Promoting my novel

                                              A Half Day In Hell

a novel by

Nat Trayger

Copyright 2006 All rights reserved

About the Author

Nat Trayger grew up in the East New York section of Brooklyn and also Long Island, New York. He graduated from the University of Miami and received a masters degree at Queens College. During the 1980s, he was a dean of students at Andrew Jackson High School in Cambria Heights, Queens. He received a doctorate in curriculum and instruction at Florida International University and lives in Florida.

PROLOGUE

THE ANT, 1990

The eight people shivered with cold and fear as the patrol boat cruised by. Through the accident of birth, it had been their fate to live in a country that did not allow people like them to live, but only to exist. Now they were risking everything to escape. If they were caught, the adults could be imprisoned as traitors to the revolution and the children could be taken away.

He secretly called himself The Ant because he realized that all of them existed only to serve the colony: Cuba. Everything he did was monitored by someone. The worst thing about it was that even though you knew some of the watchers, you couldn’t know them all.

He wasn’t sure when he had made up his mind to leave. Maybe it had been in school when he had read about how horrible America was because there had once been slavery. His thoughts went back to the 1960s when his class had been shown a film clip of the police beating black demonstrators in a southern American city. His teacher explained that this showed the evils of capitalism and America, but most of the kids in his class pointed out the fancy watches and shoes that the demonstrators had. Some of the boys marveled at the sight of the parked cars on the American street. In Cuba, only Communist Party members had easy access to cars. To the average Cuban, owning a car was only a dream. Some owned old cars from the Battista years, but it was a struggle to keep them running. Once the administration realized that showing the film only made the students envy the Americans, it was forbidden to show these films again.

When he learned about slavery under capitalism he wondered what it was like to have someone else control your destiny. As he grew older, he began to realize that he was like those slaves. He saw that the supposed equality of Fidel’s regime was a farce. He saw the poverty in the streets, the women selling themselves to European tourists so that they could feed their families. Once, his mother saw him softly crying about his life and he hid his tears in embarrassment.

He saw that a man in Cuba could never be a real man because there was no control over one’s own life. Even Teo Stevenson, the Olympic boxing champion, had been used by the state. If Stevenson had lived in another country, he could have become the heavyweight champion of the world.

The Ant was forty-five years old and married with two children. He had wanted to go to a university, but had not been permitted to attend. Literacy in Cuba was high, but what good did it do when all you could read was government propaganda? Truthful conversations were rare, and political discourse did not exist unless you chose to denounce the United States. Higher education in Cuba was available, but it helped to have Party connections. He did not have any, so he and his brothers fished to support themselves and their families. His two older brothers seemed content to live this way, but he was not.

Their father had died seven years before and their mother had just passed away. She had been hospitalized for a bleeding ulcer and was waiting in the hospital corridor with six other patients for an opening in the operating room. He was with when her eyes rolled back and she started to cough. The nurses tried to save her, but it was too late. With bitter reflection, he knew that Party members did not die waiting in a hospital hall.

If he had been the son of a Party functionary, he could have been more than this. In the past, he had met some of the chosen few who were part of the government. He always had to smile and act as if he was happy to be living in Cuba. He wondered whether the Party regulars knew that it was an act. Maybe they didn’t care.

After his mother died, he began to verbally challenge some of the minor Party officials that he met. He knew that if he kept doing this, he would eventually be arrested and imprisoned. But he could not seem to stop. He knew that if he didn’t leave Cuba, he was going to get into trouble, maybe even thrown into prison like Jaime.

Jaime had made a printing press out of an old typewriter and a laundry press. The police had burst in while he was printing anti-government leaflets, and he was sentenced to ten years in prison. Someone must have told.

The Ant and four others decided that they had served the colony for too long, and they planned their escape. He would bring his wife Milagros and their two children. They would try to get to the United States and become human beings, or they would die in the effort.

CHAPTER 1

HOMEROOM

That Friday in June 1993, Harry Rabkin took homeroom attendance as he did every morning at Andrew Jackson High School. Rabkin was hard to miss, at 5' 6" and 325 pounds of blubbery fat. He was one of the most interesting teachers in the school. His life was always in a crisis mode. Harry was always on the phone trying to get doctors to prescribe him sleeping pills so that he could come down from the amphetamine highs from the diet pills that he took. Many of the other teachers found his daily struggles entertaining, and tried to get their schedules adjusted so that they could eat lunch at the same time that he did.

There were only fourteen days of school left. Most of the students filed in and sat at their desks while some other students continued to socialize in the hall. After the late bell rang, they slowly filed in. Anyone who wasn’t seated was marked late. One student came in from the hall and protested the late mark by claiming that his books were already on his desk.

“Your books were on time but you were late,” Harry replied.

As the rest of the stragglers sat down, one of the students near the window got up and called out, “Hey, there’s a fight going on.”

Nearly every student in the room got up and looked out of the windows. They watched as two boys went at each other in front of the school. A couple of nearby teachers quickly moved in to try to break up the fight. Albert Kagan, one of the deans, came into the room and he and Rabkin also looked out of the window.

“You going to go down there, Al?” Harry laughed.

“No.” Kagan pointed to the two teachers who were trying to break up the fight. “Look at those two dumb schmucks,” he continued. “They should never break up a fight right away. When I witness a fight, I always wait a few minutes until the two assholes get a few licks in. I only get involved if someone is really getting hurt or after both have had enough.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Harry agreed. “It’s best to wait until they get tired or do enough damage to each other. That way you don’t get hurt.”

“Kagan and Rabkin, like most teachers, were approaching middle age. It could be dangerous for an adult to try to break up a fight between two energetic adolescent students. Earlier that year, John Parisi, the head dean, tried to break up a fight between two girls and got kicked in the testicles. Because it was an on-the-job injury, he was able to get two weeks off.

Kagan looked on as nearly all of the students in the homeroom watched the fight. He looked at Rabkin, but they both knew that it would be useless to tell them to sit down. Eventually some teachers along with school security got the combatants separated and led the two inside the building to the dean’s office.

“OK, settle down,” Rabkin said, trying to regain control of the class. “The fight’s over; now go back to your seats.”

About half of the students sat down. He repeated the instruction and most of the other students found their seats. Only two students remained standing.

“Hey, sit down now. The fight’s over.”

One of the students sat down. About two minutes had passed since the end of the commotion, but Henri Wong still didn’t move from his position by the window. Susan Roberts walked in and went to the front of the room to pick up her lesson plans for her first class.

Frustrated at being ignored, Harry moved closer to the defiant student. “What’s the matter, Wong?” Rabkin pressed, sneering. “If you don’t speak English, I’ll speak in a language you understand.”

He imitated a Chinese accent. “Whassa matter Wong? Fight ovah now, Wong. You go chair now! You sit down now, Wong.” The whole class began to laugh. Wong turned red and finally sat down, smiling wanly.

“Was that Cantonese or Mandarin?” Susan Roberts asked, still laughing.

Susan was a light-skinned black woman who had been teaching for twenty years. Roberts, Rabkin, and Kagan, all social studies teachers, had formed a friendship and ate lunch every day together during the fifth period. Susan and Rabkin shared Room 338 as their base, switching off during the periods either one taught.

Susan had danced on Broadway years ago and had met her husband there. After an injury to her ankle, she realized that she could not dance forever and put herself through college, earning a bachelor’s degree at Hunter and a master’s at Queens. She had once confided to Kagan that she hadn’t minded being the main breadwinner in the family until her husband’s jazz band had established themselves. She was proud of her husband’s talent and enjoyed listening to him play his bass. His band was now successful and the money he brought in was important to the financial health of the family, and it was all cash. He was a good father to their children, and they had invested their extra money wisely. They lived comfortably but not extravagantly in a three-family house that they owned. The rent from the two other tenants paid most of the bills.

The first period bell rang and the room emptied. Susan set up an overhead projector to teach her first period class.

“Actually, Harry,” Kagan said, “I came up here because you wanted to see me about the Randy Brown matter?”

“Yeah, Al,” Harry answered. “We need to go over a couple of things for the suspension hearing.”

“Well, it seems pretty open and shut to me.” Kagan said. “The kid brought a knife to school and you found it.”

Rabkin nodded. “Yeah, that’s the short version. Look, I’ll talk to you later; I’ve got to get to class.”

Rabkin went to teach his first period class. Kagan left to patrol the halls.

Harry Rabkin was not only well known at Jackson, but was a legendary figure throughout Queens because of his revolutionary way of dealing with supervisors.

One of the provisions of the New York City teacher’s contract stated that a supervisor was to observe a lesson being taught by every teacher in the school system at least twice a year. After the scheduled observation, the supervisor wrote a critique and rated the teacher on lesson planning, execution, class order, and the effectiveness of the lesson. If a teacher received two unsatisfactory reviews, this could lead to an unsatisfactory annual rating.

If a teacher was not yet tenured, an unsatisfactory rating could lead to a denial of tenure. For a tenured teacher, an unsatisfactory rating could mean a denial of advancement to the next pay step, which was based on each year of satisfactory service.

During his first year of teaching, Harry received an unsatisfactory review from his supervisor, Murray Blum. This was not unusual for a new teacher directly out of college. Most teachers worked to improve their skills, and the second observation usually reflected this work. Ultimately, the new teacher would be given a satisfactory rating for the year. If a teacher was hopelessly incompetent, the administration suggested that the teacher consider another career.

Throughout most of the city school system, an informal but humane arrangement was made so that teachers who were unable to master the necessary skills for a successful teaching career would receive a satisfactory rating for their records, but would resign from their positions. In this manner, the city could rid itself of incompetent teachers without stigmatizing those individuals. After three years of receiving satisfactory ratings, a teacher received tenure, which made it almost impossible to be fired for incompetence.

Rather than putting in the effort needed to improve his teaching skills, Harry found another solution to fix his initial “unsatisfactory” report. He devised a different strategy that, as far as anyone knew, had never been tried before. He carefully read the teacher’s contract and found the loophole he was looking for. There was a provision that stated that if a teacher received an unsatisfactory observation from a supervisor, that supervisor had to help the teacher overcome his shortcomings. He looked at Murray Blum’s schedule and found that fourth period was when Blum was scheduled for lunch. Fourth period was also Harry’s preparation period. Preparation periods were supposed to be used by teachers to do paperwork, grade papers, and write their lesson plans.

Harry began to request appointments with Blum for fourth period on a daily basis. While Blum’s fellow administrator friends were enjoying their lunch period, Murray had to work with Harry. For two weeks, Blum had to spend his lunch periods with what seemed to be an impossibly dense individual who just couldn’t seem to understand lesson planning and classroom discipline.

After several weeks of explaining virtually everything he knew about running a classroom, Blum scheduled another observation. Blum duly noted the “improvement” in Harry’s teaching and the old unsatisfactory observation was removed from Harry’s file. That year, Harry Rabkin received a satisfactory rating.

From that day on whenever Blum observed Harry, he would informally explain to him what he’d done wrong, but he never again put it in writing.

Over time, most of what Blum told Harry did work its way into his teaching and planning and he became an effective and popular teacher. Word of Harry’s strategy spread, and his successful thwarting of the administration became known throughout Queens. George French, a science teacher at Jackson, dubbed it the “Rabkin Protocol” and it eventually became a widely used technique for discouraging officially written unsatisfactory observations.

