by Dan Brown
A man named Professor Darling came to P.S. 85 on Fridays. I had heard things about him: he taught painting at Barnard, he was a close friend of Mrs. Boyd, he did brilliant art lessons. Occasionally I saw him in the hall with his broad leather portfolio.
On Friday, December 19, I asked Mr. Randazzo if Professor Darling could come to 4-217 that day. Randazzo threw me a look that I read as, “How do you know about Professor Darling?” He said skeptically, “Do you think they can really handle it?”
“Yes. I think they need it.”
Mr. Randazzo paused, thinking. “All right, you got it. Ten-thirty to twelve.”
Professor Darling had a soft voice and short, curly hair. The kids watched enthralled as he pulled out large photographs of the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower, and the Chrysler Building, which I taped to the board. The professor wrote “SKYSCRAPERS” in large block capitals.
With a blank sheet of oversized drawing paper, Professor Darling illustrated the fundamental elements of a skyscraper from the broad base to the top spires. He passed out notebook-sized sheets and walked the students through drawing their own skyscrapers, step by step. They had never done anything like this before.
After about forty minutes of steady instruction, the professor handed out oversized sheets, like his, for each student to create an imaginary cityscape. Eddie Rollins drew a brilliantly inventive skyline, complete with the Twin Towers, in three-dimensional perspective. Lakiya showed some drawing talent as well. I was sad that Tayshaun, my mad sketch artist, missed it.
I decided to be extra-lenient on enforcing the stay-in-your-seat rule because the kids were so excited to show and talk about each other's creations. At the end, Professor Darling wanted to read Langston Hughes's short poem “City.” I wrangled everyone back to their seats, but they wouldn't stop talking. They had just had their most exciting classroom experience of the year and it was Friday lunchtime, less than a week before Christmas.
Professor Darling had to wait much longer than he wanted to get through the poem, and when he finally read the words, he hurried through it, still without the undivided attention of the full group. Several times he said, “If you can't settle down, I won't be able to come back to this class for another lesson.” When the poem was over, he picked up his portfolio and sadly shuffled to the door without saying good-bye. I chased him outside.
“Professor Darling,” I said. He turned. “That was really a great lesson. I know the kids really appreciate it.” He made a kind of grimace and nodded. I could tell he was disappointed about the poem. “There are some very disturbed kids in this class. It's a really tough class. But this meant a lot to them, and it would be really great if you came back.”
I extended my hand. He shook it. But never came back.
Tayshaun Jackson reappeared at morning lineup on Monday, December 22. During my prep, I brought him out to the Teacher Center, where he stared at the table. “I like you, Tayshaun,” I said. “I want good things to happen to you and for you to be happy.” He looked up. “But I can't help you when you skip school six days in a row.” He looked down again. “You hit Athena and that's unacceptable. You have to face what you did. No more running away. You have to act like a man.”
I made an awful decision saying that last sentence. I had hoped to curry some kind of macho favor, but instead I probably invoked angry memories of an abusive father who ran away from the family. Plus, the kind of gender stereotyping in phrases like “act like a man” was the opposite of the ideas I wanted to present to my students. Tayshaun scowled.
“This afternoon I am going to announce that we're having a class holiday party tomorrow afternoon. At lineup tomorrow, you will be picked up by Ms. Devereaux for the whole morning. If she gives me a good report at lunch, you will come to the party. If I get a bad report, forget it. Does that sound fair?”
Nothing.
“Tayshaun!”
“Yes,” he hissed.
The next morning, Ms. Devereaux told me, “I'm so sorry, I can't take him. I forgot they're having the Secret Santa–revealing parties in my room. I'll come by in the morning and scream at him.”
At 11:30, the fourth-grade teachers gathered for the last common prep meeting of the year. We had made it to the desperate, final hours before the coveted break, but Marge Foley ran the meeting with gravity in her tone.
