathy to spread among both. Small schools graduate more students. Small schools are safer. Small schools have changed the city that we know. Some experts are now linking New York City’s decrease in homicides to the increase in small schools. More kids feel like they have a school where someone cares about them. In large high schools, you have no idea what people are doing during those crucial years. I went to a large high school, but it wasn’t until college, when I wasn’t a popular athlete anymore, that I experienced academic anomie. The anonymity of a small school will last mere hours, after which there are plenty of adults and kids who will know your name. A large high school, on the other hand, can create a lifetime of hostility toward schooling and teachers. In a small school, students have a school that knows them well. They have agency and are actors in their own lives. I think of schools as an engine that helps this city operate. Small schools save lives.
There’s no questioning the brilliance and durability of the formula of Fannie Lou. Marilyn joined the staff in 2008. Andy has been here since 2011. Our classrooms reflect ideals that are basic to the foundations of public education: equity, democracy, and engagement. The faculty works together. We are friends.
The way the school is structured, I know exactly what the 2017 Panthers are working on every day. Today Frankie practiced his lines for his Macbeth performance. Tyree and Kaleb went to the Bronx River to measure its turbidity and salinity. Walfri wrote a paper on Emmett Till. Charles wrote the second chapter of his autobiography. Shamar presented his PowerPoint on “parenting and inequality.” Cris worked on his microbes mini-lab. Kenneth and Mack compared political cartoons about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Josh and JB worked with their advisers on the differences between private and public colleges. Bryant edited a draft on the idea of greed in Pushkin’s Queen of Spades. The members of the basketball team all have the common spirit of the school.
Over the years, I have worked hard to sharpen my sales pitch. Fannie Lou was built to provide a quality education and lure families from the neighborhood. Its magnetism has worked on me and my colleagues as well. As anyone who has ever taught in an urban public school knows, teaching is no joke. It is a very difficult job. You do have to be a badass once in a while. I’m fortunate to work here, though. Gone are the clunky, impersonal forty-minute periods, gone are the overpopulated schedules where teachers interact with hundreds of students a day. As teachers, we are unencumbered by conventional thinking. As a result, a dozen or so colleagues have embraced Fannie Lou for the long haul. They aren’t distracted by changing jobs or careers. They have given themselves a chance to grow their roots here.
When I check my colleagues’ social media, it is not uncommon to see the love they have for Fannie Lou. One morning I saw Kate Belin post a photo on Instagram. It was of her shadow on the wall of the school with a leafless tree behind her. She used the hashtag “roots.”
Fannie Lou has a centripetal pull. Ask anyone who has ever worked there. This is not to say that those who left did not love it. How does Fannie Lou keep up the high standards and ideals? A combination of allegiance, faith in the institutional organization, and a little luck.
In 1993, the chancellor was attacked by a young man who was discontented, not because he was left alone in the hallways, but because he was allowed to be anonymous. Teaching at Fannie Lou is not like any movie you’ve ever seen about teaching. Maybe it is more like the old television show Cheers, because here at Fannie Lou, everyone knows your name.
HOME OPENER
In our home opener we looked royally good in our inglorious, unluxurious gym. And the good news was that over the last few days, nobody had quit the team. Tony, Randy, and Steven, the school custodians, kept it makpid as a kosher restaurant. We beat Annex High School 75–47. The first quarter was redolent of the first game against Clinton, but after that we blew them out of the gym. In our next home game of the season, we had what I will call a Julius Caesar game. We “wreaked havoc and unleashed the dogs of war” on Hyde Charter School, 105–53. Sometimes I have to be indecorous on the sideline to get the team to play the way I want. Tonight was one of those nights. Clearly the only thing I can accomplish against the rapid growth of charter schools is to beat their teams. That’s my digital salute to the charter schools movement. We were now 3-0 on the season. Up next was our division rival, Morrisania.
THE ALBATROSS
After school on game days, my classroom transforms into the locker room for the basketball team. Sneakers, jeans, belts, socks, duffel bags, and T-shirts today cover Emilio Aguinaldo’s Independence Day Speech; there are still copies from yesterday’s lesson on Teddy Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” on the table. My room is a mess. The old diagrams from previous seasons, along with clinic notes and motivational articles that were never read or are now forgotten, surround a favorite article from Grantland on top of a file cabinet. A green scorebook from 2010 sits alone on the windowsill; the basketball ephemera compete with the daily assignments and forgotten papers with the signatures of students who either forgot to take them, didn’t think it was necessary, or figured I would keep them in a safe place. I bet on the latter and put the papers on the enormous, space-invading computer cart. Three Band-Aid-colored file cabinets squat in the back of my room stuffed with clothes, shoes, yearbooks, and more papers. Paper is the ultimate colonizer. Its imperial expansion is difficult for me to keep up with and still keep a tidy classroom. By 3:30 p.m., the guys were dressed and the routine of the pregame chalk-and-talk was about to begin.
“Frankie, can you get your shoes off the table, it’s bad luck.”
