The Great Expectations School

by Dan Brown

  On the last day of March, the Visual Arts Club reconvened to look at our work. By that time, every kid had returned his or her camera. I had doubles processed for each roll; one set for the kids and one for me. In our circle, I examined and praised each picture before circulating it for everyone to see up close.

  “This picture of Gabriela's mother really makes me feel like I know her,” I said. “Look at her face. It's not a pose, it's real life captured. She has documented her home in pictures. It's a glimpse for us into Gabby's home life, one image that Gabby has picked to show us, and I love it.” We only got through half of the kids’ work because of the amount of discussion and analysis each picture received.

  I felt strange on the subway home. Some of my efforts were dovetailing into success as others were splitting apart at the seams. Three months remained in the school year, and I had no idea what new twists awaited me. I recalled an apt bit of guidance from a screen-writing professor in my previous life as a college student: “There are two nonnegotiable conditions for a satisfying ending, and in this, life imitates art. An ending must be simultaneously unpredictable and inevitable. Fulfill these and your characters may rest.”

  April

  Teacher Dance Party

  “FIRST OF ALL, my real name is not Mr. Brown. It is Dr. Claudius Zornon, and from now on, that is what you will call me: Dr. Zornon. When I was a baby in Vancouver, it didn't take long for everybody to realize I was a prodigy, which means a child super-genius. When word got out of Vancouver that the Zornons had a prodigy in the family, I got invited all over Canada on the lecture circuit, giving speeches and sitting on panels in front of huge groups of people. I made some powerful friends and earned more than a little political influence in the Yukon Territory. Penn State also gave me an honorary bachelor's degree.

  “Along with all the money my parents made off of me, the Canadian government granted me an around-the-world hot-air balloon pass. Everyone knows what that is, right? Okay, good. I got to take my four best friends with me, and we traveled to every continent, including Antarctica, and we swam in every ocean in the world. We had to hurry, because our balloon pass was only good for eighty days, but the whole trip came to an early end when our balloon popped over Tokyo, Japan! We were falling so fast, everyone was sure that would be the end of us, but calling on a few ideas I picked up on the lecture circuit, I used scientific knowledge to turn the popped balloon into a hang glider. News cameras filmed us when we touched down, and it was very exciting. A few music groups even wrote songs about it, and one called ‘Man vs. Panda’ went to number 2 in Germany. It was a little too techno-y for me, though.

  “Anyway, at age ten, I got my own apartment back in Vancouver and picked up a job teaching fourth grade, although it was a little bit strange at first, because I was the same age as all the students. This lasted five years until I wanted to travel again.

  “An old buddy of mine named Rex, who was living in Italy, called me up and asked me if I wanted to help him. I said sure, so I got on a superjet to Rome. We went out to lunch near the Vatican, where the pope lives, and Rex asked me to drive his car. I like driving so I agreed. He gave me directions to a big bank and told me to park in front and wait, leaving the engine running. He put on a mask and ran into the bank. A minute later he ran out, carrying a huge bag of money and screaming at me to let him in and then drive away. Rex was a bank robber! I was so surprised that I froze up and couldn't move, and the next thing I knew, Roman policemen were slamming handcuffs on us and yelling in Italian.

  “And then I went to jail. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. I used my one phone call to ring a lawyer friend, and he got my charges dropped. This meant I was out of trouble and had to go back to North America. On my way out of jail, I saw my old buddy crying in his cell. I said to him, ‘I know it was you, Rex. You broke my heart.’ I still visit him in prison whenever I go to Italy. He's only got eighty years left on his sentence. Crime doesn't pay.

  “So I moved to New York City and got a swell apartment on the 107th floor of the Empire State Building. You all know my favorite author is Dr. Seuss, of course. Well, I decided to try my hand at writing books just like Dr. Seuss. I spent two years working on a book called Dr. Zornon and the Wornons. I went to every publisher in New York, but no one liked my story. I was about to give up when one editor at Julius Erving University Press loved my illustrations of the Wornons and showed them to his brother, who happened to be the curator at the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA, as they call it. This curator guy, the boss of the museum, gave me a big showcase that got written up in every important magazine, and I became the toast of the art world. You've probably seen my pictures of the Wornons before and just didn't know it. They are big purple creatures, probably as tall as this ceiling. They have three arms, two heads, but only one brain, which makes them excellent… farmers. Sound familiar? Awesome.