“I know we're all excited to get out of here, but we need to talk about ELA [English Language Arts]. The Test is the first week of February, and, for the several of you who are new, this is a very, very serious, very high-security test. There will definitely be monitors from the state watchdogging our every move when we administer the Test. P.S. 85 effectively sinks or swims on the fourth-grade Test scores. I'm just giving you the heads-up that while it feels far away, because we're about to have this break, it really is breathing down our necks. Expect to do little else in January besides preparation. Are there any questions?”
My mom gave me a box of books from Scholastic, a class set of homemade holiday goody-bags, and three teddy bears with medals labeled Courage, Hope, and Love.
During lunch period, I scrambled to set up the junk food buffet (with food the kids brought in this time—and no ice) and a book display, where each kid could pick one to keep. As I scurried around my childless room, Chantal, one of Evan Krieg's fifth-graders, showed up. Krieg was a young second-year teacher, but his eternally mellow demeanor and suave handsomeness had earned him the title “the Tom Cruise of P.S. 85.”
Chantal had spent several days in my room when Krieg was absent and the administration had broken up his class. “Mr. Brown, we're having a celebration! You gotta check out some of my white rice, it's slammin’!”
Mr. Krieg was throwing a potluck party for the culminating activity from a two-month Author Study unit he had created. Every student had orally presented a research paper about his or her author in the morning, and now they were feasting and laughing and talking about books. It was a classroom scene of dreams. Krieg had told me he felt like a failure his entire first year as a Fellow. Now, less than four months into his second year, he exuded an unstoppable force of positive teaching energy. I wanted to run my class like that. Like the Tom Cruise of P.S. 85.
Our second stab at a 4-217 party was much more successful than the first, even if Tayshaun spit in the soda and washed the board with erasers soaked in apple juice. Lakiya and Gladys Ferraro surprised me with gifts. Lakiya gave me a gold-painted ceramic bear, and Gladys gave me an ashtray, an amusing choice in the midst of our antismoking health unit. I flipped out with thanks on both of them. I made a brief speech about some phantom raffle and presented the three bears to the “winners.” Hope Bear went to Athena, Love Bear to Sonandia, and Courage Bear to Marvin. Their faces told me I had made the right decisions.
“Now I know my mom will let me have Christmas,” Athena said, embracing Hope Bear.
The kids could not seem to believe that they could really and truly keep the book they picked out as I called them up one at a time to receive their goody-bags. I felt pretty good, and I felt even better when they all went home.
I was alone in 217, picking up trash, when a woman I did not recognize came to the door. She looked very sad. “Mr. Brown,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I'm Jimmarie's mother.”
“Oh, hi! It's so nice to finally meet you.” I dropped my trash bag and walked to the door.
“I just wanted to come and say thank you for everything you've done for my daughter. That book is so beautiful. You made her and my mother so happy.”
“Jimmarie is a wonderful girl and a great writer. She's given me a lot of happy things to think about too.”
“We're moving south. Next week. Things are… things are bad here.”
“I understand,” I said.
Jimmarie and her younger brother appeared in the hall.
“Hi, Mr. Brown,” Jimmarie said.
“Hi, Jimmarie.”
“We're moving to Florida.”
“I know, your mom just told me. That will be a good thing.” She did not look assured.
“I want you to remember,” I continued, “no matter where you go, or what happens, that Mr. Brown will always know what a smart and loving and tough girl you are, and he'll be thinking about you. And we'll always have From the Floor to the Moon. Okay?”
Jimmarie said okay. I hugged her and shook hands with Jimmy.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Brown,” Jimmarie's mother said.
“Merry Christmas. And I know the new year will be better than the last.”
January
The Dentist Is In
Extend your hand to a black and white creature
Often confused with koalas in my mind
Not eucalyptus that this one wants to be eating
He's only interested in watching you die
(Oh…no…I…am… toast!)
I'm in danger! You're endangered!
I'm in danger! You're endangered!
Droplets of blood coursing down my neck
How I wish the khaki hunter had left you in Tibet—
—MAN VS. PANDA
(Music by the Hygienists/Lyrics by Dentist)
UNBEKNOWNST TO MY P.S. 85 COLLEAGUES, I had been leading a double life. Most days and nights I was Mr. Dan Brown, struggling rookie teacher who, every venture in public, saw his name stamped on a particular ubiquitous best-seller about secret messages in the Louvre. But occasionally, I shed this straitlaced skin and assumed a more colorful, musical persona: the Dentist, lead singer of the rumpus-inducing rock sextet the Hygienists!
