Our new class list contained blank slots for freshmen, which we were to fill using the index cards, but the sophomores had already been assigned. Javon was on Luna’s list.
“If you see any red flags,” another teacher said, “we can still make some switches.”
“Any advice about my group?” Ms. Luna asked me.
When I saw her list, I knew I should’ve fought to keep some of my students, particularly Javon, who I’d invested so much time in, but I chickened out. If I had a repeat of the year before, I would’ve quit teaching, a failure. I had a better shot at being a new man with new kids. I exchanged my old students for new ones like I was trading in a bad poker hand.
“You’ll be fine,” I told Ms. Luna.
She must have detected something in my voice, because she laughed. “You sure about that?”
Luna was a strict teacher, but my students turned out to be a handful, even for her. She’d kick Javon out often. He’d head to my classroom, which was the standard procedure—kids going to their advisor. Javon, as a sophomore, had gotten rid of the Powerpuff Girls backpack. Now he rocked buttoned shirts and wore a gold earring.
I’d be in the middle of class and wouldn’t have time to check in with him. I’d sit him in the corner and tell him to write an explanation of what happened, but I’d rarely discuss it with him afterwards. I’d just send him off to his next class. I had new students to worry about.
As the fall semester wore on, Javon’s grades plummeted. Shane asked how it happened that Javon was no longer my student. “All that progress you made with him last year,” she said.
“The foreign languages messed up the scheduling,” I said. “I couldn’t figure a way around it.”
Our last resort with Javon was to switch him into another family, hoping a new advisor and new set of teachers might work some magic. It didn’t. He continued to blow off assignments. That by itself we could work with, but Javon was also getting sent out of class regularly, within the first minutes of class. It seemed intentional on his part.
At a staff meeting, we voted for Javon to leave the school. “If we keep him,” I said at the meeting, “what message are we sending to the rest of the students?”
I volunteered to meet with Javon and his mother. It was a delicate matter. We didn’t have the power to kick out a kid. If a student hadn’t committed a serious offense, a transfer had to be voluntary. We laid out the reasons why Javon would be better served at a different school, and Javon was all in.
“Teachers here be on you 24/7,” he said. “They be doing too much.”
His mom, though, wasn’t budging. She countered, and rightly so, that our school provided more support. Why would she give that up?
To convince her, I drew on my own high school experiences, not of being a student who’d gotten his act together after switching schools—that wasn’t my story—but of knowing how to appeal to a desperate mother. “You do the same things,” I said, “you get the same results. It’s clear to me, and I think to you too, if Javon stays here, he’ll just fail another semester of classes. He needs a fresh start, a wake-up call.” What I said wasn’t total bullshit. I really thought it was the best choice for Javon. Sometimes people need to be jolted into changing. But what was also true, and what I couldn’t admit to anyone else, was that I wanted him to leave. His presence reminded me of my cowardice.
The next semester, Javon was placed at a vocational school. I didn’t know how things were going for him, but for me, things were looking up. I’d transformed as a teacher. Instead of yelling to get the class’s attention, I developed a stern gaze. I’d imagine myself as their parent. I’d make the disappointed face of a father and cross my arms, or the face of an angry mom about to open a can of whupass. Once, I got too into character. A boy made a subtle sexual remark about a girl in the class, and I popped him upside the head.
During that spring semester, to boost teacher morale, Shane made appreciation posters for each of us. In the middle was our photo, surrounding by quotes from students. On my poster, one student remarked, “I don’t know what got into Mr. Lam this year, but he don’t play no more.”
The next time I heard about Javon was near the end of that school year. I was on a panel in another teacher’s classroom, and we were discussing how a student had just done on her presentation. All sophomores had to develop a presentation and defend it to a panel, consisting of two teachers, a student, and a parent. Our job was to grill them with questions. If they passed, they’d move on to Senior Institute, what we called our mixed-age junior- and senior-level program. The oral defense was a grueling experience for a fifteen-year-old, but passing was cause for celebration. They’d run around the hallways hollering for joy. Some parents would get their kids flowers or balloons. If Javon had remained with us, he would’ve also presented his portfolio. Maybe I would’ve been scoring his oral defense at that moment. Maybe his mom would’ve brought him a lei.
As we were about to announce that the student, dressed in a business suit, had passed her defense, a cell phone rang. It came from the panel. The student panelist stepped out to take the call.
“What?” he shouted. He rushed back into the room. “They killed Waga.” He grabbed his backpack and took off, still on his phone.
The next to leave was the student who had presented, tears easing down her cheeks. Then her mother trailing after her. The other teacher collected the paperwork, numb