Frankie removed a pair of pearl-white Jordans and placed them on the floor politely.
The role superstitions play in a season can be crippling. I haven’t shaved since the day before the Clinton game. There are strings of gray hair on my chin that weren’t there last year. My beard has traces of cinnamon too; it reminds me of a pancake with powdered sugar sprinkled on top. You would think the older I get, the less superstitious I would become. Not so. I’m reminded that Nikita Khrushchev tried to implement a fight against superstitions. He also wanted people to eat more corn. I’m not convinced I would have been a good Soviet citizen.
Last season Morrisania finished second in our division. They were a tough-minded opponent, and many of the players on both teams had been playing against each other since middle school.
“Take care of the ball, be aggressive on defense, and play together.”
Those were my simple suggestions for the early December divisional game. We were still turning the ball over at an alarming rate, and it was freaking me out. Turnovers are hard to solve.
“Ready? Let’s go!”
We huddled in the front of the room near the chalkboard, and Walfri led us with a “One, two, three, defense, four, five, six, together!” chant.
Checklist: camera, tripod, clipboards, dry-erase markers, red defibrillator, and the scorebook were all picked up as the boys shuffled out of the room to the gym. I felt like we were missing something. Jaquan, the junior backup point guard, wasn’t with us today. He had to babysit or was grounded or was grounded for not babysitting. I w
asn’t really sure. At that moment, I remembered his mom had texted me earlier in the day asking me to send him home right after school. I forgot to tell the team.
In the gym, some popular hip-hop music played. The students in the crowd were mouthing the lyrics. Tyree was flashing his hands and enjoying the songs. I’m never sure what song or artist is playing. I don’t care what music they listen to as long as it helps them. Tyree, the fifteen-year-old shooting guard, looked like a consummate ventriloquist while effortlessly making the ball go through the hoop. He and Shamar had just created the “Shooting God” T-shirt, pinching the Houston Rockets’ Chris Paul’s “Point God” moniker. Ty loved to shoot. He was driven by a mimetic compulsion like a machine. He frequently changed his last name on social media to Ty Briscoe or Ty Fox or Ty Oubre, borrowing the surnames of talented college or NBA players. I could see the scars on his right forearm; the sun had darkened the scar on the top, leaving the two on the underside a flesh color. His left shoulder was now pinned with a tattoo saying “Faith.” Melville wrote, “Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.” I was hoping our shooting guard would start shooting the ball well.
Tyree’s basketball off-season hadn’t gone exactly as planned. The injury prevented him from playing for the rest of the summer. His new bionic arm was a little rusty. He struggled in the preseason, but in the last couple of practices and games he had looked more comfortable. “Just keep shooting,” I told him during practice. Later that night he sent a text: “Life throws challenges at you, you need to face them.” Ty was well aware of his struggles. He was staying late after practice and shooting in the morning before school started. Nonetheless, he was shooting under 10 percent on three-pointers. Yet today in warm-ups he looked like Ray Allen: the ball wasn’t even hitting the rim. All net.
The Morrisania coach, Steven Greenwald, is a retired teacher, but he still coaches basketball to stay active during retirement. He was wearing a blue New York Yankees polo shirt and khaki cargo shorts with black ankle socks, as if summer hadn’t vanished months ago. I stood as far away from him as possible, yet he approached me. There is something suspicious about a coach who arrives at a game dressed like a vendor at a baseball game. The pregame coaching exchange is as painful as you can imagine. He wouldn’t stop speaking in baseball metonyms and retirement mumbo jumbo and lamenting about teenagers and their lack of work ethic. “Wheelhouse.” “Tier four versus tier one.” You get the picture.
Ms. Jackson was waving at me from across the gym. She was rescuing me from this ordeal.
“Best of luck tonight,” I squeezed out of the corner of my lips to my garrulous opponent and skimmed across the court to her.
The game was about to start, when Gaby leaned over. “Oh, I see this guy at the Laundromat all the time.”
“Who?”
“The ref. He’s awful. He watches games the same way I stare at clothes in the dryer.”
Charles reappeared just in time from the storage room, which serves as a Seamen’s Bethel before games; he prays alone before each game there. Charles tapped the tip perfectly to Frankie. Frankie snatched the ball, the Morrisania defenders moved like starfish, and Frankie quickly took two dribbles and soared above them for an easy bucket. He hovered and turned in the air to get back on defense. For a moment he looked like a helicopter in a premature landing.
Frankie’s basket would be our best offensive possession of the first half and his last bucket of the game. Nobody heard the crack, a few saw the grimace, and only Frankie felt the microfissure in his foot. I was waiting for the injury to subside; like stepping on an errant Lego, the sting eventually fades. He hobbled back on defense dutifully, lifting his right foot in the air. The clock operator was looking at Frankie. The guys on the bench were looking at Frankie. Gaby stood up. The whole time I was trying not to look at Frankie.
