by Ed Boland
They were short conversations, everyone eager for my embarrassment to end, but as I look back, here is what I wanted to tell them all. I’d have to leave the To Sir, with Love; Stand and Deliver; and Blackboard Jungle endings to the Hollywood heroes and the superhuman twenty-two-year-olds who are made of stronger stuff than I am. My god, how I wished I were tougher, more resilient, more organized, harder working, and less in love with bourgeois pleasures, but I was not, am not. I have reenacted every fight, insult, and outburst but cast each scene with a better version of myself as a veteran teacher, and I always emerge victorious. But would it really have worked? Would it have made a difference?
I still wrestle with flashes of guilt, shame, and betrayal. A white guy with a salvation complex is bad enough, but how about one who couldn’t save anybody? Every time I walk by a school or see a band of rowdy kids on the subway, these demons revisit me. I so wish it were a different ending for me and for the kids, but some stories have to end like a seventies movie—gritty, real, and sad.
Chapter 15
Pomp and Circumstance
The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that—well, lucky you.
—Philip Roth, American Pastoral
THREE YEARS AFTER I left the Union Street School, sometime in late June 2010, I banged out a few final e-mails in my office, pulled off my tie, and bounded down the stairs of the Project Advance brownstone located on a leafy block on the Upper West Side. I hopped on my dinged-up, mint-green Bianchi cruiser and headed downtown through a snarled mess of yellow cabs, rolling hot-dog carts, and defiant pedestrians. After a frantic ride, I arrived at a small, dark auditorium somewhere on the NYU campus, just in time for the Union Street graduation ceremony.
The early summer heat and the anxiety of seeing my former students in the flesh left me short of breath as I grabbed a program and plopped down in a squeaky fold-down seat. Up until that point, with a notable exception or two, I had purposely avoided much interaction with the school or its students. Eager to put the ugly year behind me, I had thrown myself into my position at Project Advance with renewed conviction. I was more partisan than ever about the program, believing that low-income kids with the greatest promise are well served in private schools, where their talents can be cultivated and they have the best chance of joining the leadership class.
I watched as my former students filed onto the stage, beaming and mugging in shiny green graduation robes with their mortarboards askew. They took up surprisingly little of the stage. I did a quick count and was saddened to discover that only about half of the original class of ninety students would be graduating; the missing could be chalked up to dropouts, expulsions, and transfers. As I scanned the rows of faces, I was hard-pressed to believe that several of those onstage had really met the state graduation requirements, which had grown even more rigorous since I had left. My suspicion was later confirmed by shrugs and rolled eyes from faculty members.
Lucas, the brainy son of Haitian immigrants and one of the few middle-class kids in the school, gave a moving commencement speech, urging his classmates to make their mark on the world. It also featured a walk down memory lane, including a reference to “terrible fights inside Mr. Boland’s classroom,” which left the graduates laughing and my face burning with embarrassment. Always right behind Byron in terms of grades, Lucas concluded by saying he would attend Vassar in the fall. As happy as I was for him, he was very much the exception. Those kids going on to higher education were mostly headed to community colleges, and even then it was largely through remedial programs.
At the reception afterward, to my great surprise I was swarmed by students like some kind of celebrity, by kids who formed a sort of receiving line. Even more shocking was the fact that I was most warmly received by the students who had seemed to hate and resist me the most.
For the entire year I taught her, Gloria Lin didn’t make eye contact with me and mumbled insults under her breath, sometimes in Cantonese, sometimes in English. Here, she held me in a long bear hug, saying, “You were an amazing history teacher! Why did you leave?” Even three years later, the mindfuck continued.
“Mister, mister, look at my beautiful baby girl,” said DiNatalya. She hadn’t graduated that afternoon but had come to cheer on her classmates. She frantically thumbed through her phone and brought up pictures of a cherubic six-month-old crowned with a wisp of black hair. I congratulated her but thought about how hard the road ahead would be for someone with her challenges. I wanted to cry.
José, whom I remembered as a smart-mouth with terrible grades, was next. “I’m goin’ to JTC College an’ study international business,” he said. I slapped him on the back and shook his hand. Inside, I was fuming. I knew it was one of those sinister for-profit colleges, which lure in the weakest students with deceptive, cynical advertising: “Be somebody!” “Do it for yourself and your kids!” “No high school diploma necessary!” They’re expensive and they load their students up with taxpayer-funded loans and grants, but 63 percent of the kids drop out because they are so unprepared. In the end, the schools keep the money (one CEO of a chain of for-profit colleges, Strayer Education, Inc., made $41.9 million in 2009), but students rarely get the degrees promised and they are stuck with a mountain of debt.
Dalia, whose name I barely remembered since her attendance was so terrible, embraced me. “Mister, I got some more high school courses to do, but when I finish I’m gonna join the Marines, just like my dad.” I’m all for serving your country, but I knew she had few other options. I took a picture with her and forced out another smile.
