Love the One You're With (29 page)

That disclosure wasn't lost on him.

“Now, your first assignment is to write an autobiography of yourself in fifty words or less.”

The class reacted with grumbling and hissing.

Willoughby made his displeasure known the loudest. “Yo, we gotta do homework on the first day?!”

“In the future, do not address me as
Yo
. And, yes, you will have homework on the first day. Get used to having it
every
day.”

“Yo—”

I glared at him.

“Uh … Mr. C?”

I nodded. “Mr. C is fine.”

“Don't you know Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863?”

More laughter from the crowd, uh, class.

I smiled. “You are a witty one, Will. And smart, too. I look forward to seeing that humor and intelligence displayed in your homework—starting with tonight's assignment.”

I did see it in that assignment, and many others: a haiku about Jesse Jackson (“MLK's homeboy helping us keep hope alive and our eyes on the prize”); an essay about his mother, who died when he was a baby; and a commentary on girls playing team sports with boys (his argument was a sexist one—“Girls just don't want to do what boys do, they want to
be
boys and they can't be”—but he presented it in such a convincing manner that it's easy to see how even the most nonsensical ideas can be made to
sound
sensical). But while he turned in near-perfect work, he was determined to test every teacher in the school. The comic outbursts and flippant air were getting him a C across the board in both behavior and concentration—and you know what happens to Black boys who are labeled “difficult,” “aggressive,” and “abrasive,” as some teachers had Will. I surmised he learned at a younger age that the best way for him to get people's attention was to be a smart-ass—and given how invisible Black boys are meant to feel, I can see why some react in such a way. This is why I give the boys just a little bit more time than the girls—Black boys are more likely to be “tracked” into remedial classes, placed in special education (instead of educators, most of whom are white, taking the extra time to work with them), and harshly disciplined for the most minor offenses, such as talking back or making noise (instead of being diagnosed with “attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder” and receiving a prescription for Ritalin or some other kiddie drug like their white peers). Such events scar them and make school a very unpleasant and unappealing experience, leading many to lose interest and drop out by the time they reach high school. It's my job to both undo the damage that may have already been done and lead or keep them on a path to realizing their own potential.

So, at least once a week during that first month and a half, I kept Will after school.

“What am I going to do with you, Will?” I asked for the umpteenth time.

“Whatcha mean?”

I gave him a “don't even try it” look.

He twirled his tie. “I don't know.”

“You do, too, know.”

“Uh … maybe I'm just lazy.”

“You're not lazy.”

“Maybe I'm just stoopid.”

“And you're not stupid, either.”

“Maybe I just don't care.”

“Oh, you care. You care enough to act up, so I know you care.”

Silence.

I sat down in front of him. “Run out of excuses, huh?”

“What?”

“I know and
you
know you are not lazy or stupid, and that you do care. This is about your wanting attention.”

“I don't want no attention.”

“You say that but your actions tell me something different. There's a right kind of attention and a wrong kind of attention, and the kind you are constantly seeking isn't the right kind.”

He looked down.

“I've noticed that the higher your grades get, the more you act out. Are you afraid your friends won't see getting good grades in school as being cool?” Although I hadn't heard any student say it at Knowledge Hall, that “acting white” charge is very much alive in some quarters of Black America. I got the label “Oreo” when I was in grade school because I excelled and that was almost twenty years ago, so I can't imagine how much harder it would be for kids growing up in environments today where the so-called role models are either in jail or livin' the (high) life selling drugs.

But apparently this wasn't the case. “No,” he mumbled.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I'm sure.”

“Are you afraid that others won't like you if you don't act that way?”

“No.”

I sighed. “Well, help me out, here, Will. What is it?”

He fidgeted in his chair, tapping his fingers on the desk.

“I'm going to tell you a secret. You can't tell anyone, okay?”

He nodded.

“According to the report card you'll be getting in two days, you'll have the highest grade point average in your class.”

He looked up. He seemed surprised. “I will?”

“Yes, you will. But you could have the highest GPA in the sixth grade—maybe even the highest in the entire school—if you'd only chill out.” I leaned in toward him. “You may think everybody likes you because you make them laugh, and they probably do. You're a likable young man. But you've got to be careful: if you play the fool too well, people might start believing you are one.”

“I ain't no fool,” he insisted, pointing to himself.

“
I
know you're not. But that's how people are reacting to you, especially the faculty.”

He sucked his teeth. “Teachers in this school can't take a joke.”

“Maybe some of us can't. But we're not not laughing because we don't have a sense of humor. We're not laughing because it is not funny the way you are screwing around with your future. There's a difference between telling a joke and making
yourself
the joke.”

He shot me a contemplative glance.

I was breaking through. “Think about it.”

He thought about it, and what I said must've had an impact—he's mellowed considerably. The old Will still makes a guest appearance every once in a while, but now people are no longer laughing at him but with him.

That my laid-back approach (allowing Will and others to call me Mr. C) was winning over the students wasn't lost on my colleagues. Some found my style as well as my teaching methods to be a bit unorthodox. To one in particular, they were downright disgraceful.

“We are trying to prepare these students to be doctors and lawyers,
not
rappers or actors in ghetto films,” cried Henrietta Drake, in that dragging, monotone voice. A public-school science teacher for twenty-five years who came out of retirement to join Knowledge Hall's staff, she's a stout sister with freckles dotting her cheeks and a mop of wispy black hair. We were in Elvin's office.

“With all due respect, Miss Drake, I don't know what a ghetto film is, but if any student's goal is to be an actor or rapper one day, why shouldn't we recognize and nurture that?”

“
Because
, Mr. Crawford, this is not the High School for the Performing Arts.”