Harry was an admitted casual drug user, a notorious misogynist, and was generally considered by his colleagues to be a degenerate. Once, a few of the other teachers obtained his credit card number and placed a personal ad in New York Magazine that read, “Five foot six inch, grossly obese, always in debt, troll-like creature wishes to meet young, slim, financially secure, and attractive female for meaningless and emotionless sex. I am lazy, addicted to most prescription drugs, and am despicable in many other interesting ways. I like to lie around and loaf when I am not eating. I have accomplished very little in life and will most likely continue in this path. Would you care to join me?”

At first, Harry was angry with his friends, but then responses to the ad started coming in, which actually gave him an active social life. At the end of four months, he had exhausted his supply of interested parties. All of the women who had at first thought that the ad was a joke soon realized that they were wrong.

To save money for drugs and to pay his other bills, Harry was always trying to get other teachers who lived near him to carpool, especially Jeff Klinger, who also lived in Brooklyn. Klinger had always declined. Once, while they were both in the teacher’s room, Harry asked Jeff why.

“I thought that you might be trying to seduce me,” Jeff answered, flatly. All of the other teachers started to laugh. Harry stopped asking.

CHAPTER 2

THE SCHOOL

Statistically, Andrew Jackson was one of the most violent schools in New York City and possibly the country. It was considered so bad that two police officers from the local precinct were assigned there full time. The police captain realized that having his men in the school was a good way for them to identify neighborhood troublemakers. He also hoped that his officers would become familiar with the future troublemakers who would, as vacancies arose due to prison and murder, take their place.

Two teachers supervised eleven security guards who guarded the fire and exit doors so that students could not let outsiders in. Seven deans handled the more serious behavior problems, such as fighting, robbery, and possession of drugs and weapons.

In terms of salaries, benefits, and future pension liabilities, the City of New York was paying around two million dollars a year just to control the school before any teaching or learning could take place.

In most high schools in America, special assemblies took place in the school auditorium on a regular basis. At Andrew Jackson, the last assembly had been held four years before in order to induct students into the National Honor Society. During the ceremony, one student had thrown an apple to one of his friends but accidentally hit another student in the head. The student who was struck attacked the student who had thrown the apple. One of the deans and two security guards tried to break it up and remove the combatants. One of the struck student’s friends hit one of the security guards. The security guard grabbed the student and threw him to the ground. Other students started to fight with the other guard and one of the deans. As the fighting spread, other students tried to get out of the auditorium and a full-scale riot erupted.

When they heard the commotion, the two policemen on duty called for reinforcements. A special tactical unit responded. Reporters for two local television stations picked up the call for help on their scanners and left a nearby fire to cover the riot. This became the leading story on two evening television news shows. Both The Daily News and The New York Post reported news of the riot.

Two days after the riot, Dr. Hurley, the principal, put in for retirement: reportedly at the insistence of his wife. The new principal, Dr. Andrea Johnson, arrived a week later with only a brief memo of introduction from the Board and very little information about her background.

The teachers and staff didn’t expect her to last for long in the difficult position. Dr. Johnson seemed gentle and benign at first glance. She was a short and rotund black woman with an almost comical, high-pitched voice. How could such a gentle soul possibly handle the nightmare that was Jackson? However, she soon proved to be a tough, no-nonsense administrator who commanded respect from both her students and her staff. Her judgments in discipline cases were often viewed as harsh—there was no room for exceptions or leniency for even the most minor infraction—but her expectations were so consistent that she was universally respected for her sense of fairness.

She was also a keen judge of character, and rewarded those with a similar sense of order and justice. After observing Kagan’s ability to handle those who misbehaved, Dr. Johnson asked him if he wanted to become a dean of students. He had only been at Jackson for a year, and her decision met with some vocal opposition amongst the tenured staff; but she held firm, maintaining that ability far outweighed seniority in the needs of this important position.

Early in his time at Jackson, Kagan had been assigned cafeteria duty. He noticed that the older and stronger students were cutting into the lunch lines ahead of the weaker and less aggressive ones. This was hardly surprising; it went on in nearly all of the schools in America. Kagan watched as Mr. Brandon, the teacher in charge, ignored it.

“I just saw those kids cut in line ahead of those other kids. Shouldn’t we stop that?” Kagan asked.

“I wouldn’t,” Brandon answered. “It could just cause trouble and lead to another riot.”

“But it’s unfair to the good kids,” Kagan persisted.

“Look Al, you’re new here,” Brandon said. “I appreciate your sense of justice; but if you go over there and the kid doesn’t move, what are you going to do? Are you going to try to physically move him? Let’s just get through this and not kill ourselves.”

“How can we expect these kids to do the right thing when the adults around them are too scared to?” Kagan questioned.

“I hate to say this,” Brandon responded, “but they may as well get used to this. This is what life will be like for them anyway.”

Kagan went along with the older teacher even though he thought it was wrong. He believed that when students saw adults ignoring bad behavior, this reinforced the idea that injustice and brutality along with the threat of violence ruled. Kagan felt that he couldn’t expect the students to obey the rules when everywhere around them they saw that those who disobeyed got away with it. Kagan decided that the next time he saw something like this happen he would act…with or without Brandon’s approval.

He didn’t have to wait long. The next day, a large and intimidating-looking boy cut ahead of other students on the lunch line. Kagan immediately walked over to the student.

“Excuse me,” Kagan said. “I just saw you cut in line. You’re going to have to go to the end of the line.”

The student just ignored him. Kagan stepped in front of him and said, “Go to the end of the line now.”

This time the student snidely answered, “My friend here let me cut in.” Kagan looked at the smaller boy, who seemed afraid to disagree.

“He doesn’t have the right to let you cut in ahead of all these other students.” Kagan said, letting the smaller boy off the hook. “Go to the end of the line now,” he repeated, firmly.

“No, I ain’t going nowhere.”

“I see,” Kagan replied. He walked away and went to the other end of the cafeteria. Brandon quickly approached him.

“Nice,” Brandon said. “What good did you do? Now you look totally stupid and impotent.”

“This isn’t over yet.”

Kagan walked over to the serving area just as the boy who had cut in arrived at the head of the line.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Poitier,” Kagan addressed the lady serving the food. “Please do not give this young man any food. He cut ahead of all of the other kids. I told him not to and he ignored me.”

“I hate when people do that.” Mrs Poitier grinned largely. “Next!”

Kagan motioned the next student up to the serving line. The line-cutter tried to prevent the boy from advancing.

“Now if you wish to stop everyone else from eating and prevent these ladies from doing their jobs,” Kagan said, “I’ll have you removed.”

“Man, you crazy!” shouted the line-cutter.

“I’ll do it, and you’ll be led out in handcuffs,” Kagan said. “But maybe there is another way out.”

“What’s that?” the line-cutter asked.

“You can go to where you would have been if you hadn’t cut in line. But next time it will be the end of the line.”

The boy looked around and then back at Kagan. He saw that this teacher meant business.

“All right,” said the student.

“Fair enough?’

“Yeah.”

“We’ll shake on it, man to man.” Kagan said.

The student looked at him suspiciously, then offered his hand.

“Okay.”

After the incident was over, Brandon came over and said, “You’re a real asshole, Al. You could have started a riot.”

“I admit that I’m an asshole, but you’re a lazy, burned-out putz.”

Brandon complained to Michael Romano, the chapter chairman of the United Federation of Teachers Union. To Brandon’s surprise, Romano said, ”The man was just doing his job.”

Kagan had to repeat this process a few more times, but gradually the line cutting ceased completely when he was on duty. After that, Kagan noticed that a lot of students that he didn’t know said hello to him when he passed them in the halls.

Near the end of his first year, Kagan gained legendary status among the staff because he had figured out a solution to a major discipline problem. In order to get the end-of-year report cards back to the students on time, it was school policy that the final grades had to be entered ten days before the final day of school.

Another policy stipulated that once a teacher entered a passing grade for a student, the grade could not be changed to a failing one. However, a failing grade could be changed to a passing one. This was implemented so that the school could keep the students advancing along through the grades regardless of whether they learned or not. This policy was a highly guarded secret because if the students learned that it was impossible for grades to be lowered after they’d been submitted, anarchy would rule the school for the last ten days in June.

The day after the final grades were entered, Kagan faced a nightmare. All of the boys in his third period class came in late. When Kagan confronted them, they smugly replied, “We know that you already entered the grades. We can’t be failed now.”

Kagan’s heart sank because he knew they were right. “Who told you that? Whoever told you that was wrong; it’s not true,” he lied.

Larry Hamilton piped in. “Oh yes it is, I heard Dr. Johnson talking to Mr. Rosenberg about it.”

Oh my God, Kagan thought, I’ve passed nearly all of them.

“I’ll find a way to fail you anyway.”

Johnny Gomez, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Hispanic boy, said, “You can’t.” Then he added, “School policy 106.2233 says so.”

The whole class laughed at Gomez and his made-up policy number.

Kagan began to panic. What could he do? He couldn’t face two weeks of his students being out of control. Word would spread not only to his other classes but to all of the students in the school. His heart began to beat faster, and he began to sweat. He looked at them and saw a sea of smiling but belligerent faces. They had him and they knew it. Think Al, think fast. You’ve faced other tough issues before.

“In that case, Mr. Gomez, maybe I’ll just pay a surprise visit to your home today.”

“My parents are in Puerto Rico,” Johnny smiled, “but you can come for dinner; my sister is a good cook.”

Again the class roared with laughter. Kagan knew that he looked like a fool. Wait a minute, what do I do? Think, think, maybe, maybe...

“Well boys,” Kagan said with a shrug, “Larry Hamilton is correct.”

The whole class responded with a collective roar of approval for Larry Hamilton’s successful, if accidental, bit of espionage.

Kagan continued. “Everything that Johnny and Larry said is true. It is true that once a passing grade is entered it cannot be changed to failing, but a failing grade can be changed to passing. Is that what you heard?”

Both boys nodded affirmatively.

Here it comes, Kagan thought.

“I figured that you guys would react this way if you found out about this, so I did something to protect myself.”

“What’s that?” Johnny Gomez asked defiantly.

“Well Johnny, I failed nearly every single person in this class.”

“What?” Johnny Gomez said in disbelief. Larry Hamilton looked shocked, as did the rest of the class.

“In order to protect myself from discipline issues, I failed nearly everyone in this class and most of the students in my other classes.”

“But Mr. Kagan,” Carla Dippolito protested, “I’m passing! That’s not fair.”

“Carla,” Kagan replied, “You don’t have anything to worry about. I only failed those kids who are likely to misbehave. So you see, Mr. Gomez and Mr. Hamilton and all of the others who might take advantage, in order for you to pass, I have to actually change your grade from failing to passing. I suggest that you take out your notebooks and start doing some of the work on the board.”

“He would do it, Johnny,” Larry Hamilton muttered.

“Not only did I do it,” Kagan said, “but a lot of the other teachers did it too. I personally know some teachers who failed every student in their classes.”

Larry Hamilton and Timothy Wilson took their notebooks out and began working on the assignment. Johnny Gomez looked around the room and saw that the rest of the class was no longer with him.

“Johnny, is that dinner invitation still open for tonight?” Kagan asked.

The class roared, but this time it was at Johnny’s expense. Word spread of the incident and many teachers congratulated Kagan for his quick thinking. Michael Romano told Dr. Johnson about the incident and she acknowledged that Albert Kagan had essentially saved the last two weeks of school for all of the teachers.

As a new teacher, Kagan had never written a referral, a practically unheard-of situation. A referral was a written record of misbehavior, similar to an adult getting a summons. If a teacher was unable to control a student’s misbehavior, he would write out a referral and one of the deans would deal with the student. Kagan, apparently, handled all of his classroom discipline problems on his own.