But there was real cause for celebration, too: Manfred, one of the students who had held his own with Byron and Lucas, earned nearly a full scholarship to Pace University to study business. (He sends me his good news from time to time. He went on to graduate with a degree in environmental science, studied abroad in Hong Kong, and just landed a great job working for an eco-conscious leather producer.) Ahmed would go to Baruch College to study computer science. Even more encouraging, several of the middle-of-the-pack kids took unexpected turns for the good: Dee-Dee, a quiet, unmotivated, sometimes surly girl, blossomed as a spoken-word artist and earned a near full-ride scholarship to the very groovy Hampshire College, where I was sure the hippies and hipsters would love her. Lazy Lee Lee turned it on somewhere along the way and would go on to study economics at St. John’s in Queens.
I said my final good-byes, exchanged e-mail addresses with a few kids, and unchained my bike from a light post. As I started pumping my way back uptown, my mood shifted at almost every intersection. I felt alarmed for those missing, concerned for those exploited, and overjoyed for the steady workhorses and turnaround artists. So much for neat closure.
Since graduation day, largely through the wonders of e-mail, Facebook, and gossip, I have tried to stay connected to my former students and colleagues.
Mei and Gretchen both left (or were forced out, depending on who you talk to) the school not long after I did. Mei was promoted to the Academic Office of the Department of Education, where she evaluates the performances of schools like the one she left. Gretchen moved on to a big job at an educational nonprofit that supports teachers and principals and opens new reform-minded schools. (Mei’s replacement as principal, Meghan, was widely disliked by the faculty, and a significant exodus ensued. She left in 2012 for a senior administrative post in teacher “talent management” in a big school district out west.) Union Street School is now on its third principal since its founding in 2004.
In August 2012, New York State declared Union Street a “priority school,” meaning it was performing in the bottom 5 percent of schools statewide. Not surprisingly, Eugene D
ebs is also on that list, but it was especially disheartening to see that Union Street underperformed even Eugene Debs in terms of math and English scores. It was mandated that Union Street dramatically improve its performance or face closure by 2015. Only 10.2 percent of students were reported as having met state standards in English, and a mere 10 percent of the seniors were classified as “college ready.” It is hard to square these sad facts with the school’s tagline: “College Ready. Globally Competent.” It is unclear how the new and more union-friendly administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio will deal with such schools.
I know Mei, Gretchen, and Meghan were smart, well-intentioned, and worked extremely hard. I know that society unfairly expects educators to fix larger societal problems through schools, but it’s disconcerting that the school’s early leaders have been promoted up the chain despite terribly poor results.
All but two of the thirty-two faculty members I taught with at Union Street have either moved on to other schools or left the profession. One year after I left, Monica went on to Harvard Business School. After graduating, she tried corporate management consulting but disliked it. She is now back working for the largest school district in the Midwest, overseeing school performance, trying to fix the big machine. If anyone can do it, she can. Bridget, the science teacher, got fed up with teaching and moved to the United Arab Emirates for a time. Last I heard, she was running an organic beet farm in upstate New York. My buddy Porter, who taught ninth-grade English, stayed for four years at Union Street, but then in frustration moved to a new school that attracts more motivated kids and focuses on creative writing. In June 2014, he saw his new school’s first-ever graduating class go on to some excellent colleges. The social worker, Sita, went on to do God’s work in a school for recently incarcerated youth. Her stories are legend. A student told her recently, “Miss, this morning I robbed this lady that looked like you, but she had money.”
Rebecca, the charismatic and gifted middle school reading teacher at Union Street, went on to become a highly regarded principal of a Queens high school. In 2014, she was accused of having sex in school with both a security guard and a vice principal from another school. Intimate photos of her reportedly found on school computers were reprinted by the New York Post and ultimately viewed by millions of people. My former coworkers and students alike were shocked at the news because this was so out of character from how we remembered her.
Then the twist: Rebecca contacted me after this book first came out to say the allegations weren’t true and she’s working to clear her name. Her experience saddened and disturbed me and I am so sorry she has had to go through it. I hope she succeeds. It’s disheartening to see such an amazing educator not able to use her gifts in the classroom and a terrible loss for the New York City school system.
As for the kids, Chantay, who greeted me during my first week with some serious profanity, finished her associate’s degree at a community college in upstate New York and has transferred to a four-year state college on Long Island. She doesn’t really like it that much and plans to take the NYC police officer exam or go to culinary school soon. Kameron, aka “Nemesis,” who was suspended for threatening to blow up the school, later attended a high school for “post-incarceration and juvenile detention center youth.” It’s hard not to assume the worst about why he ended up there. Bad boy Jesús, who participated in the rumble along with his father, posts on Facebook about wanting to join the Navy SEALs, but also about how he’s going to “get lifted with this blunt before my GED class.” The empty lot that hosted the rumble is on the verge of total gentrification. Essex Crossing will be one of the largest developments in New York in decades, consisting of nearly two million square feet of shops and apartments. The neighborhood is quickly becoming unrecognizable.