During his senior year, my roommate Greg had secured the job of social chair at Princeton University's Terrace Club, his responsibilities consisting chiefly of booking live entertainment for drunken college hipsters. One time in October, a band canceled on him a week prior to a show. Greg called fellow road-tripper McKenzie and me, offering us the time slot. We had no band, no gear, and I had no musical abilities, but we instantly agreed to the gig. After gathering several high school pals to fill out the instruments and assigning costumes and personas (Ninjar on keyboard, Gun Politician on drums), we threw together a few garage practices and played the show.
The crowd went berserk for us. The irreverent songs, incorporating references to Donald Sutherland, the Boston Tea Party, and The Canterbury Tales, struck a chord with the loosened-up house. Doing my damnedest to channel David Byrne and Johnny Rotten, I danced and shouted while my bandmates rocked with raw, punk rock verve. After the show, Greg bought a sampler and a chainsaw (for dramatic effect during “Canterbury Tales”) and joined the band, rechristening himself Business Casual. We played at CBGB and a bunch of other downtown clubs, billing ourselves as an “avantclowncore extravaganza from Reverse Calcutta!” People actually showed up. This is something I love about New York City.
During lunch periods, I'd sometimes compose Hygienists lyrics in my brain, occasionally jotting them down on my lesson plans. Once in the fall, during a visit to my desk, Tiffany caught a glimpse of my scribble. “Man us panda?” she asked.
“Forget it,” I blurted, grabbing our blue, stuffed class mascot from the shelf and offering it to her. “Want to hold Mr. Lizard for the rest of the day?”
A raucous New Year's Eve soiree starring the Hygienists at a University of Pennsylvania frat house brought me into 2004 with a cleansed grin on my mug. (My perpetual 4-217 laryngitis even worked to my vocal advantage at the show!) I was still on a cloud from the fiesta when I found myself back in the P.S. 85 cafeteria for morning lineup.
“Mr. Brown! What you did on Happy New Year, you was crying?”
“What? No. Why would I be crying, Asante?”
She grinned. “I don't know. Some peoples was crying!” Must have been some party. “Well what did you do, Mr. Brown?”
Cavorted in a lab coat while screaming about snakepits. Made out with a stranger on a freezing Philadelphia rooftop. (She insisted the lyrics to “Canterbury Tales” touched her deeply.) Realized that loud and fast music could temporarily cure the P.S. 85 blues. Passed out on a random couch. I was Dentist!
“I watched the ball drop on TV,” I said. “I never miss Dick Clark.”
Mr. Randazzo showed up at my door several minutes after I walked the class upstairs for the first time of the new year. Loud enough for everyone to hear, he said, “Mr. Brown, I have wonderful news. You have two new students coming in, and one just moved to the United States from Antigua! They're both terrific readers, and both need some help in math. They became friends, just sitting there in the office signing in. They asked if they could be in the same class, so I said sure!”
He handed me two orange slips. Seresa Bosun and Epiphany Torres. I had lost Verdad Navarez, namesake of truth, since he never returned from Christmas break, but now every day I would appropriately have an Epiphany.
There had been many changes in 4-217 personnel since the first week, eons earlier in September. Angry Marvin Winslow had come into my world. Asante Bell had appeared, still commuting alone from a shelter in Queens, but only showing up once or twice a week. Daniel Vasquez had come in from one-on-one special ed in Detroit, and after a painful three months was finally sent to an appropriate school for his needs. Reynaldo Luces came and went one day with a crying fit. Mischievous Fausto Mason and Deloris Barlow had wreaked disaster before being transferred to other fourth-grade rooms. My coteacher, Ms. Richardson, came and went in a flash, and Verdad had disappeared with no fanfare. Jimmarie had also left town, but she came to me to say good-bye. This rampant transience could not be healthy. I looked at the two new girls and wondered if they would be gone the next week.