If a student continued to misbehave in his class after being reprimanded, Kagan would pay a surprise visit to the student’s home on the weekend and speak with the student’s parents. After a few of these visits, word got out around the school. Most of the students thought that he must be crazy. This was exactly the effect that Kagan wanted. Most of the kids in his classes found it easier to go along with Kagan than to have him show up on their doorstep to speak with their parents, especially their mothers.

Once, Kagan approached a student’s mother and grandmother on the sidewalk as they were on their way to church. When Kagan told the women that the student had said “fuck you” to him, they both frowned at the boy. Then he told the two nice, respectful, church-going ladies that when he had informed the student that he would pay a visit to his mother to tell her about his language, the student had replied, “My moms don’t give a shit if I say fuck you, so fuck you.”

The boy looked as if he was going to have an accident right there on the street. The women glared at the miscreant and assured Kagan that they would deal with him.

Kagan almost felt sorry for the kid; but not too sorry. Kagan had come from a time and place where it was unheard of for anyone to curse out a teacher. Times had certainly changed. After accepting the dean’s position, Kagan asked the teachers to document exactly what the student said or did. A referral which read simply that a kid used “bad language” did not have the same devastating impact in parent-teacher conferences as one that quoted the student’s exact words.

For less serious disciplinary matters, the deans would call the parent (or in many cases aunts, grandmothers, older siblings, or legal guardians) to come to the school for a conference. With students who were normally well behaved, a phone call could suffice. If the matter was more serious and involved a threat or cursing, a five-day suspension could be given with the principal’s approval. In order for the student to be re-admitted, a parent had to come to school for a conference.

The more serious matters involving weapons or violence were dealt with by having students removed permanently from Jackson. The deans represented the school at these expulsion hearings, which took place at the Board of Education complex in downtown Brooklyn.

“Motherfucker” had long been the term of choice when it came to cursing out a teacher or a fellow student. One of the other deans, Edward Griffin, had reduced his students’ use of this term in a unique way.

Griffin was a former college football player. Griffin’s father had made sure that his son went to class and received an education, so that he could avoid the fate of many black athletes. Edward Griffin was the first in his family to attend and finish college and earned a degree in English with a minor in education. When he finished college, Griffin had tried out for the New York Jets but was cut early. He began his teaching career at Jackson, and while he would have liked to have played professional ball, he knew that his father had been right. So many other athletes that he had gone to school with didn’t make the pros. Those who hadn’t finished school ended up working as truck loaders and other modestly-paying muscle jobs.

When Robert McShane, a student in one of Griffin’s classes, called him a motherfucker, he replied, “Tsk tsk, your mother should have never told you about me.”

McShane and the rest of the class were stunned. How could a teacher say such a thing? The story was repeated so many times that by the end of the day nearly everyone at Jackson was aware of the incident. After this episode, called by some “Griffin’s Motherfucking Corollary”, the use of that term greatly diminished at Jackson.

Griffin was also noted for his technique for clearing out smokers in the boys’ bathroom. When Griffin walked by a bathroom and smelled smoke, he would go in and loudly say, “Hey, what are you boys doing in there? Pull your pants up, young man. You, you there, put that thing away. I’m open minded, but we don’t go for this sort of thing around here.” Griffin would say this loudly enough so that those in nearby classrooms could hear. All of the students in those classes would start laughing, especially the girls.

One way you could tell a school was riddled with problems was if the staff stuck together. There were few divisions among the staff at Jackson. They understood that they were all in the same boat, which seemed to be always taking on water.

The lone exception was Brian Kennedy. Brian Kennedy had been at Jackson for ten years and taught Spanish. He had a master’s degree in supervision and was the foreign language chairman. His rank was equivalent to an assistant principal’s and he hoped to become a principal some day. Three years ago, he had taken the supervisor’s exam and received the twentieth highest grade in all of New York City.

Helen Rodriguez, a former guidance counselor at Jackson, had also taken the test and her rank on the list was 150. However, she had been offered and had accepted the principal’s job at a Staten Island middle school. When Brian found out, he bitterly complained that she was getting the job based on her ethnicity and her gender. White, Hispanic, and black members of the staff at Jackson had heated arguments in the teacher’s room and at one point, two teachers almost came to blows.

Much to Kagan’s surprise, nearly all of the black teachers were quite severe and strict when it came to disciplinary matters. Because local blacks overwhelmingly supported liberal Democrats, and because the student population was largely composed of minorities, Kagan had assumed that the black teachers would be more lenient with the students. He had discovered that this was not true. Most of the black teachers and administrators had struggled against the odds to finish college and respected the value of an education and how it had changed their lives. They did not respect nor did they tolerate young miscreants who interfered with their attempt to transmit knowledge to the students.

Kagan had once observed a scene in the hall between Susan Roberts and a black student who was caught cutting class. The student was wearing two gold chains and a hat. The student must have sensed the disdain in Susan Roberts’ eyes.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” he asked.

“You represent everything that I detest,” Susan replied, frankly.

CHAPTER 3

FIRST PERIOD

One of Kagan’s daily first period stops was Mr. Gupta’s class. Mohan Gupta was from India, and like many Indian teachers, he was not used to teaching disrespectful American students. In India, students would stand up whenever they addressed the teacher and start every sentence with “sir.” In America, kids just weren’t raised that way. With his accent and high-pitched voice, Gupta had his problems in terms of class control. Mimics immediately caught on to the fact that imitating the Indian teachers’ accents was a good way to get a laugh. Another way to achieve class clown status was to come to class and ask him for a Slurpee.

The head of the science department, Sally Shyman, had tried to protect Gupta by giving him only honors classes to teach. She hoped that the advanced students would be better behaved than the kids in the regular classes. After other teachers complained about the lack of honors classes in their own schedules, Shyman had to rectify the imbalance. For Gupta, this meant that only two classes out of his daily load of five were made up of honors students.

When Kagan walked by, Gupta was teaching one of his non-honors classes. He looked in and saw Gupta lecturing in the front of the room. The students in the back of the room seemed to be staring at some object on the floor. At first it looked like a blanket, but closer examination showed that it was moving. Kagan realized that what the kids were staring at was actually two students fighting. Each had a headlock on the other and they punched each other with their free arms. Gupta continued teaching as if nothing was happening.

Kagan walked into the room and Gupta said, “I would like to report these two for fighting. Please take them away.”

Kagan walked to the back of the room and calmly asked the two if they were finished. They loosened their hold on each other and stood up.

“Get your things and both of you come with me.”

Both students packed up their book bags and Kagan took them to the dean’s office on the first floor. The students sat down and Kagan went to the file cabinet and looked for disciplinary folders but neither boy had one. That meant that they were part of the vast majority of students who typically didn’t cause trouble. Leniency might be the best policy for first-time offenders, but he would still have to find out why they were fighting.

“Who threw the first punch?” Kagan asked, folding his arms and towering over the boys.

“I did,” the first boy said.

“Why?”

“He took my pen.”

“I did not; this is my pen,” the second boy shot back.

Kagan suppressed a sigh. It seemed absurd to fight over a pen, but at Jackson it wasn’t. Kagan knew that the first student believed that if word got out that someone took something of his and he did nothing about it, he would be marked as a punk. From then on, anything of value that he had would be fair game for anyone else to take. He had to defend what was his or risk setting a dangerous precedent.

Kagan snatched both students’ book bags and dumped them contents on the floor. The three noticed as identical pens spilled from both bags.

“Well, what do you say now?” Kagan asked the first boy.

“I’m sorry, man,” the accuser said, looking at his feet.

“That’s okay, man,” the second boy replied. He had not been hurt and he knew that he would have done the same thing if the situation had been reversed. Kagan sent the second boy back to class.

“What do you think I should do with you for starting all of this trouble?” he asked the first boy once they were alone.

“Send for my parents, I guess,” the student replied flatly.

“Is that what you want?” Kagan asked.

“No.”

“Listen,” Kagan said, perching on the edge of his desk, “I don’t have a disciplinary card on you, so I’m inclined to be fairly lenient about this matter. But you created quite a problem over something that you were totally wrong about. This situation came out of your being too lazy and stupid to thoroughly search your book bag. Instead of doing that, you attacked someone who was totally innocent.”

“I thought he stole it,” the student argued.

“I’m going to ask Mr. Gupta if he will agree to only have me fill out a disciplinary card about all this,” Kagan said. “Of course, I’ll have to tell your folks what happened, but they won’t have to come to the school. If there are no other incidents between now and the time you graduate, I’ll destroy the card and it won’t be part of your permanent record.”

The boy thankfully nodded his agreement.

“That’s only if Mr. Gupta agrees not to have you suspended and does this favor for you,” Kagan warned. “Wait here until the period ends and then go to your next class.”

Kagan had always looked out for Gupta and knew that he would agree to anything that he suggested. But this ruse would make the student think that Gupta was in a position to have him suspended, but instead had decided to let it go. Kagan hoped that this might make the student have some gratitude for Gupta and behave better in the future.

This was basically a good kid who could be reasoned with, but there were plenty of others who were not so easy to deal with. Kagan remembered that when he was young and had wronged someone, his parents and teachers had always asked, “How would you like it if someone did that to you?” Back in the fifties and sixties, The Golden Rule was an effective disciplinary tool.

Kagan’s very first disciplinary conference as a dean had involved a student who had stolen another student’s sneakers. Kagan tried the “how would you like it if someone stole your sneakers and put you in a choke hold?” question on the thief and was shocked by the student’s response.

“If he can take my sneakers and I don’t have the juice to keep them, he has the right to,” the student replied.

Kagan was left dumbstruck. He had the student suspended, but was troubled by the response and his own inability to deal with it.

The ancient Jewish scholar Rabbi Hillel had stated, “what is hateful to you, do not to do others.” Years later Jesus affirmatively restated this ideal as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Immanuel Kant formulated the Categorical Imperative, which stated, “Do unto everyone as you would have everyone do to everyone else.” The “imperative” here was absolute morality.

The next time he was confronted with a similar situation, Kagan asked the miscreant, “how would you like it if someone did this to your mother?”

Most offenders responded to this by admitting that they would not like that. This seemed to be a starting place to try to reach some of the students who might, over time, develop a conscience and eventually be reasoned with. Through the use of reason, Kagan hoped that they would assimilate the values that made a person understand right from wrong.

Kagan hoped that Hillel, Jesus, and Kant would have approved of his actions. He knew that they would never have approved of what he had done on a beach in Florida only a few years before.

CHAPTER 4

THE EDUCATION OF ALBERT KAGAN

Kagan headed out of the office and back to the third floor. He eagerly waited for the bell for the beginning of second period. Only three periods would be left to deal with the students. This particular half day was needed by the staff because morale was so low. Jackson had been through yet another bad year.

Two loaded guns had been confiscated that year. Another one had been fired, but the perpetrator had never been identified, let alone caught. The bullet had not been recovered until a leak that followed a rainstorm revealed its path.

There had also been fifteen assaults on teachers, and seven of those were on Mr. Santini. Santini would get in front of the miscreant, put his face right up to the student’s, and dare him to touch him. As soon as the troublemaking kid made a move, Santini went down, an ambulance was called for, and a case for permanent expulsion was made. Santini was known as “rent-a-victim” by the deans because once he got involved, they could always count on him being assaulted.

In this school year alone, there had been one hundred and sixty five expulsion hearings for Jackson students at the Board of Education headquarters. The school had not lost a single hearing. After a formal expulsion hearing at 65 Court Street, the student would be permanently banned from Jackson. Jackson would give up one kid but under the Lend Louse system, Jackson would receive a student who had been expelled from a different school.