I finally found someone to rest my eyes on, in the stands: Jamaal Lampkin, class of 2010. Jamaal now looked like a fullback, but when he played for me he was a relentless rebounder and the first 1,000-point scorer in the history of Fannie Lou. Our eyes met as Frankie hobbled in front of us the way someone walks in front of the television.
Watching Frankie limp was unsettling. We had seen this sort of injury before and knew it wasn’t good. Was it his Achilles? His ankle? I didn’t know. Frankie just seemed to land the wrong way.
Gaby and Frankie disappeared into the weight room. I hesitated. Coaches are never supposed to hesitate. Mack was home babysitting. So now, early in the season, we didn’t have a third-string point guard. Now I would have to apply the sacred principle of injuries: the next guy better be ready.
“JB, get in there.”
Tyree and Shamar, like bear cubs separated from their brother, were looking in the direction of the weight room, hoping Frankie would reemerge from the hobble. “Shamar, you are now the one,” I said, shifting the burden of point guard duties onto him. He told me later that when he heard me say that, he said to himself, “IQ now needs to go up and nerves need to go down.”
The Morrisania Knights were energized by Frankie’s disappearance and scored easily on the next possession. They applied a full-court press, since they knew that without our regular point guard we would have difficulty. Walfri, our dependable inbounder, passed to Shamar, who was clearly not ready to take over the point guard duties, because he found the person with the least amount of experience against a full-court press, the freshman Jaelen, “JB.” I imagine he was a very good eighth-grade player. He’s athletic and strong, but at five-ten, he was now far from the tallest or strongest on the court. Unbridled like a bottle rocket, he quickly dribbled up the right sideline. His flame was quickly extinguished by three Morrisania defenders. JB’s shot still managed to ricochet off the backboard the way a carpenter bee slams against a window in vain. The rest of the quarter was a lot more of JB’s unspectacular fireworks, forcing shots into a defensive hurricane of Morrisania arms and hands.
“Is he ready?” I asked Gaby.
Gaby went to check on Frankie.
“No. He says it hurts on the top of his foot.”
A few more possessions went by.
“Is he ready?”
“He says he is in a lot of pain.”
“He may have broken something,” I admitted. Frankie was not a malingerer.
* * *
—
On the defensive end, we fouled them on every other possession. Jaelen launched another unmakable shot, and finally I had to take him out of the game.
Yet somehow we were winning 13–11 at the end of the first quarter.
“Jaelen, we play as a team. You’re not going to beat them yourself. Relax out there and let the game come to you. You’re forcing everything, you don’t have to score to help us. In fact, don’t try to score.”
I don’t think he heard me.
“Bryant, go in for JB, tell Charles he is the four [power forward], and Walfri is the three [the small forward].”
Bryant, the backup center, now entered the game. His Bajan Rastafarian braids covered his eyes like those decorative bead curtains from a long-lost college dorm room. He may or may not have given the directions I asked.
To start the second quarter, Shamar was now at point guard for the first time in his life. Ty was ice-cold from the outside. Walfri was now at the small forward spot, a position he has dreamed of playing, but his Clydesdale speed had always prevented it. Only Charles and Bryant were at positions they knew well.
What happened next was unpleasant. I would call a play, and nobody knew where they were supposed to be.
“T-Stack,” Shamar called, trying to redirect the troops. It was our pet play, where Walfri usually gets a layup.
Shamar veered. Tyree tacked. Nobody was in the position. The play plunged into oblivion.
Frankie had reappeared and taken up t
wo chairs on the westernmost part of the bench. A gap of three chairs developed between him and four players with about ten minutes of varsity experience combined—Kenneth, Kaleb, Cris, and Jaelen. On nights like tonight, we could have used Xavier and Latrell. I wanted to text Mack, “Next time listen to your mom, please.” The best-laid plans can be undone by an injury, a lie, or a punishment. Walfri moved to correct the situation and caught the ball, but he traveled as he tried to attack the paint. A few plays later, a combination of a Shamar steal and layup allowed us to apply our full-court pressure. Guys were almost in their right positions and were almost getting steals. They looked like teenagers driving a car for the first time.
The gym was silent until Bryant got a block that awoke his four friends in the stands. A small fan club attended every game, waiting for any little thing that Bryant did right so they could lose their minds. Next was Tyree’s turn. He snagged a pass and went in for a layup. Tyree then went on to have back-to-back-to-back steals and was able to find Shamar sprinting ahead for an easy bucket. Our defense was keeping us alive.
* * *
—
Unaccustomed to playing a lot of minutes, Bryant asked for a rest. Did the bench time teach JB anything? Maybe. As soon as he touched the ball, he drove right into the paint and found Tyree for a wide-open three. That may have been our second-best offensive possession of the game.
“Great pass, JB!” Frankie yelled.
We would fight back before halftime to be down only five: 28–23.
“Is Frankie okay?” Frankie’s cousin asked.
“I think it’s best if he went to the hospital now.” We asked his cousin to take him there.