“All the more reason for us to do it. My class is the only one where they get to express themselves freely, to use their imaginations and be creative.”

“
Here
is an example of your allowing them to use their imaginations and be
creative
.” She held up one of Will's papers and adjusted her reading glasses, which had been planted on her very big bosom. “And, I quote: ‘I wish Drake would give us a break, give us a breather for goodness' sake, / The way she talks about the planets and the stars, you think she was once livin' on Mars, / I betcha she's an alien, in this world she wasn't born, / All I wanna know is, how does she hide her fangs and horns?'”

Elvin giggled to himself.

She was not amused. “I don't find that the
least
bit humorous, Mr. Macintosh.”

“Believe me, Miss Drake, I wasn't tickled by that rhyme,” he managed to get out without cracking a smile.

“I would hope not.” Her eyes rested back on me. “But I know I couldn't think the same of Mr. Crawford.”

I nodded. “Well, that's the first thing you've said that I agree with.”

“I don't believe you are taking this seriously.”

“Taking what seriously? That you have a problem with a student composing a rap in which you are the butt of a joke?”

“That you would even pass this off as educational and imply that one shouldn't be insulted by both the assignment and its execution is a joke.”

“What
I
find to be a joke is a nonexpert in the area of creative writing telling me what that can and cannot constitute.”

She shook the paper in the air. “This
trash
has
no
place in a classroom!”

“This is not 1975, Miss Drake, it's 1995. It is our job as educators to adapt to the times. And since you aren't a student in any of my classes and don't know what my students do or do not receive, you are not in a position to make such claims.”

“I've been a teacher a
lot
longer than you, young man, and—”

“And you would want to save that paternalistic tone. Your many years as a teacher and many,
many
more years on this earth do
not
give you the right to talk to me in that manner.”

She heaved in disgust while Elvin grinned.

“The bottom line is that my students are learning the value of the written word, beautifully crafting it in ways that explore the worlds they live in—and they have the grades to prove it.” I turned to Elvin. “If that'll be all, I have a class in five minutes I must prepare for.”

Elvin nodded. He wasn't the least bit moved either way by our debate; he didn't care one way or the other. He'd only held the meeting to appease Miss Drake. But I knew that if push came to shove, he wouldn't suggest I tone down or change my approach—especially when the newspaper the sixth-grade students produced,
The Hall Monitor
, had just been featured on FOX-5's morning program,
Good Day New York
, and CNN's
Reliable Sources
(Will was the star in both reports).

“
Good
day, Miss Drake,” I bellowed in my best Maggie Smith à la Jean Brodie voice, closing the door behind me with a thud.

I believe the real problem with Miss Drake is jealousy. Because of her much-ballyhooed appearance on
Oprah
a few years back and the two Teacher of the Year Awards she won from the National Education Association, she's used to being numero uno and has been campaigning to defrock those she feels have dethroned her—namely, myself and Miss Ramos, who teaches math. I don't think she'd find many supporters amongst the students (I can be stern and strict, but only when I have to be, and they know it), but if she were to have any success having me ousted, her allies would surely be outraged parents—and open-school night would be the best time to identify and rally them to her cause.

YOU'D THINK AFTER VISITING ME TWICE DURING THIS
school year, these folks would know me by now—and would just
know
. But, no, there are those who always have to try me. Miss Reyes disagrees with how I evaluate her daughter, Alma, attempting to use my not speaking Spanish as the reason why her little girl doesn't get the grades she deserves (she thinks
bilingual
means Alma should be able to do all of her schoolwork in Spanish). Mr. and Mrs. Edmundson are convinced their son, Harold, will be a future publisher (à la Earl Graves Sr.) and, given that, deserves to be the publisher of his class paper (never mind the boy can't
spell
the word
publisher
). And Mr. Morrison just doesn't think his son, Prince, is special (with a name like Prince why wouldn't he think that?); he feels Prince deserves special
treatment
(he's a national-science-project champ who has an ACT-SO prize from the NAACP).

Mind you, they all know their child
deserves
something, but it's a sense of entitlement that has everything to do with what the parent wants,
not
what the child needs. I will say one thing for these and other parents who are fanatical—at least they've chosen a jood thing to be obsessed about. Instead of a bunch of brats who do little to no work and are constantly in the principal's office (and whose guardians are probably always missing in action), I've got a flock of overachievers whose parents consider it a personal affront if their child isn't deified as The One. Give me an overinvolved parent over an uninvolved (or, worse, unconcerned) one any day.

It was five minutes to nine when I decided to close shop. If anybody else was coming (my last parent left at 8:25) they would have already shown up. I erased my name from the blackboard, stuck the bottle of Tylenol in my pants pocket (I only popped one; I usually need two), and started loading the students' work into my briefcase when a set of footsteps came marching up the hall.

I turned as they—or, rather,
he
—stopped in front of my door.

He was so tall that he had to duck before entering the room, so wide that his shoulder blades bumped the door's entryway coming in, and so thick that one could clearly make out the mountainous mounds of muscle under his dark blue suit and pink shirt.

“Mr. Crawford?” the forceful yet friendly voice asked.

My mouth opened; nothing. I tried again. “Yes?” I yelped.

He extended his
big
light brown hand. “I'm Willoughby Grant Senior, Will's father.”

“Why, Mr. Grant, it's a pleasure to meet you.” I shook it and
it
shook
me
—smooth and hard as finished wood.

“The pleasure is all mine,” he insisted, licking those reddish lips. Like the lips, that sleepy left eye, dime-sized mole on the right cheek, and gray eyes ran in the family. Unlike his son's crew fade (buzz on top, shaded on the sides), his head was dotted with dozens of twists, each one no more that a half inch in length.