Lend Louse was a play on words based on the WWII program of Lend Lease. Lend Lease had been Roosevelt’s way of getting around the will of Congress in order to aid the British prior to America’s entrance into WWII. If the British lost a ship, the Americans let the British lease a ship for a nominal fee. In this manner, lost equipment was replaced on a one to one ratio. In the case of the schools, one “louse” would be transferred from school A to school B, and school A would receive a replacement “louse” from school B.

Federal and state courts had ruled that every child had a constitutional right to a free, appropriate, and public education. This meant that no student could be permanently removed from a school system unless they or their parents or guardian agreed to it. No matter how delinquent a student was, some educational setting had to be made available by the child’s local jurisdiction.

This fact made delinquent students essentially a commodity. An unwanted commodity, but a commodity nevertheless. All commodities can be traded. For years, when it came to the miscreants of the New York City school system, the trading between schools was as sophisticated as that done with commodity futures at the Chicago Mercantile. Deans and principals of one school would negotiate with their counterparts in another school to see who could make better trades.

Kagan’s first expulsion hearing was for a boy who had brought a knife to school. During the hearing, Mrs. Claire Braddock, the hearing officer, looked at the knife and called for an immediate recess. During the recess she told Kagan that she had determined that perhaps the knife could also be interpreted as a tool.

Kagan was shocked at this indulgence. “Are you serious?” he asked.

“Perhaps the youngster uses it to install carpets in an after-school job,” Mrs. Braddock explained. “Or maybe he uses it to open boxes in a warehouse.”

Kagan realized that Mrs. Braddock was intent on her course of leniency. He hoped that this would sound as crazy to the student as it sounded to him. He had dealt with this student before, and it was worth a try.

“It’s leading if you suggest the term tool to him.” Kagan responded. “Why don’t you just ask him the purpose of this item?”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Mr. Kagan.”

After the hearing reconvened, Mrs. Braddock asked, “Son, what exactly is this item that you are accused of possessing?”

“That’s a knife,” the student responded. “What are you, fucking stupid?”

Mrs. Braddock looked shocked at the foul language. She found the student guilty of the offense and ordered him expelled from Jackson.

Generally, when students were expelled they could go to another high school if they could find one that would accept them. If the offense was non-violent, this was usually possible. But bringing a weapon to school or committing an act of violence guaranteed that a student would have to attend the Jamaica Learning Annex.

The Jamaica Learning Annex was sort of an educational outpatient facility. Nearly ninety percent of those assigned to complete their education there would eventually drop out of school. It was the Board of Education’s official policy to discourage dropouts, but once a student was assigned to The Annex, they most likely wouldn’t even bother to show up.

Kagan and most of the other deans did not care if this type of student dropped out. These miscreants prevented the good kids from learning. Kagan had a utilitarian attitude toward the educational system. He believed that the many good kids should be allowed to learn and complete their education without the disruptions and violence of the few. Kagan felt that there were some kids who just shouldn’t be in school. They belonged either in a job or on the street where their misbehavior could be dealt with by the police. At least the cops were armed.

A student who was faced with an expulsion hearing had the right to have an advocate or even an attorney at the hearing. A dean from the student’s school would present the school’s case and the student, parent, or advocate could counter the case or try to get the hearing officers to interpret the event in a different way.

About a week after the knife-carrying student had been expelled, Kagan was called to the office because of a fight between two students. One of the students had been at Jackson for two years and had never been in trouble.

“What was this about?” Kagan asked the new offender.

“He just pushed me, for no reason,” the student responded.

Kagan looked for the other boy’s record and found that he had just been transferred to Jackson from Richmond Hill High School. Andrew Jackson had given up a knife-carrying student and had received another violent one in return.

Kagan believed that the Lend Louse system was pointless because all it did was move the troublemakers around. This could even be considered counterproductive, because at least the school’s own troublemaker’s capabilities and talents were a known quantity. A new and unknown troublemaker’s modus operandi would have to be learned by the students and teachers of the new school, who were constantly in a position of having to learn who to avoid in order to not become victims of beatings, theft, and intimidation by the new students.

Kagan had spoken to Parisi recently about the futility of it all, but the head dean just shrugged it off. “That’s just the way it works.”

Once, Kagan brought up the whole Lend Louse situation to the fifth period lunch group.

“It’s all due to the Miranda decision,” Sy Morris said.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, Al,” Ed Griffin said, “the suspects have to be told their rights. This Carmen Miranda decision was the worst thing that ever happened to the schools. Now all of these kids have all of these rights.”

“Ed’s right,” John Dunbar laughed at Griffin’s mistake. “You remember the Carmen Miranda decision. That’s when the Supreme Court outlawed the wearing of big hats in the movies. This was the beginning of the end of public order!” A few of the other teachers laughed, and Griffin flushed. “The other Miranda decision told the police that they have to advise someone who is arrested of their rights.”

“But seriously,” Dunbar continued, “Lend Louse is crucial to the maintenance of order.”

“Why?” Kagan asked.

“Lend Louse,” Dunbar said, “serves an important role in what is known by curriculum researchers as ‘the hidden curriculum’.”

“What in the world is the hidden curriculum?” Kagan asked.

“Oh God Al, now he’s going to start,” George French groaned. “Here comes a lecture by the well known scholar, Dr. John Dunbar, Ed.D.!”

Ignoring George, Dunbar began to explain. “Look, all schools in America and the rest of the world have a formal curriculum, which is expressed most of the time in writing. This is made up of all of the subjects, policies, and activities that the students take part in within the school setting.”

“That I understand, ” Kagan said.

“All societies have to have ways to teach the young its customs and pass on its knowledge,” Dunbar explained. “Every society has to ask itself, like the social theorist Herbert Spencer did, what knowledge is of the most worth. These ideas are expressed in the formal curriculum of the agencies and institutions that control the schools.”

“The hidden curriculum is made up of the events and policies that are not formally expressed,” Dunbar continued. “In some respects, students learn more from the school’s hidden curriculum than the formal one.”

“Why?” Kagan asked.

“Do you remember your education courses in college concerning John Dewey and the project method?” Dunbar asked. “Let’s say you want to teach students about maps. Dewey would suggest that having the students make their own maps is more productive than just teaching them out of a textbook. Those who advocated teaching by the project method were considered part of the progressive wing of curriculum thought. They believed that students learned better by approaching problems and then trying to solve them. The solving of the problems of the chosen project would give students insight into many areas of life and they would obtain useful knowledge in this manner.”

“This stuff is a little dense for me,” Kagan said.

“I know, but these issues are important. Most people, and that includes teachers, just take what is taught in schools for granted. But schools didn’t just appear and the curriculum didn’t just create itself. There is a whole course of research in this curriculum field and people like my professors have spent their academic lives writing about these issues. That little kid in the park or mall you see every day and his friends are going to run this country some day. What these kids are taught or are not taught will determine the nation’s future.”

“Yeah Al,” Sy Morris, the guidance counselor, said. “How do you expect us to get our pensions and social security if the little bastards can’t read and write?”

“He’s right Al,” George French joined in. “If all these kids can do is work at McDonald’s, we’re all sunk.”

“That’s true enough,” Kagan agreed.

“Students interpret events best from their own experience,” Dunbar responded. “When I went to high school, there was a really good quarterback in my math class. He was failing and this meant that he would not be able to play in the homecoming game. The principal let it be known to the teacher that some way needed to be found for this kid to play. The teacher gave the kid an extra credit report and he played in the game. Top athletes given passing grades in classes that they deserve to fail is part of the hidden curriculum of many schools in America. Students who observe this are taught a lesson that makes a deep and lasting impression that no lecture or exam of the formal curriculum could equal.”

Kagan nodded. This was exactly how he had felt about the precedent that Brandon had set by ignoring disruptions in the cafeteria.

Dunbar continued. “Now, Lend Louse serves to show students that there are consequences for misbehavior. If a student misbehaves and isn’t removed, other students would quickly realize that the deans and the principals were empty suits without any real authority.”

“But ultimately that’s the truth,” Kagan pointed out.

“Of course it is,” Dunbar responded. “But the students have to be kept uninformed of this truth. The fact that Lend Louse allows for even the appearance of real punishment has some value.”

“You’re depressing me, John.”

“Someone has to do it,” Dunbar responded. “You ever hear of the Hawthorne Effect?”

“I know,” Jeff Klinger said. “Wasn’t that when Nathaniel Hawthorne increased his penis size and called himself Moby Dick?”

“No, Jeff,” George French answered. “That was Melville who had sex with Moby Dick. Hawthorne had sex with Hester Prynne.”

“Can I get her number?” Klinger asked.

“Wasn’t this something about a telephone factory somewhere?” Kagan asked, ignoring the wisecracks.

“That’s right,” Dunbar answered. “Elton Mayo was a researcher. During the 1930s he was brought in by the management at a Western Electric factory in Hawthorne, Illinois to increase the productivity of their workers. Beneficial changes in lighting were made, and productivity improved. What surprised Mayo and the other researchers was that when they began to make other changes that were considered non-beneficial, productivity also improved. This did not make sense to them. Finally, the researchers removed all of the beneficial changes that had been made for the workers. Do you remember what happened?”

“No,” Kagan said.

“To the surprise of Mayo and his colleagues,” Dunbar said, ”productivity improved again. It was concluded that workers improved their productivity if they felt that management was interested in their welfare even if the change was not meaningful or beneficial.

“The supposed change accomplished by removing students from a school satisfies the illusion of management interest from the Board of Education. Students observe that those who commit grave infractions are no longer at Jackson and thus there is a consequence for misbehavior. Teachers also observe that their particular nemesis is gone.”

“So the whole thing is a sham,” Kagan concluded.

“Yes, in a way it is, but it’s not so simple,” Dunbar said. “Remember, most students are satisfied with the illusion of punishment and don’t stop to consider that the delinquent was only moved to another school and that a new one takes his place.”

“That’s true,” Kagan responded. “But the worst part is that most of the time the expelled student repeats the anti-social behavior in his new school by victimizing students and teachers alike in their new environment.”

“And your job,” Dunbar grinned, “is to deal with all of it.”

“This isn’t making me happy, John,” Kagan said.

“The study of curriculum isn’t supposed to make you happy; it just makes you better informed.” Dunbar said.

“Great, I feel so empowered now,” Kagan said.

“So, now you feel empowered?” George French asked.

“I was being facetious, George.”

“Should I tell him the rest?” Sy asked.

“How can it be worse?” Kagan asked.

“Well, Al,” Sy said, “two years prior to your arrival here, John Parisi began to notice that Jackson seemed to be getting a larger share of students who had been expelled from the other high schools in Queens. He told me about it and I figured that perhaps a decision had been made at the Board of Education headquarters. I can’t prove it, but most of us believe that the higher-ups at the Board were deliberately turning Jackson into a martyr school.”

“Why would they do that?” Kagan asked.

George French said, “The idea of a martyr school is that they sacrifice one school to save five or six others.”

“The other schools end up with fewer discipline problems,” Dunbar explained. “Their teachers could spend more time educating the remaining students. We, however, get all of the bad kids.”

“That seems unfair,” Kagan said.

“Fair? Are you crazy?” George laughed. “This school is made up of mostly blacks and Puerto Ricans with some leftover white trash who were too stupid to move out when the neighborhood changed. The Board looks at this and figures these people don’t vote and when they do, they vote Democrat anyway, so who gives a shit about them?”