  “Around this time, P.S. 85 called me up and offered me a job, but I told Mrs. Boyd, ‘Thanks, but I have something very important to do before I can ever teach fourth grade again.’ And that very important thing, kids, was to join the circus.

  “I linked up with Ringling Brothers in Pittsburgh, and even though I was still kind of used to my luxury Empire State apartment, I got into the idea of sharing a train car with the chimpanzees pretty quickly. We drew a line in the middle of the floor; I stayed on my half and they stayed on theirs, so we made it work all right. I stayed with the circus for six months until everything came to an abrupt end with the Great Clown Fiasco in Memphis, which I'm sure you've all heard of. Wait, you haven't? Really? Should I tell you about the Great Clown Fiasco? Okay.

  “Well, we had a fire-eater in the circus named Lazarus. For the grand finale of every show, Lazarus would eat a gigantic bouquet of fire and the ringmaster would yell, ‘Send in the clowns!’ Eight clowns would come charging out and gang-tackle Lazarus, who would get up, brush himself off, and then burp out flames and smoke! It brought the house down every time.

  “One night in Memphis, we had a new clown named Crumbles, who was real jumpy and nervous because it was his first circus show ever as a clown. Crumbles was so nervous about missing his cue at the big finale that he actually started running to tackle Lazarus too soon, before Lazarus had eaten the whole fire bouquet! Have you ever seen someone's eyeballs on fire? Okay, Eddie has. So he knows how crazy it looks. Lazarus's face was burning up. I ran out from backstage and blew the fire extinguisher in his face to put out the flames.

  “Since my part with the chimpanzees was at the beginning of the show, I was allowed to ride in the ambulance when they rushed Lazarus to the hospital. I held his hand and talked to him, but what he said back to me didn't make any sense. It was all about exploding rainbows.

  “The doctors at Memphis General Hospital made me wait in the waiting room for five hours before I could see Lazarus. When I finally saw him, he spoke very quietly and told me he was blind. The last thing he ever saw before everything went black was my face looking down at him in the ambulance, and now that image of my face was burned in his brain. All he could ever see, for the rest of his life, was the face of me, Dr. Claudius Zornon!

  “I had to drop out of the circus after that. Crumbles served two years in clown prison, but got out early on funny behavior. I moved back to New York and asked P.S. 85 if they still had a job for me. Mrs. Boyd told me I had the teaching gene and of course I could work here. And that's the story of my life.”

  Thirty seconds of dead silence.

  “That's the weirdest story I ever heard,” Tayshaun said.

  “That's the best story I ever heard!” Gladys V. cheered.

  “Yeah!” seconded Jennifer and Destiny, grinning.

  “Is that real, Mr. Brown?”

  “Please call me Dr. Zornon.”

  “Is that real, Dr. Zornon?”

  “Of course it's real, Dennis! Do you think I could just make all of that up?”

  “I don't know.”

  “How old are you, Dr. Zornon?”
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  “Everything is true. Oh, except I forgot one detail. April Fools’!”

  “DAAAAAAAAA!”

  Later in the day, cold-faced Marvin Winslow walked into 217 and sat down at his desk. He had been banished down to third grade since the camera crisis. “Marvin, you're supposed to be with Ms. Claxton.”

  He shook his head.

  I called Ms. Claxton's extension. “I'm sorry,” she said, “but he hit two girls. Hard. I can't keep him up here.”

  “I understand,” I replied. Then I called Mr. Randazzo and Ms. Guiterrez, but neither picked up the phone. The guidance counselor, Mr. Schwesig, and his occasional reading pal, Ms. Foley, couldn't take him. I couldn't put him with Ms. Devereaux. He had to stay in my room. There was nowhere for him to go.

  When Marvin broke Tayshaun's pencils a few minutes after coming in, I moved him to the back of the room, where he pounded his knuckles into the desk. He buried his head in his folded arms and seemed to fall asleep for a while.

