The Great Expectations School Read online

  PRAISE FOR DAN BROWN'S THE GREAT EXPECTATIONS SCHOOL

  “With introspection and good humor, Brown tells a lively and often appalling story…a vivid depiction of just how hard first-year teaching and its implicit lesson that urban schools urgently need to attract and retain more thoughtful and dedicated people such as Brown.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “[Brown is] an appealing and sympathetic figure with a seemingly genuine talent for teaching… yet he finds himself in charge of a class that is always on the verge of chaos…”

  —The New York Times

  “I loved reading this book. Dan Brown has not only the teaching gene, but the writing gene. His account of a year in a tough classroom is one of the best that I have read.”

  —Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System

  “A lively and searchingly intelligent work on urban education which is also a vivid and compelling story of the highest possible political significance at this moment in our history. Parents and teachers alike will be grateful to Dan for his disarming honesty.”

  —Jonathan Kozol

  “Brown's persistence… earned him a range of experiences that allowed him to become a clear-eyed and trustworthy guide to the inescapable everyday social problems with which so many public school children live. If we want to ameliorate some of these problems we need to know what we're dealing with and acknowledge the impact of poverty on students. We also need to try to keep bright young people like Brown teaching in our public schools.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “[The Great Expectations School] is not only a great read, it's a vivid portrait of the teacher retention challenge… Each student in Dan's class becomes someone the reader cares about—they all deserve the finest teachers and those teachers deserve a system that supports them…”

  —Susan Fuhrman, President, Teachers College, Columbia University

  “Among the many first-year teaching accounts, it's one of the best. [Brown's] students sparkle with life, and his tales from the classroom shimmer with real-life stress and inspiration.”

  —NEA Today

  “In [Mr. Brown's] book, we see that good teachers are the linchpin to solid reform.”

  —Newsweek

  “Brown chronicles his first year teaching with heart, humor, and disarming candor.”

  —Scholastic Instructor

  “My favorite first-year teacher memoir.”

  —Roxanna Elden, author of See Me After Class

  “Mr. Brown has written a compelling and engaging story full of the joys, sorrows, absurdities, terrors, and treasures of becoming a teacher.”

  —on Snyder, Dean, Graduate School, Bank Street College of Education

  “Powerful and moving… Dan Brown has a story that we need to hear—and respond to.”

  —Deborah Meier, author of The Power of Their Ideas and In Schools We Trust

  “Mr. Brown's a hell of writer in his own right, and he's just published a wallopingly good book -- his first, which is difficult to believe.”

  —The Jewish Exponent

  “A compelling, scary, funny, touching look at urban education in the US.”

  —Christian Science Monitor

  “Touchingly, Brown's dedication and imagination helped save those kids—and himself.”

  —The Sacramento Bee

  “Dan Brown's heartfelt account of the thrills and frustrations of a first-year teacher grips like a novel. A must-read for anyone who has dreamed of a job that makes a difference.”

  —Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U and Generation Debt

  “A riveting human drama full of heroes and villains, humor and tragedy. Brown is an exciting new talent and his writing is so clear and suspenseful that the pages turn themselves. I couldn't put this book down.”

  —Clara Bingham, co-author of Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law

  “A compelling and illuminating journey through the American public education system… Brown's highlights the personal success-stories—the dedicated teachers, the kids overcoming massive odds—he encountered on the way. One finishes reading The Great Expectations School wishing those in charge of public education in this country spent less time administering overvalued standardized tests on students, and more on inspiring those students to truly learn. A good way to start would be listening to teachers like Dan Brown and some of his colleagues.”

  —Scott Anderson, author of Moonlight Hotel and The Man Who Tried to Save the World

  “A powerful, heart-breaking story that challenges our image of inner city schools and the children who populate them. Important and moving, The Great Expectations School grabs your attention from the first page and refuses to let go.”

  —Gilbert M. Gaul, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist

  “The Great Expectations School splashes some ice-cold reality on usual policy pabulum that comes from inside-the-Beltway.”

  —Barnett Berry, co-author of Teaching 2030 and President, Center for Teaching Quality

  “A poignant portrait painted with skill… Read it and weep—and wonder no more about the human dimensions of the achievement gap.”

  —Gene I. Maeroff, author of Building Blocks: Making

  Children Successful in the Early Years of School

  THE GREAT

  EXPECTATIONS

  SCHOOL

  THE GREAT

  EXPECTATIONS

  SCHOOL

  A Rookie Year

  in the New

  Blackboard

  Jungle

  DAN BROWN

  Foreword by RANDI WEINGARTEN

  President of the American Federation of teachers

  Copyright © 2007, 2011 by Dan Brown

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Arcade Publishing® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-61145-033-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  For my Mother, Sonandia, and Colleen

  My rescuers, in the order that I met them

  Contents

  Author's Note

  Cast of Characters

  Prologue

  June/July

  From the Floor to the Moon

  August

  What Do You Want Us to Do?