“Well, what about going to the press?” Kagan asked.

“First of all, we can’t prove it and the Board would deny it,” Dunbar said. “But we did try once. Mike Romano gave them the names of the new troublemakers and guess what they all had in common?”

“They were all black and Hispanic,” Griffin guessed.

“What are you, a racist or something, Ed? They weren’t all black or Hispanic. Only 90% were,” Dunbar said.

“John and I have spoken about this before,” Griffin addressed Kagan. “I don’t deny the problems in the black community and you know that I am pretty strict with the troublemakers. But I believe that in the case of blacks at least, it is the past treatment at the hands of white society that has led to this situation.”

“I always figured it was the lack of black family structure especially the absence of the black father.” George said.

“That’s all true, too. I don’t deny the bad shape of the black family. But why do you think it turned out that way?” Griffin asked. “Let’s say you were a black man thirty or forty years ago. If a white person insults you or your family, you have to take it. If you fight back or even level an insult, you face trouble, maybe even a trumped-up charge. You may be able to lick one guy, but once the cops and the judges get involved, you lose. No matter how tough a black man was, he couldn’t beat the system.

“Let’s say you’re a kid and you see your big strong father have to take shit from a scrawny white guy who your dad could eat for breakfast. Your dad could be the strongest and roughest guy in the world, but he still has to take it. How do you think it makes him—and you—feel about white people?

“And speaking of those kids,” Griffin continued, “How do you think it felt to have your kids attend a second-rate, poor black school, even if you lived right across the street from the white school? Wouldn’t you start to feel that the government was intent on keeping your people uneducated?”

“Yeah, that’s true, but hasn’t it been a while since we have had that kind of blatant segregation?” Kagan asked.

“Absolutely, but just as the legal system begins to change for the better, what happens?” Griffin asked. “The government comes in and tries to right the wrongs of the past by giving black people all of this so-called help. So what happens is that the black man who should now be able to support his family is displaced in that role by the same government that created the problem in the first place.”

“But they don’t have to take the aid,” George pointed out.

“Show me people who don’t take money when it is offered,” Griffin answered dryly. “I don’t care if you’re white or black.”

“But look,” he said, steering the conversation, “All I’m saying is that there are legitimate reasons for a lot of the anti-authority attitude among black youths today. The problem is that now they have succeeded in doing what the white racists could not do. It is now the black criminal,“ Griffin said, “who oppresses our community and keeps it down.”

George said, “So anyway, the reporters, especially those at the New York Times, didn’t want to cover the issue of how these kids get shuffled around because of the race and ethnicity of the troublemakers.”

“What are the mechanics of all of these transfers? I mean, how do they do it?” Kagan asked.

“They issue a transfer from the Central Board,” Dunbar answered. “Parisi says the students just show up one day at the front office. No warning. In more than one way.”

“How’s that?” Kagan asked.

“How do you generally find out if a new student is a troublemaker?” Dunbar asked.

“They just start trouble. Like the kid from Richmond Hill who just victimized one of our nice students.” Kagan said.

“Right, do you ever know in advance?” Dunbar asked. “ I mean, does the administration ever tell you about a new student’s past misbehavior?”

“No, they don’t, come to think of it.”

“John Parisi tried to get the records of the new students once, and he was told by an administrator at the Board that it would be unfair to inform the new school of the disciplinary records of the students because it might unfairly prejudice the staff against the student,” Dunbar said.

“We can still expel students, though,” Kagan said.

“Yes, you can. You can get rid of one bad student, but you will receive at least one or maybe two equally bad or worse ones in return.”

“It all seems pointless,” Kagan said in exasperation.

“What you need to know is that you can get rid of a specific troublemaker, but because of the Board’s policies you will never bring this place completely under control. If you understand this from the beginning, you will be less frustrated. You will win some battles, but this school will never really improve. If you can accept that, you will be able to deal with the situation.”

“Did Dr. Johnson ever try to confront them on this?” Kagan asked.

“Oh yeah, and they totally denied that the practice of martyring a school existed.” Dunbar said. “They were quite indignant. However, she did win one concession.”

“What was that?” Kagan asked.

“She got a budget increase and this allowed her to create more positions in the dean’s office. You are one of them.”

With this knowledge, Kagan began to informally gather intelligence. Some of the deans at other schools were sympathetic. When new students with bad records came to Andrew Jackson, Kagan and the two police officers conducted unofficial meetings with them and explained that they would be watched.

To Kagan, the saddest thing about this situation was that there were so many kids who, because of the learning environment at Jackson, left there barely literate. Most, he believed, would have thrived at better schools.

The only way for a good kid to get out of Jackson was to move. Nearly all of the parents in the area were too poor to afford the cost of housing in the better neighborhoods of Queens. Some of the more resourceful parents used false addresses and post office boxes to get their kids registered at the better high schools like Cardozo and Bayside. The luckier parents might have a relative who lived within the boundaries of those schools, and they would pretend that their children lived with these relatives. There was even a thriving address rental business run by some of the more enterprising homeowners and apartment dwellers in the better neighborhoods of northern Queens.

Geographically, Cardozo and Bayside were within ten miles of Jackson; but educationally, they were light years away. Cardozo and Bayside were two of the best high schools in New York City and perhaps in the nation. Approximately 90% of the kids that graduated from the schools went on to pursue higher education.

When the Board learned of the deception employed by some of the parents, they ordered the individual schools to demand to see utility and phone bills to prove that the family actually lived at the reported addresses. Those students who the Board investigators had determined actually lived in the boundaries of Jackson and had fraudulently attended Cardozo and Bayside were removed and sent back to Jackson. Kagan had witnessed some of these students break down and cry after their first day back.

CHAPTER 5

SECOND PERIOD

As Kagan walked into the dean’s office, John Parisi looked up. “Al, I have a situation that needs your particular talents. I have a girl here; her name is Laura James. Her mother is here, too. Laura’s headed for the Annex if she doesn’t straighten her ass out.”

“I have to call the Board about the Randy Brown matter,” Kagan said. “Why not give this to Debra?”

Debra Coogan was the only female dean at the school, and she handled most of the girls who got into trouble. Debra had put together a program for pregnant students to learn about childcare along with studying their academic subjects. She was a warm and friendly person.

“Debra’s too nice,” Parisi answered dryly. “This is a job for a prick like you. Randy Brown can wait.”

“Thanks,” Kagan said, grinning. “Can I see her file? What’s up with her?”

“No disciplinary card; she’s never been officially written up for misbehavior before.”

“So why am I seeing her, then? What’s her problem?”

“She’s a hallwalker.”

“Oh.”

Laura didn’t have a discipline card because she hardly ever went to class. A hallwalker was one of approximately 500-600 students who came to school but rarely went to class. They made up about 15 percent of the school population. To some of these students, Jackson was a place where they received a free lunch and could socialize. Some would go to homeroom, and later they would eat lunch for a few periods. This was the extent of the academic experience for them. Others would casually attend some classes with their friends and skip most of their other classes.

All of these kids walking, talking, and wandering in the halls made it almost impossible to teach. Another problem was that many of the hallwalkers would bang on the classroom doors to deliberately disrupt any learning that might possibly be taking place.

The vast majority of the remaining students at Jackson followed the rules. They attended all of their classes, did their homework, and tried to get an education under trying conditions. With so many other students misbehaving all around them, Kagan was amazed at the number of kids who did the right thing. They wanted an education and the chance for a better life than their parents had experienced.

In order to improve class attendance, the Board installed a computer system that compared homeroom attendance with classroom attendance on a daily basis. Monitors from the school’s computer center collected the homeroom attendance sheets every morning. Throughout the rest of the day, teachers used similar sheets to take classroom attendance. Monitors were sent to collect these sheets as well. At the end of the day, the computer compared the data from the homeroom sheets and the classroom sheets. If a student reported to homeroom but did not report to his classes, a “non attendance” or “cut” was recorded for each incident.

At the end of the day, an automated phone system tied into the computer dialed the phone number listed on the student’s record. A recorded voice informed the parents or guardians that the student had missed a class. It was hoped that the cuts would be discouraged due to adult knowledge of the situation.

The system was capable of making 750 phone calls every night. During the first two weeks of school, the system recorded over 15,000 cuts and was overwhelmed. Mr. Rosenberg, the teacher assigned to handle all of the school’s computers, said that the computer had become overloaded and unstable. It would take him a week to re-program the entire system.

George French had his own unique way of combating the hallwalkers. He asked a few teachers to make up worksheets for the subject that they taught. He made a sign that read “Project R.O.A.M.”, which stood for “Re-educate Our Ablest Minds”, and placed it on a lunch cart he’d borrowed from the cafeteria. Another sign read, “You won’t come to us, so we’ll come to you.” After the late bell rang, he and a couple of other teachers who were off that period went out in the first floor hallway and began to ask students which class they were cutting. If a student said “history,” they handed the student a history worksheet. They told the students that Dr. Johnson had initiated a new policy. The student had to sign their name, include their student number, and finish the assignment. Then they would have to bring it to Dr. Johnson by the end of the day. She had agreed to grade all of the papers and give credit for each class the students were cutting. At 3:00 that afternoon, Dr. Johnson was unable to leave her office because of the throng of students waiting with their worksheets. George had done this as a joke, but a few days later there were rumors that Queens District Superintendent Adam Malberg had heard about the matter and was seriously looking at funding and expanding the R.O.A.M. project.

During his first year at Jackson, Kagan tried a different approach. He used his preparation periods to patrol the third floor halls and try to get the hallwalkers to go to class or at least to leave the third floor. This allowed the teachers of the third floor to teach without outside interruptions during that period. Some of the other teachers reciprocated by patrolling the halls on their own free periods, which allowed Kagan uninterrupted teaching time as well. Within a few weeks, the third floor social studies and science areas became relatively free of hallwalkers.

Word spread throughout the school, and teachers on the first and second floors began to follow suit. When Dr. Johnson asked Kagan to be a dean, she told him that she wanted him to patrol the school full time and put him in charge of the halls.

The dean’s position was a “compensation time” job. This meant that a dean was paid a teacher’s salary, but only taught one class a day versus the typical class load of five. Kagan was supposed to patrol the halls or handle discipline problems the rest of the time. Dr. Johnson trusted him to use his time effectively.

One day, Kagan and Griffin were on patrol together and encountered two students wandering the halls. One of them saw the two deans and ran away before he could be recognized, but both deans knew the other student, who stayed behind, busted.

As Kagan approached the student, he asked, “What class are you supposed to be in now?”

Before the student could answer, Griffin asked, “Who teaches that class?”

“Who is your homeroom teacher?” Kagan barked.

As the student turned to answer Kagan’s question, Griffin demanded, “Who is your math teacher?”

Kagan and Griffin continued to ask rapid-fire questions of the boy, who began to get a dazed and confused look in his eyes. He seemed anesthetized. They had discovered a new weapon against the hallwalkers. Griffin called it “question bombing.”

When a hallwalker saw a dean who was known for question bombing, he would more often than not run away. Sometimes the student would run out of the building and would not be let back in.

Question bombing was far more stressful on the student and less stressful on the adult. This technique was found to be more effective in discouraging the hallwalkers than trying to catch them. Occasionally, a dean would give chase, but this was a pretend response because no adult could catch a high school student. One teacher, Rodney Grant, had been on the U.S. Olympic track team twenty years before and attempted to catch a kid who had stolen a girl’s bracelet. The chase started on the first floor, but by the time Grant had reached the third floor, the kid had disappeared. Grant told Kagan that his heart had not stopped racing for twenty minutes and he’d had to sit down in the teacher’s room.