  The next morning, Marvin was all smiles. “Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown,” he said, tugging on my sleeve at lineup.

  “What is it, Marvin?”

  “Good morning.”

  At math time, he really tried hard to understand the mixed-skills word problems. I was able to come to his desk and work with him through one, an issue of how many ten-cent candies can be bought with three quarters, and he got the right answer! I instantly thought to put him on the Rewards List for that kind of effort, but then remembered that just yesterday, he had beaten up third-grade girls. What do you do with a kid like that?

  On Friday, April 2, the last day of SFA, Kelsie read the class her latest poem:

  My SFA class is great and I don't hate

  It's fun and I like to get things done

  My teachers name is Ms. Baker and Mr. Brown

  They probably like the town

  Mr. Brown likes Lord of the Rings and a lot of things

  I like the way he reads books because it's like he's really there

  I like how he cut his hair

  He probably went to the barber shop to take a stop

  Ms. Baker is a nice lady

  She probably gets paid maybe

  I like her hair it's nice and flare

  So that's my poem about my SFA class

  And my SFA teachers are the best

  At 10:15, P.S. 85 quietly achieved its much-discussed curriculum transition from Success for All to Balanced Literacy. No more changing students from 8:45 to 10:15. On April 14, when we came back from spring break, it would be Mr. Brown and the regular 4-217 crew, all day, every day.

  Everyone broke up with everyone. Allie Bowers moved out of her shared apartment with her long-term boyfriend, Clay. Trisha Pierson, Elizabeth Camaraza, and Tim Shea saw relationships turn to dust. Cat Samuels was on the rocks with live-in Rob. Karen Adler's long-distance boyfriend did not empathize sufficiently with her P.S. 85– related emotional strains.

  I didn't have anyone to break up with me. I spent most of the break laid up with what I thought was mono but turned out to be exhaustion. Books and television kept me company through my convalescence. I read Ron Suskind's compelling The Price of Loyalty, which painstakingly documents Paul O'Neill's journey from mega-successful chief executive of Alcoa to George W. Bush's first treasury secretary and, ultimately, to his resignation from that post in 2003. Bush politics aside, O'Neill's affable, hands-on management style resonated with me. He put a premium on personal relationships between employees, and he relied on good research and analysis to guide his policy.

  Calling on analysis and group input to find solutions seems like an obviously logical methodology for both troubleshooting and constructing a long-range vision, but this was precisely what was lacking at P.S. 85! The decision-making administrators were locked in a war of resentment with the teachers, who, in many ways, were just as culpable in poisoning the community spirit. (The nasty distribution of Kendra Boyd's unflattering news article was case in point.) Blaming it all on the massive overarching bureaucracy wouldn't wash. I willed myself out of my morose mood. I'm going to think solutions!

  Despite my manufactured bright-side epiphany, on the morning of P.S. 85’s return from spring break, the faculty looked more like zombies than rejuvenated teachers. Evan Krieg, formerly a rock of idealism in action who had orchestrated the magical potluck author celebration at Christmas, moped from the hot food line to the cashier in Lee's Deli on 188th Street. “I don't want to see them,” he told me. “I've got three girls who determine the mood of the whole class, and I've got to appease them. I want to tell them, ‘You're ten.’ I don't know if I can do this another year.”

  Balanced Literacy afforded far more decision-making than Success for All. Guided only by a lesson format, I chose the content we would cover. Some grumbling teachers even complained that this was too much freedom and wanted more ready-to-use materials handed to them. Fran Baker, my wonderful SFA coteacher, still joined my class from 8:45 to 10:15, which was like a Ms. Richard-sonesque boost, just having another responsible body in the room with the 4-217 crowd.

  I borrowed Karen's class set of Pocahontas and the Strangers books and handed one to each kid to write his initials in the inside cover. Thrilled to possess their own book, the kids listened intently to my introduction to historical fiction. I also discussed the idea of “themes” in literature, and previewed the theme in this book of “freedom and imprisonment.” Every day we spent thirty minutes on a round-robin reading and discussion, tearing through the nearly two-hundred-page book. Most students had never read a book so lengthy and would never have gotten through it without our team reading and steady, thorough analysis. I sucked the text dry for writing prompts, having the kids write journal entries from the perspectives of four different characters, as well as papers on predictions and text-to-self comparisons. Everyone got excited when I announced it was time to take out Pocahontas and the Strangers and groaned when we had to put them away.