  September

  The Disharmony

  October

  Motivation into Submission

  November

  Snap

  December

  Courage Bear

  January

  The Dentist Is In

  February

  Stressed and Assessed

  March

  Mr. Brown Can Moo

  April

  Teacher Dance Party

  May

  Nothing Cannes Stop You Now

  June

  Teacher Gone Missing

/>   Teacher Found

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Author's Note

  This book shares the journey of a teacher and the life of a classroom: an intersection of youth and experience, energy and discipline, empowerment and failure. As the drafts developed, and I circulated my work to teachers from a broad scope of backgrounds and school environments, I realized that the essence of my story did not stem purely from my own idiosyncratic misadventures in the classroom. Some inner-city teachers I know only vaguely have thanked me for articulating their stories.The insights and issues, whether systemic or personal, that spring from this narrative may pull back a curtain on a sector of our society that is largely invisible. One year with class 4-217 in the Bronx's P.S. 85 can illuminate the mushrooming crisis in lower-class America and the individual specks of hope that may propel us to act, or at least to care.

  The contents of this book are based on my notes and recollections, though many names have been changed to protect privacy, and in a few circumstances real people have been merged into composite characters.

  Cast of Characters

  P.S. 85 Teachers

  (* rookie teacher)

  Kindergarten:

  Allie Bowers*

  1st grade:

  Trisha Pierson*

  Aaron Rose

  2nd grade:

  Corinne Abernathy*

  Andrea Cobb

  3rd grade:

  Elizabeth Camaraza*

  Janet Claxton

  Sarina Kuo

  Stacy Shanline

  Tim Shea*

  Carol Slocumb

  4th grade:

  Karen Adler, 4-110

  Marnie Beck, special ed

  Edith Boswell, gifted Performing Arts Class

  Dan Brown*, 4-217

  Pat Cartwright, 4-219

  Catherine Fiore, 4-210

  Melissa Mulvehill, 4-220

  Cordelia Richardson

  Wilson Tejera, bilingual

  5th grade:

  Cheryl Berkowitz, gifted Performing Arts Class

  Paul Bonn, 5-110

  Evan Krieg, 5-205

  Marc Simmons, 5-207

  Jeanne Solloway, 5-213

  Prep teachers:

  Fran Baker, literacy

  Ethel May Brick, literacy

  David de la O*, computers

  Deborah Friedberg, gym

  Adele Hafner, science

  Wendell Jaspers*, floater

  Wally Klein, librarian, union rep

  Ava Kreps, art

  Valerie Menzel, computers

  Cat Samuels*, social studies

  Jim Zweben, gym

  P.S. 85 Administrators

  Dom Beckles, Success for All coordinator

  Kendra Boyd, principal

  Barbara Chatton, new-teacher mentor

  Al Conway, math coach

  Rhonda Cooper, payroll secretary

  Len Daly, Mr. Randazzo's assistant

  Marge Foley, literacy coach

  Sonia Guiterrez, assistant principal

  Mr. Joe, security

  Helen Kirkpatrick, special ed coordinator

  Julianne Nemet, health clinic staff

  Bob Randazzo, assistant principal

  Diane Rawson, assistant principal

  Marianna Renfro, special ed coordinator (summer)

  Nurse Tina, nurse

  Dilla Zane, regional superintendent

  Class 4-217 Students

  Sonandia Azcona

  Deloris Barlow

  Cwasey Bartrum

  Asante Bell

  Seresa Bosun (enter in January)

  Joseph Castanon

  Evley Castro

  Gloria Diaz (enter in March)

  Gladys Ferraro

  Dennis Foster

  Tayshaun Jackson

  Reynaldo Luces (enter late September)

  Maimouna Lugaru

  Fausto Mason

  Julissa Marrero

  Bernard McCants

  Verdad Navarez

  Athena Page

  Lakiya Ray

  Destiny Rivera

  Edgar “Eddie” Rollins

  Eric Ruiz

  Manolo “Lito” Ruiz

  Tiffany Sanchez

  Jennifer Taylor

  Epiphany Torres (enter in January)

  Hamisi Umar

  Daniel Vasquez (enter in late September)

  Clara Velez (enter in April)

  Gladys Viña

  Marvin Winslow (enter in late September)