Sy Morris, the school psychologist, once speculated how this technique worked. “I think that most of the hallwalkers don’t go to class because they don’t like to think. Rapid fire questioning forces them to think. They’ll do almost anything to avoid it.”

“Even actually go to class?” Kagan asked.

“Even that,” Morris smiled.

Kagan opened the door to the side office and saw that Laura James and her mother were waiting. Kagan had looked at her disciplinary file and found that Laura James would come to school every day and have her attendance taken. She would then attend some classes, skip others, eat lunch, and walk the halls. She was actually passing two subjects. According to the guidance office, Laura was an intelligent girl. She could easily pass all her subjects if she actually went to class and did some work. Kagan’s job was to get her to attend summer school so that she could make up work in the other three subjects and be promoted.

Kagan looked at Laura and guessed that part of her problem was her good looks. Pretty girls like Laura got more than her share of attention from boys. Laura looked at the school as a place for socializing and not education. Sometimes she stayed in the cafeteria for all four lunch periods. After that, she would leave the building.

Due to the newly instituted hall patrols, Laura had been picked up by security for attempting to open one of the exit doors to allow outsiders to enter the building. When questioned, Laura had responded with attitude. “I heard knocking, so I opened the door. I was being polite.”

This meeting was Laura’s last chance to settle this issue before she was suspended and sent to the Jamaica Learning Annex. Being kicked out of Andrew Jackson would pretty much guarantee that no other school would want to take her.

“Good morning, Mrs. James,” Kagan said, entering the room. “I am Mr. Kagan, one of the deans here at Andrew Jackson, and I want to thank you for coming to school today to discuss this and other matters concerning your daughter Laura.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kagan,” Mrs. James replied brusquely. She was visibly worried but also looked tense. “Mr. Kagan,” she continued, “I am so tired of being called up to school. Every time, I have to miss work and I don’t get paid.”

Kagan immediately saw his opening. He knew that his next words would be risky, but it was worth a shot.

“Laura,” Kagan said, turning to the girl, “Why do you hate your mother?”

“What do you mean?” Laura responded, outraged. “ I love my mom.”

“I don’t believe you.” Kagan looked at Mrs. James and he saw that she understood what he was trying to do.

“Mrs. James, how do you feel about having to come to school for this type of thing? How do you feel about Laura skipping all of those classes?”

“Mr. Kagan, I’m ashamed of her for doing this,” Mrs. James replied. “I’ve tried my best to get her to do right but she won’t listen to me. I work hard every day so that she has food and clothing and a place to live, and this is how she pays me back. I tell her to get educated but she won’t listen to me. This is breaking my heart.” She began to dab her eyes with a tissue.

Kagan folded his arms and gave Laura a stern look. “You have caused your mother pain and you don’t care. You would rather stay in the lunchroom all day and hang out than use the opportunity she’s providing to make your life better. I see from your file that your mom has been here before for the same problem. Deep down inside, I think you just hate your mom.”

When Laura saw her mom begin to cry, her attitude softened. Though she tried to fight it, Kagan saw a few tears in Laura’s eyes. She slowly began to weep.

“I don’t hate my mom, I love my mom.” Laura said loudly, visibly upset.

“Nonsense,” Kagan said. “Oh, I know you say you love her, but deep down inside, the only person you love or care about is Laura. Anyone who really loved their mom wouldn’t put her through this. Look at what you’re doing to her.”

Laura began to cry.

“Mrs. James,” Kagan said, “What do you want for Laura?”

“I want her to straighten up,” Mrs. James sobbed. She turned to her daughter. “Just do your work and don’t get in trouble.”

Kagan left the room, leaving the two of them to work it out. “I’m sorry, Mom,” Laura said tearfully as he softly closed the door behind him.

After a few minutes,` Kagan came back. Laura apologized to him and her mother and told them that from now on she would go to class and do her work.

“Good,” Kagan said. “Now I want to talk to your mom alone. You go to class. Here is a late pass.” Laura left and Kagan closed the door.

“Personally,” Kagan said, turning around to face Mrs. James, ”I think that in a few days Laura will be back to her old habits.”

“I do too” Mrs James said.

“She is going to have to attend summer school to make up for all of the missed work. I think that a daily report card should be used to track Laura’s progress. This will serve as a constant reminder of what she has to do. I’m going to give you enough daily report card sheets for a month. Laura will have to give one to her teachers at the beginning of each class. I will sign it at the end of each day, and she must bring it home for you to sign. I’ll need to see your signature on the previous day’s card when she comes to see me at the end of each day.

“I will explain all of this to Laura. Here is a card with my office phone number on it. I will also make sure that all of her teachers know that this is being done in case Laura decides to fill it out herself.”

John Parisi came in to the office after Mrs. James had left and asked how the meeting had gone.

“I did what I could,” Kagan said. “I put the girl on a daily conduct and grading schedule and we’ll see what happens. What’s with the Randy Brown situation?”

“Well, he brought a knife to school. Rabkin witnessed it.”

“I don’t understand this,” Kagan said. “I’ve checked this kid’s record, and he has never been in trouble before.”

“I know,” Parisi said. “But Rabkin saw the knife and he’ll testify.”

“I wonder if the kid was threatened by someone and that’s why he brought the knife?”

“Why do you give a shit?” Parisi asked. “Once you come into the school with a knife, that’s it—you’re out of here.”

“This kid is going to be sent to the Annex unless another school wants him,” Kagan said. “No other high school will take a kid who brought a weapon to school. He will probably drop out.”

“Well, that’s not our problem. Since you responded to the incident you’ll have to handle the suspense hearing as the school‘s representative. Rabkin will be our witness. You going to go with him?” Parisi asked.

“Harry lives in Brooklyn. I’ll meet him there.” Kagan turned to leave.

“Don’t come back early from the hearing, it makes the rest of us look bad. Look how stupid this is!” Parisi said, exasperated. “A kid brings a knife to school and instead getting kicked out right away, he gets a hearing. He’s allowed to hire a lawyer or better yet, the taxpayers fund legal aid so we pay for that parasite as well. The school has to pay a substitute because Rabkin is out. If you don’t get back in time to teach your fourth period class—and I already know that you won’t—the school has to pay another teacher twenty dollars to fill in for you. The hearing officers are mostly useless pieces of shit who couldn’t hack it in a classroom. They make the same money that we make to handle all of this bullshit. Most of them get their jobs because they are either giving someone at the Board a blowjob or bending over for some other type of activity. I’m being polite here.”

“What an erudite and eloquent explanation,” Kagan laughed. “This is even better than Dunbar’s shit.”

“Yeah and I don’t even have a doctorate.”

The bell rang, signaling the end of second period.

CHAPTER 6

TEACHER WORK DAYS

Today was a half day for the students but a full day for the teachers. Like most people at educational institutions dealing with throngs of teenagers, the entire staff looked forward to half days. Officially, the days were called “teacher work days”, but to the teachers, any time on the job that they did not have to deal with the kids was considered a vacation.

A half day meant that the teachers taught the first four periods out of eight and had the rest of the day to do paperwork and listen to whatever speaker the New York City Board of Education might send over to improve staff morale. At Jackson, morale was always low.

Earlier that year, all of the teachers at Jackson had attended a mandatory lecture given by Dr. Harold Massey, a motivational speaker sent by the Board to try to improve staff morale. As he neared the end of his presentation about the school systems in Spain and Germany, Edward Griffin and George French challenged him. During the question and answer period, they disputed his ideas about how teachers had to first show love to the students in order to get them to behave. No sooner would Griffin finish a question than French would ask him another one.

Other teachers started to join in. Nobody had planned it. Dr. Massey was essentially being question-bombed, the same technique used to discourage the hallwalkers. He began to get angry and threatened to quit the lecture.

John Dunbar rose and asked, “Don’t you think that it is inconsistent for you to tell us that we must love the students to get them to behave, and yet as soon as you’re challenged a little bit, you threaten to leave? Why don’t you show us how much you love us, and maybe we’ll behave!”

Massey sputtered, “I’m paid a lot of money to come here to help you improve, but if you don’t want my help that’s fine. Besides, you are all adults, not high school students.”

“You know, Dr. Massey,” Jeff Klinger said, “we don’t have the luxury of leaving the building like you do. Why don’t you come here for a month and try to teach? Let’s see if your theory of love really holds water then.”

Massey straightened his jacket and huffed, “Unfortunately, I don’t have the time.”

All of the teachers began to laugh. Dr. Johnson got up and quickly ended the lecture. As Dr. Massey left, some of the other teachers heard him say to Dr. Johnson, “Fuck ‘em if they don’t want to be helped.”

After that, the Board did not send any more speakers to Jackson.

Within the ranks, teaching is often referred to as the loneliest profession. In addition to the basic expectation of daily curriculum and instruction, Jackson’s teachers constantly struggled to maintain order, function within an extended bureaucracy, and protect themselves and innocent students from troublemakers. The one hope offered to them was representation through the teacher’s union.

Michael Romano had been elected as Jackson’s UFT chapter chair for ten consecutive years. Each school in the city had one chapter chair and depending on the size of the staff, a number of other delegates. Jackson, being a large school, had six delegates.

All of the delegates, along with each school’s chapter chair, formed the UFT delegate assembly. Decisions made by the president of the union and the executive board had to be ratified by the whole delegate assembly, which met once a month. Unlike the Teamsters and other unions, the UFT was not continually enveloped in scandal.

Romano had explained to Kagan that unions that were systematically corrupt had executive boards with great power and a lot of discretion when it came to financial matters. The general membership of those unions had little power. It was easier to corrupt and control 50 members of an executive board than it was to try to intimidate 2000 delegates. Decentralized unions had far less corruption than one could expect considering the amount of money that flowed through its coffers.

The one thing that Romano and others in the union feared was the left wing activists, who he called “the comrades.” When Romano got elected as the chapter chairman, they made up the majority of Jackson’s union delegation. They were continually re-elected as delegates because most of the other teachers did not want to run for the position. Along with like-minded delegates from other schools, “the comrades” wanted the union to take political positions on national and international issues that Romano and most other teachers felt were not the union’s principle business. The average teacher felt that the purpose of the union was to seek higher wages and better benefits, or at least preserve what they had.

Romano and George French realized that “the comrades” had gained power in the union due to the apathy of the mainstream members, and they conceived a plan to rid the Jackson delegation of its left wing members. Romano recruited conservative people, including George, to run for delegate seats. He explained to the reluctant candidates that they wouldn’t have to do anything but run for the seat. While it was true that they were supposed to attend the monthly meetings in Manhattan, there was no penalty for not attending. It took two years, but every one of “the comrades” was eventually defeated and other school chapter chairmen began to use the same strategy.

Romano convinced Kagan to run for one of those seats and he won. Romano always made sure that he introduced himself to every new teacher who was assigned to the school. He also performed informal background checks on teachers who had been assigned from other schools to see if they were good and loyal union members. Kagan had initiated the practice of having the front office give the deans a list of teachers who had called in sick for the day. The deans could then help out the few substitute teachers who were willing to come to Jackson. In any high school in America, the presence of a substitute teacher practically guaranteed a discipline nightmare for the substitute and the deans. With this new policy, one of the deans would greet the class and let the substitute and the students know that any misbehavior would earn a student an immediate five-day suspension and a parent-teacher conference.

As Kagan had expected, there were no teacher absences called in on this day. Teachers were given ten paid sick days a year. No one would use up a sick day to miss a half day.