  Several times a day, a student asked me, “What book are we reading next?”

  I had dreaded Balanced Literacy because of its time commitment, but the curriculum switch turned out to be the most academically beneficial change all year.

  Mr. Randazzo delivered another new student to my room. “This is Clara Velez. She's going to be with you for the rest of the year.” Clara craned her head to stare at the ceiling.

  “Does she speak English?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah. She was with Fiore, but Catherine asked me to take her out. Just a personality conflict. They didn't mesh.”

  I had a few characters I did not exactly mesh with either, but there was no point getting into that now. Think solutions! “I don't have a desk for her,” I said. “I guess she can sit at my desk.”

  “Great,” Mr. Randazzo replied, already out the door.

  At our next common prep meeting, Catherine Fiore gave me a rundown on Clara. “She does nothing. And she's a bitch. She needs to get left the hell back.”

  Fiore's shortness ticked me off. She and Jeanne Solloway interacted with the other teachers with a sense of entitlement since they were ostensibly being groomed by the administration as the heirs apparent to the gifted Performing Arts Class. Rumors abounded that the veteran PAC teachers, Ms. Boswell and Ms. Berkowitz, were preparing to retire.

  True to her reputation, Clara avoided schoolwork and irked classmates. She was a chronic finger-pointer, reigniting the blaze of 4-217 tattling. She had sticky fingers when it came to pencils and small change. At this point in the year, I didn't even get upset about the petty conflicts anymore. Clara showed occasional bursts of empathy (an unsolicited apology letter for her “big mowth” to Gladys Ferraro), and I liked her. Maybe wishfully, I thought if I could have worked with her for the whole year, her attitude toward assignments might be different. Fiore had written her off in September.

  When the Probable Holdover forms came around, Fiore directed me to write Clara's name, so there it went next to Eric, Marvin, jungle disco fan Chri
stian, and Lakiya. I knew Lito's Test marks would be on the fringe of passing, but I wanted him to move up so badly that I kept his name off even the Potential Holdover list.

  On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the Visual Arts Club was dessert after a long meal of overcooked cabbage. In the first week of April, we reviewed each kid's roll of pictures. Following that, I brought in several short films from my NYU days. The club members got a particular kick out of the ones where I appeared onscreen.

  Jodi gave a story pitch for our P.S. 85 music video. “What if Mr. Brown is teaching the class and everybody's bored, but then he has to leave to do something, and right when he leaves, the whole class starts dancing?”

  Everybody loved it. I had instant visions of a surreal choreographed number to Tiffany's version of “I Think We're Alone Now.” We honed the plot and drew up storyboards to include Mr. Brown's sudden exit resulting from a secret note delivered by Ms. Adler. After the students’ celebratory dance, they sneak into the hall on a mission to find their missing teacher. Slinking down the corridor, the kids stumble onto Ms. Adler's mysterious note, crumpled outside the closed door of a classroom. Every kid looks on expectantly as Jodi unfolds the paper to find the words “Teacher dance party NOW!” Lilibeth cracks open the door, and all mouths drop in shock to find cavorting teachers who, suddenly caught, freeze as a record scratches to a halt. After a mutually mortified moment, Sonandia leaps dancing into the fray, breaking the ice and instigating an all-ages dance fiesta.

  Shooting the movie went far worse than expected. We set two April dates for filming and both were aborted because of club-member absences. I was also having a difficult time recruiting teachers to dance. Instead of making our movie, I showed the present participants how to work the camcorder and let them film each other in simple scenes that I arranged. Everyone clamored to hold the camera. Using the patch cable for video input, we immediately screened their work on the TV. Sonandia and Jennifer framed some especially interesting close-ups. I set a May 5 D-day for principal photography. Since I was headed to France for the Cannes Festival on May 7, this was the last chance to shoot and quick-edit something to submit for the midMay Region One Literacy Fair. I had promised Mrs. Boyd we would be ready.