Seresa was from Antigua. Fortunately, English was her first language, and she spoke beautifully. When Randazzo told me her nationality, I had immediately thought of Elizabeth Camaraza's student Omar, who had moved from Paris to the Bronx in November and spoke only French.
Epiphany did not make a peep her first day, although I got the eerie feeling she was silently judging me because of my circus classroom. We did a writing activity titled “You Are the Teacher,” and her paper was all about changing her classmates.
On Monday, second-year Fellow Randy Croom came sixteen minutes late to teach a lesson to 4-217 during my out-of-class prep period, apparently held up covering a kindergarten class. I improvised through the she'll-be-here-any-second lull with map trivia, which went over well. Every kid now knew in which country we all lived. After a flurry of apologies, Ms. Croom wrote several long sentences on the board about “Note-Taking Strategies” and then played Seven Up for the remainder of the period. I often heard Randy talk in the Teacher Center about how physically sick she was, and I felt bad for her, although I was positive no one learned anything during her prep lessons. When her period ended, I inherited a class full of fired-up kids, still juiced over controversies from the intense Seven Up game. I thought, how can this time be better used?
I spent my lunch period in my mentor Barbara Chatton's minischool office, giving her the idea that I had everything under control, my kids adequately motivated into submission. She seemed to buy it. Barbara subtly divulged that the consensus of the Randazzo/Guiterrez/Boyd administrative triad was that after the big Cordelia Richardson intervention, enough time had been spent on me. In truth, I felt overrun with doubt about the future of 4-217. Were these kids learning anything? By June, would they have eaten each other alive?
When I stepped out of Barbara's office, Trisha Pierson called out to me from down the hall. “Mr. Brown! Could you help us investigate something for just a minute?”
Despite being a new teacher, Trisha taught first grade like a genius. Her room was meticulously organized, her lessons sharp and well-communicated, and she ruled over her children with love and intimidation. Besides Theo, her discipline problems were minimal. She had submitted a proposal to Mrs. Boyd for starting an after-school dance club. To me, Trisha exemplified the best qualities of a young, intelligent, dedicated teacher.
I walke
d into Trisha's thickly foul-smelling first-grade classroom. “I think there's a dead animal in the vent shaft, but I can't tell,” she said. “Can you place it?”
I treaded slowly around room 1M8, sniffing and weaving my way through the intensely curious seven-year-olds. The stench was dense and powerful, but I could not detect its point of origin. I apologized for being of little help and left. Then I had an idea and came back.
“Ms. Pierson, what are you doing Mondays at 11:30?”
“Teaching.”
“No prep or anything? I think that's the time to launch Plan X,” I said.
“Excellent. I'll get my things ready. Next Monday. How many have you got?”
“Depends on how many you want. Six?”
“Six is perfect.”
“I'll bring my A-team,” I said, and walked out.
When Ms. Croom showed up on time the following week, I announced, “Evley, Athena, Sonandia, Jennifer, Tiffany, and Destiny, get your coats. We're taking a little trip.”
The children breezed down the hall, breathless with excitement. Athena Page clapped her hands and grinned. “Where are we going?” she asked. We walked outside into the frigid January air, crossed the blacktop, and entered the minischool lobby.
“We're going to Ms. Pierson's class. You are going to be tutors and help the little kids with reading.”
“Oh, boy,” Sonandia said, as if she had just turned on a scary movie and couldn't wait to watch it.
The tiny first-graders stared in awe as the towering Big Kids entered their realm. My students looked to me for directions. They were not used to being stars.
Trisha calmed nerves by dishing out instructions in a welcoming and organized manner. She paired one preselected student of hers with one of mine and gave each duo a book, a pencil, and a specially labeled Tutor Notebook. The first-graders would read the book to their fourth-grader helpers. If the reader stumbled on a word, the tutor would jot the difficult word in the notebook. At the end of the story, they would review the story content and the tricky vocabulary words together. The first-grader would make up a meaningful sentence with the tough word and print the word five times. Trisha taught a math lesson on the carpet to the other three-quarters of her class, and I strolled around the room, witnessing magic.