The best thing about the half day, besides not having to deal with the students, was that the teachers got to eat a long lunch with their colleagues. Most outsiders don’t understand that teaching is one of the few professions where there is very little interaction with other adults. In some ways teaching can be a lonely job.

The half day gave Kagan a chance to eat with the fifth period lunch group. This would be a nice long lunch, not the usual rushed 45 or 50 minutes in the third floor teachers’ room, where most of them would grade tests or do other paperwork. On half days, so many teachers’ schedules coincided that the room quickly became too crowded. A small group of them had decided to meet instead in George French’s science lab on Fridays. These gatherings were a welcome distraction in a long and tedious week.

CHAPTER 7

THIRD PERIOD

Kagan was in the dean’s office going over Randy Brown’s expulsion hearing notice. Board of Education policy stated that a phone call had to be made to inform a parent of an expulsion hearing. According to recent court decisions, if a dean couldn’t reach anyone by phone, a telegram had to be sent to the home at a cost of 35 dollars. In one month, Jackson had spent over 700 dollars on telegrams.

At that moment, Kagan was shaken from his reverie by the high-pitched voice of Dr. Johnson on the loud speaker. “Mr Kagan, please go to Mr Rajneeth’s class on the third floor.”

“Oh great,” he muttered to himself. “They’re jumping again.”

The architects who had designed Jackson back in the 1930s had been influenced by the industrial efficiency movement. Frederick Winslow Taylor had begun the trend when he applied principles of science to industrial production. Legions of experts then designed factories to be efficient in terms of space, production, and time. Andrew Jackson, like most schools built during that era, looked like a factory and operated that way as well.

A factory that made cars moved a chassis along an assembly line, where parts were added one at a time, at each “station” along the way. Many American secondary schools also worked this way. Students and teachers went from one class to another based on set periods of time that were allotted for instruction. As they moved through the building from class to class, a little English was added, a little math, some science, and so on. It was hoped that after 13 or more years of public schooling, a well-educated and capable citizen would be completed.

This had been a workable system for many years, although many education reformers questioned this model. As time passed, some communities across the country completely re-designed their schools to more resemble a home. These new “learning centers” had movable furniture, and pupils were taught in small groups, so teachers and aides could work with individual students. Instructional time periods could be varied. In some suburban areas, high schools were designed to look more like open college campuses, with classrooms surrounding an open space in the center of the school.

Kagan shuddered to think of trying to patrol in a more open setting. Andrew Jackson had been designed with each of its three floors having one long hallway and another hallway that branched off from the center, so the building looked like a giant letter T. Schools that were T- or L- shaped were easy to patrol. If one stood where the hallways converged, it was possible to look in any direction and see everything that was happening. Some newer schools were shaped like rectangles. This made hall patrols more difficult because you needed at least two people to see the whole floor.

Without realizing it, the architects who had designed Jackson had created a future disciplinary nightmare when they placed one of the third floor science rooms directly above the roof of the boys’ gymnasium. Things first began to get out of control in the 1960s. Although it was a twelve-foot drop, some of the students had discovered that jumping from the third floor window and landing on the roof of the gymnasium was an entertaining activity, particularly when a substitute teacher was covering the class. Jumping in this manner earned a student status in several ways. The other students in that particular room and students in other second and third floor classrooms witnessed this act of daring. In addition, the resulting thud heard in the gymnasium was an auditory signal to the students below. They would then leave the gymnasium to get visual confirmation of the daring student.

The Board responded to this situation by installing steel-door cages around the windows of that room. Because of New York’s fire code, the steel cages had to be able to be opened in case of a fire. Locks were placed on the doors, but they were occasionally smashed off.

As he walked up to the third floor, Kagan looked at his watch. He knew that by the time he got to the classroom where the jumpers were exhibiting their prowess, the third period would end. He grabbed the lock that the custodian had given him so that he could replace the one that the students had destroyed.

Rajneeth met Kagan at the door. He was visibly agitated. “I told them to desist in this activity,” he complained, “but they refused to listen to me.”

Kagan looked down toward the gym and saw nothing. He locked the steel cage door. The jumpers had either scrambled back into the school through an open window or had decided to jump from the gymnasium roof and leave the school grounds. The bell rang and the rest of the students left the room.

CHAPTER 8

CULTURAL CAPITAL

As Kagan headed for his fourth period class, he thought of a book that he had read by Dr. Diane Ravitch, who once served as an Undersecretary of Education. One chapter examined the role of Francis Keppel in expanding the federal government’s involvement in local education. Keppel had been the United States Commissioner of Education back in the sixties before the Department of Education was made into a cabinet post.

Keppel believed that it was up to the schools to see to it that poor children did not repeat the failures and poverty of their parents. He felt that these children had as much potential for learning as the children of the middle class and the wealthy.

Some researchers, along with Keppel, believed that many poor parents did not have the knowledge necessary to teach their children how to succeed in this society, nor did they understand how society rewarded certain behaviors. The theorists called this knowledge ’cultural capital.’ Keppel believed that the only institution that could change this destiny was the schools.

Keppel testified before Congress and urged the legislators to pass the necessary laws that would ensure that each American child received the best education possible. Keppel advised that remedial aid must be given to children who lacked sufficient reading and math skills, and that this aid should be paid for by the federal government along with the local jurisdiction. Keppel’s opinions and theories formed much of the basis for the education bills during the Lyndon Johnson administration.

Kagan had been a student at Andrew Jackson during that time. Cambria Heights at that time had been a predominantly Jewish, Italian, and Irish enclave with some Hispanic and black families. It was probable that few parents in Cambria Heights had ever heard of Keppel, but most seemed to intuitively understand that education would give their children the tools needed to take advantage of the vast opportunities for upward mobility that America offered.

Kagan’s grandfather, Nachum, had come from Russia and had settled into Brooklyn, where he started a moving business and became modestly prosperous.

Nachum started out with a horse and wagon and earned enough money to transport the rest of his family from Russia to the United States. He married a fellow immigrant, Sadie, and eventually was able to purchase a Ford truck. Their house in Brownsville was one of the first to have electricity. Albert Kagan’s father, Leo, grew up working on the trucks with his father and later his two younger brothers.

Like many who faced a life of manual labor, Leo Kagan hated his job. Leo loved school and viewed it as an escape from the grim realities of his father’s life as a mover during the depression of the 1930s. At school, he could read and learn about the great books of western civilization.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, schools all over the country were dealing with the issues of how to make the children of immigrants into loyal American citizens. At the same time, the immigrants themselves were concerned with helping their children assimilate to their new culture to ensure future success. One way to teach students about the western heritage of the United States was through the great books of western civilization. These works, chosen by scholars from the leading American universities, made up what would come to be known as the Western Canon.

Albert Kagan’s grandparents hoped that their children would escape the dismal conditions and hard physical labor that they had to perform every day. They knew this could be done through education. All of the Kagan boys went to college and served in the armed forces during World War II. One of the Kagan boys mastered physics so well that he was recruited to work on the atomic bomb project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

After the war, Leo Kagan married Rose, a neighborhood girl who became a schoolteacher. Leo’s own college education had been interrupted by the war. He completed his studies under the GI Bill and became a teacher and later a principal.

The parents of Cambria Heights in the 1950s and 1960s were mostly first-generation Americans who understood that education had propelled them and their communities upward. Education would do even more for their children.

Kagan’s parents and their peers believed in the power of government to benevolently change people’s lives. Hadn’t the government under Roosevelt fixed the Depression? Hadn’t the American government finished Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo? The government had provided the means of escape from the hard lives of their immigrant parents through education. The best part about it was that in America, education was provided for every child and it was free.

During the sixties and seventies, some scholars at some of the leading universities criticized the Western Canon as being exclusionary and made up almost completely of the work of dead white European males. They argued that the Western Canon particularly excluded minority and female writers.

One reaction to this by supporters of the great works traditions was to expand the Canon to include some minority and female writers. As a result, Albert Kagan and his friends had read the works of Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, the Bronte sisters, and James Baldwin. By the time Kagan came back to teach, even this expansion of the Canon was under attack. Many left-wing scholars wished to do away with the idea of a Western Canon altogether.

When Albert Kagan had attended Jackson, the vast majority of kids went to class and did their homework. Kagan and most of his friends expected to go to college. Some students ended up at a trade school, but this option was not that common and was somewhat disparaged in the home.

Sometimes Kagan wondered how he would have reacted to Jackson if he had been unfortunate enough to go to school there in the present day. He realized that it was his own father who had kept him on a straight and narrow path as a juvenile. Whenever he or his siblings had gotten in trouble, his father had reacted in a predictably stern and physical way. So many of the Jackson students of today did not have a father or any other strong male authority figure in their lives.

On the education front, at least, Kagan hadn’t disappointed his parents. But there were other matters.

CHAPTER 9

FOURTH PERIOD

The only class that Al Kagan taught was his fourth period social studies class. Today this would be the last period that the students would be in the building. About ten minutes into the period, a girl named Juanita Torres asked for a pass to the bathroom for a “female problem.” She didn’t return until the class was nearly over. As she walked in, Kagan noticed that she looked disheveled.

“Why did it take so long?” Kagan asked. “You missed most of the class.”

The fourth period class clown, Robby MacDougal, said, “Hey Mr. Kagan, she looks like she’s been had.”

The class erupted in laughter and even Kagan found it hard to suppress his own instinct to join in. He knew that he couldn’t openly laugh at such a crude remark, true as it probably was.

Juanita’s boyfriend was a thick, muscular, and severe-looking young man. He was waiting in the hall for Juanita and had heard what tall, skinny, and hapless Robby had said. Within minutes, five other tough-looking young men congregated outside of Kagan’s room, waiting for the period to end. The sign language the boyfriend and his friends flashed to Robby through the door’s window made it clear that there would be a reckoning, and it would be a physical one.

Kagan saw this and told Robby to stay after class, but Robby replied, “Don’t worry, Mr. Kagan, my boys will find out and help me.”

A couple of moments later, Robby saw one of his friends’ faces through the window and said, “You see, I told you my boys would show up.”

However, this particular friend looked in the front window and said to Robby with obvious glee, “You gonna get your ass kicked.” Robby’s demeanor quickly changed from confidence to concern.

As the class ended, Kagan told Juanita and Robby to remain in the room for a few moments. Kagan opened the door and told the boyfriend to come in alone. He told the rest of the students in the class to leave.

After the rest of the students left, Kagan turned to the boyfriend and said, “Look, I understand that you are angry, and you have the right to be. But I’m the dean. It’s my job to see that what is about to happen does not happen. Let’s end this now. Robby, apologize to this young lady; and you better do it right.”

After Robby apologized, Kagan asked Juanita’s boyfriend, “What’s the point in you kicking his ass? We all know you can do it. Let it go. If you beat him up on or off school grounds, I’ll find out about it and I’ll have to make a police report. Let me handle this matter and I promise you that I will deal with this clown’s big mouth personally.”

The boyfriend glared at Robby to give a message. From the look on Robby’s face, the message was received. The boyfriend looked at Kagan and nodded his agreement. He and Juanita left.

“Listen to me,” Kagan said to Robby when they were out of earshot. “You’ve got a great sense of humor and you do say some funny things. Maybe you can do something with it later, but you are going to get really hurt some day if you’re not careful. All of the laughs you get won’t be worth it.” He narrowed his gaze. “If I were you, I wouldn’t say disgusting things like that to a girl anyway.”

