Profiles of an American Classroom: The One Who Changed Everything
part 1
January 2006. Memorial High School, Tulsa, Oklahoma. While completing my official teaching certification, I agreed to a long-term, but temporary position teaching Algebra I. The original teacher simply walked off the job. It didn’t take me long, maybe 10 minutes, to discover the direness of this situation. No rules were successfully established. No order, no structure, no foundation for learning, no basic algebra knowledge existed inside this classroom. Students strolled in as they pleased and more importantly, when they pleased. They were clearly accustomed to ‘hanging out’ and doing whatever they did or did not want to do throughout the algebra hour. For me, this became a crash course in rebooting a classroom, a classroom which already existed without any semblance of organization or educational learning for five long months. It was one of the best teaching experiences of my life.
When my time with this class came to a close, my heart was heavy. I had tirelessly poured myself into these students, most of whom were bused in from the rougher north side of Tulsa. During my relatively short time, I was able to convince some of them to stay after school for additional algebra help. I believe the vast majority had never voluntarily darkened the door of a school ‘after-hours’. I couldn’t just leave them high and dry; they had made such progress. So on my final day, I passed out my contact information and instructed the students to have a parent call me if they wished to continue after school tutoring. Sadly, I had little hope the cards would make it to parents and maybe even less hope parents would actually call. But luckily, I was dead wrong. I received my first call the following morning at 8am. Miss Deborah asked if it was true… would I continue to tutor after school? She said her nephew, Corey, would be there every single day I was available. I had no idea this simple phone call would change everything.
For the following four months, I worked with several students, including Corey, three days each week, sometimes 2-3 hours each day. Corey never missed a day. In fact, he most often came on an empty stomach, his last meal having been the evening before. As May turned to summer, and then summer to fall, a new school year dawned. I started my official teaching career across town but continued to work with Corey. During our time together, it became clear… Corey struggled to read. I initially tried to work with him in this area, but my expertise was mathematics, not teaching someone to read. I knew he desperately needed help, so I sought the generosity of friends and a local Sylvan Learning Center. We all partnered up to give Corey the educational boost he so desperately needed but his family could never afford. During this year, I spent countless hours playing math tutor, taxi driver (to and from Sylvan), English paper proofreader, school advocate, and all-around mentor to this kid whose life was so vastly diverse from my own. As this year turned into another, and then another, I slowly pieced together Corey’s story, a story worth sharing.
Several weeks before our lives intersected in 2006, Corey moved to Tulsa from Detroit, Michigan. He moved in with his mother’s sister, Deborah. Unbeknownst to everyone in Corey’s circle was the fact his life had just been at a despairing crossroads. Before his unexpected, unanticipated move, Corey found himself sitting on a bed in his Detroit home at 2am. He sat on the bed holding a gun, a 12-gauge shotgun he planned to use that very night. Normally, the sound of his drunken father shouting at his mother became ambient background noise, but on this particular night, the yelling and screaming woke him up. He heard his father call his mom a b*tch and say, “I’m going to kill you.” Even though Corey had heard his father verbally beat his mother many times before, he now determined, “This will be the last time.” As he planned to shoot his father with the gun he held in his hands, he thought through his own fate… “I will go to prison. This will be my life.” At the tender age of 13, growing up in Detroit, the only realistic paths he saw for his life were joining a gang, going to prison, or ending up dead. Obviously, the first choice easily led to the other two; so winding up in prison was always a credible possibility. He sat there holding the gun. Contemplating. Deliberating. Then, for an unexplained reason, he ultimately made the choice to wait. Oh, he would eventually have to shoot his father; this he already knew. But it would not be this night. He put the gun back in its place and cried himself to sleep. Little did young Corey know, tomorrow was a new dawn. His mother would eventually pack him up and send him south. His life would never be the same; his path forever altered.
COPYRIGHT © August 26, 2019. Wendi Vassiliou. All rights reserved.