The fate of Freddy, who was running a drug ring in his brother’s absence, is unclear, but I am sad to report that there was a prisoner with his name and year of birth in an upstate New York prison who served eighteen months for possession of a controlled substance. Sameer, the textbook thrower and pellet-gun provider, went to community college for a time and lists his profession on Facebook as “your mother’s massage therapist.” He is a pretty good boxer. I ran into him on the subway recently. He again showed me a long, fat worm of a scar on his neck. “Chicks like to suck on it,” he reminded me. He asked me to take him and a friend out for beers, but I politely declined. Mickey, the bad boy of Temple Emmanu-El fame, continued his scorched-earth policy during his sophomore year until finally he slammed Mei up against a wall and was permanently expelled. Even his grandmother couldn’t explain that one away. He attended a “second-chance” high school in East Harlem but didn’t graduate and is now unemployed. We chat on Facebook from time to time. He says he’s “chillin’ and tryin’ to stay out of trouble.”
Valentina, of Kingda Ka roller-coaster fame, is studying to become either a heart surgeon or a manicurist, depending on which of her Facebook posts you believe. But later she told me in an e-mail that she had dropped out of a medical technician training program at a for-profit trade school. She found it “overwhelming” and said “u have to keep up on everything because it’s not like community college, it’s hard.” She hopes to reenroll in the program soon. She was recently arrested and spent five days in jail on Rikers Island. She celebrated her release by getting “white girl drunk.” She will soon have a baby. Aspirational Solomon is in community college in the Bronx studying criminal justice in the hopes of becoming a cop, and also working at Staples. I don’t know if Leon came out of the closet, but he was, until recently, working as a florist of sorts, creating elaborate edible fruit arrangements. Mariah, who does maintenance work in parks, is no longer quiet about her sexuality. She recently declared on Facebook that “I’m addicted to FEMS. Want A Boo So I Could Lay Up with Her And Rub Her Butt.” Fat Clovis is happily married and working at a Walmart in Tennessee and seems his blithe self. Yvette, who was sexually exploited and loved Powers of Ten, is nowhere to be found.
By the time he was a senior, Byron had aced every course at Union Street and had only two hours of class a day; there were no honors or AP courses offered there. With the help of a really dedicated teacher, he taught himself some very advanced math topics. Since the school wasn’t well suited to help him with his applications to competitive colleges, I stepped in as a volunteer college counselor. Despite his impeccable record, stellar scores, and compelling story, his undocumented (I refuse to use the word illegal) immigration status made him a hard sell to colleges. Undocumented students are ineligible for federal financial aid, so a school would have to fill the gap with their own funds to enroll him, and those funds are usually reserved for international students who live abroad.
On the big decision day, Byron was wait-listed at Harvard, Brown, and Kenyon. I tried to use my connections at all three schools to move him off the list, but to no avail. One admissions officer told me, “It’s not looking good. We’ll treat him as a foreign student, but we only have four spots in the entire class for full-scholarship foreign students. He’s got stiff competition.” I knew from my former jobs in college admissions the kinds of kids he was competing with: former child soldiers from Sierra Leone, Indian whiz kids who’ve done research on malaria drugs, Chinese prodigies who have written their own math theorems.
We brainstormed a backup plan for him to attend boarding school for a postgraduate year while he got his citizenship status straightened out. I called just about every boarding school in the Northeast, but it was already June so the classes were filled and the financial aid was gone. Only a third-tier Catholic boarding school in Massachusetts that used to educate the lesser Kennedys showed interest. I took a day off and we drove to the campus. Byron was impressed by the rolling hills, the Gothic campus, and the seriousness of the students. Later that week, I called him with the news of a nearly full scholarship. There was an awkward silence on the line and he finally blurted out, “I appreciate your help in getting me this, but I don’t want to go. I don
’t want to be eighteen and wear a uniform and have a curfew.” It was hard to know if I was more furious or sad at his self-sabotage. Was he afraid of failure? Of success? Was he secretly scared of all those blondes swinging squash racquets? I would never know.
Later that year, Byron moved to rural Florida where, because of his undocumented status, he was unable to work or get financial aid for college. He has done very little of anything except go to the public library and help his aunt sell meat pies from time to time. In the fall of 2012, Byron was given a glimmer of hope. The federal government offered a temporary amnesty from deportation program called DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) that allows students who were brought to this country by their parents to work and receive federal aid legally. He applied, was approved, and now plans to reapply to college. I hope our nation will do right by hardworking kids like Byron. The old slogan has never rung more true: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
I have also stayed in touch with Nee-cole, the girl in foster care who was bullied by her classmates. Her homeless but savvy mother had her transferred to a better public school after one year at Union Street. From time to time, I would see her mother tasting samples of vegan products at Whole Foods and we’d catch up on Nee-cole. Though nationally only 2 percent of children in foster care earn college degrees, remarkably, Nee-cole just graduated from a competitive four-year state college in Westchester in a special program that supports at-risk kids. Her experience has been filled with low lows and high highs. I checked in with her during the early days of her freshman year and discovered that without a computer, she was writing her papers on her cell phone when the library was closed, and her foster care agency was six weeks late with a check for books. Sam and I did what we could, buying her a used computer and sending her money for textbooks and to keep her phone from being turned off. True to her character, she would accept only a loan, not a gift, and repaid me the minute her check arrived. At one point, she failed several courses and was put on academic probation.