“I promised Juanita’s boyfriend that I would handle this, and I will. You now owe me a five-page typewritten report on the Northwest Ordinance, which is what you prevented me from covering today with your nonsense. I will read your report to the class, and it better be accurate, and I expect footnotes. In your report I expect you to pay particular attention to how the legislation planned for the support of public schools. This paper is due Monday. You better not triple space between each line in order to fill up the pages like you did last time. Do that again and your mother comes up to school, along with a five-day suspension for you.”

Robby nodded his agreement. As he left the room he said, “Hey Mr. Kagan, I heard that Jack LaLanne put out an APB on you, is that true?”

Kagan’s continuous battle of the bulge was evident to everyone.

CHAPTER 10

GIRLFIGHT Sherese Goodwin was a huge girl who weighed more than three hundred pounds. Her favorite trick was to get a pass and go to the bathroom. There she would enter a stall and crouch down on a seat. When an unsuspecting girl opened the door, Sherese would envelop her like a giant amoeba and steal her money and jewelry. No girl ever complained about Sherese because this would mean a beating somewhere down the road. Every so often a female dean would search her, but by then she had given the loot to a confederate and nothing was ever found. Where Sherese’s method was entirely physical, Vanessa Miller’s was more cerebral. Vanessa kept extra combination locks that were just like the ones that the school gave to students to lock up their belongings in the gym locker room. Sometimes when an unwary girl placed her lock on a bench, Vanessa or one of her confederates would switch the lock with one of their own. The girl would unwittingly use Vanessa’s lock. Later, Vanessa or one of her gang would open up the victim’s locker and steal her valuables. They would replace the lock with the victim’s original one in an unlocked position. It was assumed that the victim hadn’t correctly locked her lock. Tough luck and too bad for her. She would have to be more careful next time. Sherese and Vanessa were rivals in crime and hated each other. Before the fourth period ended, Sherese asked for and was given a pass to go to the girls’ room. In another classroom at around the same time, Vanessa had also been granted this privilege. Sherese got to the bathroom first. She opened up the toilet stall and stood up on top of the toilet, waiting for a victim. Vanessa came in and opened that stall. Without realizing who was in front of her, but mostly due to habit, Sherese tried to engulf Vanessa. In retaliation, Vanessa grabbed Sherese’s hair, and the two girls began to fight and scream at each other. The volume of the screaming alerted everyone in the classrooms near the bathroom that this was going to be an extraordinary fight. The fight moved out of the bathroom and into the hallway. Blood began to flow and clumps of hair touched the hallway floor. Groups of students left their classrooms to watch the two girls go at it. A couple of teachers thought about trying to break it up, but they had heard what had happened to Parisi and decided not to. They were also intimidated by the fury emanating from the two girls, and neither adult was in Sherese’s weight class. As word spread to the rest of the first floor, more classrooms emptied. Nearly every student on the first floor and those in the cafeteria ran into the hall to see it. Secondary and tertiary fights broke out over the best places to view the spectacle. Some of the security guards and two of the deans heard the commotion and ran to the fight scene. As they moved toward the two girls, they tried to break up some of the smaller fights. The two policemen called for reinforcements. As other security guards left their posts to help control matters on the first floor, some other students saw the opportunity to open up the exit doors, allowing waiting intruders to enter the building. Some of the intruders began to rob and beat students they encountered. Word of the Goodwin-Miller fight spread to the second and third floors, and soon those classrooms emptied also. Dr. Johnson came out into the hallway and tried to get the students to go back to class. Parisi told her to go back in her office and announce that the school day was over and that all students should leave the building immediately. Local TV stations picked up the radio dispatch on their police scanners. By the time the police reinforcements arrived, four local television stations had already sent camera crews, which began to film some of the action. By the end of that day, the mayor, the members of the Board of Education, and nearly everyone else in the city would learn about the riot. The two girls who had gone at each other with such fury and hatred eventually tired. After that, Parisi, Griffin, and a couple of security guards carefully separated the girls. All of the men shielded their groin areas with one hand in case the two girls commenced hostilities again. Sherese and Vanessa were led to the dean’s office still yelling and screaming at each other. Gradually, the police, the security guards, and the deans restored order to the rest of the school by trying to force the rest of the students out of the building. It took about 40 minutes, but order was finally restored and the building was eventually cleared of all the students. Parisi took Vanessa into a room and began to question her about the fight. She accused Sherese of starting the fight. He tried to reach her parents on the phone but could not. In another room, Edward Griffin questioned Sherese. She accused Vanessa of starting the fight. He then called Evelyn Harris, Sherese’s mother. “I’m sorry to tell you this,” Griffin began. “We had a situation here at school that involved your daughter Sherese. Things got so serious that the police had to send for backup in order to break up the riot that your daughter and another girl caused.” “What happened?” Mrs. Harris asked, sounding concerned. “Well,” Griffin answered. “It’s just like I said. Sherese got into a fight with another girl today and. . .” “Did she win?” Mrs. Harris interrupted. After hearing about the mother’s response, the police decided to arrest both Sherese and Vanessa. Both were led out in handcuffs, still screaming and threatening each other. Expulsion hearings would eventually be scheduled and the Jamaica Learning Annex would receive two more candidates for instruction— preferably, as was noted in their files, not at the same time or on the same days. Parisi, Griffin, and school security were handling the situation. Kagan headed up to the third floor teacher’s room to eat lunch. CHAPTER 11 NO EXIT All of the teachers of the fifth period lunch group had seen most of the riot and had watched the news trucks come to the school. As the group gathered, George French crouched down and placed his chin on a table to indicate her short stature and did a dead-on impersonation of Dr. Johnson’ high-pitched voice. He went into an imaginary speech concerning the riot. “I am Dr. Johnson, the principal of Andrew Jackson High School, and I just want to assure the public and the parents of New York City that the riot they saw on television was not representative of the learning environment we have here at Andrew Jackson. These were the actions of only five or six hundred troublemakers.” The room exploded with laughter. “Where’s Harry? Has anyone seen him?” Mary Jane Sullivan, an English teacher, asked. “I think that the cops tried to arrest him,” Frank Lantz answered. “They thought he was Sherese.” “I think that Sherese even outweighs Rabkin,” Jeff Klinger said. “I saw him,” Mary Jane said. “During the riot he went to the guidance office to use the phone.” “Was he calling for help?” Marci Schreiber asked. “Probably for a pizza,” Jeff said. “Maybe he was trying to get some penicillin from a free clinic.” George said. “Why penicillin? Marci asked. “For two reasons,” George replied, “He’s probably got the clap and whatever he doesn’t use he’ll sell. It’s like currency on the street.” There was a knock on the door. A student monitor leaned in and said, “Mr. Kagan, there was a call for you from the dean at Bayside. He said you can call him at home later. His number will be with Mrs. Baker downstairs.” “Are you leaving us to go to Bayside, Al?” Sy asked. “No,” Kagan answered, looking up. “I don’t know what this is about. Probably some Lend Louse deal.” He turned to the student and said, “Thanks for the message. Tell Mrs. Baker I’ll come down and see her after lunch.” “Bayside? That’s one of the best schools in Queens,” Mary Jane said. ”Take me with you, Al.” “Sure,” Kagan responded with a laugh. “Speaking of Bayside,” George said, “I’ve been contemplating something.”

“What’s that, George?” Ed asked.

“How did all of us wind up here?”

“What do you mean?” Sy asked.

“Look at all of the shit we have to deal with every day. Look at what just happened with that fight. I mean, this is an insane place.”

“I don’t believe in pre-destination,” George continued. “But sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve this place. What if this is hell and we are all here because of our sins?”

“You think that this is hell?” Cheryl Adams asked. Cheryl, a third year science teacher, was getting her masters’ degree at Queens College at night. She was pretty with dark skin and green eyes.

“Put it this way, Cheryl,” George replied, gesturing with his fork. “There are a lot of schools in New York City and this is by far one of the worst ones. How did we all get here? Is it a coincidence or is it fate? Perhaps each and every one of us deserves to be here as punishment for something, or things, that we did.”

“So you believe that everyone here must have done something horrible,” Frank said, looking up from his newspaper.

“I believe,” George replied, “that we are in hell or some other punishment venue. Either way, this is divine retribution for our sins.”

“I didn’t know you were so religious, George,” Susan laughed.

“I’m not sure I’m getting all of this,” Sy said.

“Well,” Cheryl said, “I’m here because I got excessed from Newtown High School two years ago. I really loved Newtown.”

“What is excessed?” Marci asked.

“Excessed,” George said, perching on the edge of a desk as though he were lecturing one of his classes, “is when the enrollment in a school shifts and they have more teachers in your subject area than are needed.”

“According to the union contract,” Dunbar added, “it means that the youngest teacher with the least seniority is moved to a school where teachers with that license were needed. You and Marci are young, and untenured. Marci, you’re also an English teacher.”

“So, what does that have to do with anything?” Cheryl asked.

“English and social studies teachers,” George explained, “are always being excessed because there are so many teachers with those licenses. After all, what else can you do with a social studies or English major in the outside world? Unless you get your doctorate and teach at a college, there isn’t much you could do with a degree in those subjects outside of teaching at a public school.”

“What if you bought a house or a co-op, or have an apartment near where you work?” Cheryl asked, looking worried.

“Tough,” Sy answered.

“Anyway,” George said around a mouthful of pasta, “getting excessed is not what I meant. I think that all of us here must have screwed up in some cosmic manner. Sometimes on Sunday evenings I think about having to come here on Monday, and I think that I am a character out of Dante’s Inferno.”

“Why don’t you quit if you hate it that much?” Mary Jane Sullivan asked.

“You know that I can’t,” George responded. “I thought about it but I have a family to feed and my daughter Jane’s tuition to pay. I already put the two boys through school. Carol and I will both take sabbaticals and retire as soon as Jane graduates from Penn State.”

“Getting back to what you were talking about, what do you think that you did, George?” Jeff Klinger challenged.

“I’ve given this a bit of thought,” George said with a faraway look. He sighed heavily. “I think that I know what I did to end up at this shithole. Anyone else?”

Some of the other teachers nodded. “Hey, wanna tell our stories?” Susan suggested.

“I think that I might have a story,” Cheryl said. “A bad one.”

“I think I have one, too,” Mary Jane agreed.

George looked around the room. “You guys sure that you want to go along with this?”

Everyone looked around and nodded their agreement.

“Okay then, we will all tell our stories,” George said. “But before anyone starts, I think that there are a few ground rules we should get straight before anyone starts talking. My brother Peter is a fireman and in the firehouse there is a sign that says, ‘what you hear here stays here.’ I’ll tell my story, but everything that is said in this room, stays in this room. Does everyone agree?”

Again everyone looked around and nodded or spoke their agreement.

“Also: no interruptions, questions, or comments until the end of each story.”

“So this is like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.” Mary Jane smiled.

“In a way, I guess,” George said. “But given the subject matter, maybe it’s more like The Decameron or No Exit.” He chuckled darkly. “I’ll go first.”

“Actually,” Lantz interrupted, “If it’s all right with everyone, I’ll go first.”

CHAPTER 12

FRANK LANTZ

“Well,” Frank began, “I don’t know whether this is so bad because I didn’t actually do anything, but it’s what I almost did. I guess, in a way, what I almost did deserves some sort of convoluted punishment because I was saved from myself.”

He took a deep breath. “You guys know that a few years back, I bought a townhouse in Long Beach. I got elected to the homeowners board. Because the community was new, the seven members of the board really didn’t know each other. One night—it might have been the second or third meeting—I was sitting next to another bo