  Other P.S. 85 Students

  Corrina Castro-Fernandez,Visual Arts Club

  Lilibeth Garcia,Visual Arts Club

  Jihard Gaston, Mr. Rose's class

  Dequan Jones, Karen Adler's class

  Mary, Kimberly, Asonai, and Sayquan, Pat Cartwright's students

  Jimmarie Moreno-Bonilla, summer school

  Thankgod Mutemi, Janet Claxton's class

  Theo Payton, Mr. Rose's class

  Jodi West,Visual Arts Club

  Kelsie Williams, Success for All student

  New York City Teaching Fellows Staff

  Susan Atero, placement fair interviewer

  Sarah Gerson, summer advisor

  Charles Kendall, Mercy College adjunct teacher

  Liesl Nolan, Mercy College supervisor

  THE GREAT

  EXPECTATIONS

  SCHOOL

  Prologue

  Even if I had known what I was doing when I punched the chalk-board, I still wouldn't have expected my fist to crash through it. Lakiya Ray's face froze in a crazed openmouthed grin, but the rest of the class looked appropriately petrified. My eyes bulged, and I brushed sweat from my temple.

  “Mr. Brown, you wiped a little blood on your face.”

  “Thank you, Destiny.” I dabbed at the red wisps on my forehead and glared at the back wall's “Iroquois Longhouses” bulletin board, safeguarding my eyes from meeting those of any terrified children. Especially Sonandia.

  I righted Tayshaun's upended desk and sat on it, my cheeks tingling. “None of you deserve to experience fourth grade like this. Class is dismissed.”

  June/July

  From the Floor to the Moon

  I THOUGHT I HAD UNUSUAL REASONS for becoming a public school teacher in the Bronx. Nine months before my left hook to the blackboard, while I was in my final semester studying film at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, professors started encouraging outgoing seniors to drive cabs, bus tables, or do anything possible to keep alive our passion for making art once discharged from our bohemian sanctum of university life. The undergrad movie degree might not wow decent-paying employers in the gritty real world.

  Several of my film school pals planned to move to Los Angeles and become personal assistants to talent agents. Others decided not to work their first year out of school, intending to subsist on Netflix, ramen, and a word processor. I wanted to live on Manhattan's Lower East Side, which meant four figures in rent. I needed a job.

  A weird month as a clerk for the U.S. Census Bureau in the summer of 2000 taught me that office work brought on either loopiness or depression. I couldn't see myself in sales. Apparently the economy was in the drink. What do you do when you're twenty-two?

  Twenty-four hundred of New York City's teachers in 2003 were first-year New York City Teaching Fellows, members of a program initiated under ex-chancellor Harold Levy in 2000 to solve the chronic shortage of teachers in many of the city's toughest schools. Using the program model of Teach for America, the Board of Education agreed to hire college graduates with no academic background in education and quick-certify them with a three-year Transitional B Certificate. The city aimed its extensive subway ad campaign at altruistically minded career-changers. (“Take your next business trip on a yellow bus,” was one slogan.) While teaching, Fellows would be enrolled in subsidized night and summer courses for a master's degree in education.

  Encouraged by my career-teacher mom and buoyed by the idea of working
with New York City children in schools where there was a desperate need for teachers, I applied. If accepted, I had no idea what, where, or how I was going to teach, but I saw a strange allure in requesting a job that no one else would take.

  For my personal statement in the application, I wrote about my baseball fanatic dad. When I was six, he took me to my first ball game, a midsummer Phillies-Astros day game at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The heat index hit triple digits and Nolan Ryan mowed down the home-team batters, making for an uneventful 2–1 loss for our guys. Crossing the Walt Whitman Bridge on the drive home to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, I decided aloud that I did not like baseball. My father, captain of the 1970 University of Pittsburgh squad, clutched for his breast and started to veer out of our lane. A moment later, he recovered and nodded. “No problem,” he croaked. “That's okay.” Several years later, I asked if I could join Little League and he became my coach.

  The story was meant to illustrate my learned life lessons in patience, family solidarity, and unconditional support. Looking back, it's a reach. A few weeks later, though, I received a letter of acceptance.

  My film school friends looked at me as though I'd just enlisted for the war. “Maybe this'll give you good material,” my roommate said, eyeing me like a head trauma patient. Indeed, if nothing else, the coming year would at least be interesting.

  However, after four years of studying storytelling in academia, I never counted on a neighborhood of concrete in the Bronx to reveal my world's gutsiest heroes and desperately flawed shortcomers, the craziest violence and strangest surprises, the darkest failures and the most unexpected second chances. What I got was a life-altering tilt-a-whirl ride, all of it more vivid and twisted than anything I could have concocted in fiction.

  Along with over half of my fellow Fellows, I was assigned to teach in the Bronx. On the morning of Saturday, May 17, 2003, a placement fair for specific school assignments at a South Bronx high school began fifteen hours after I handed in my NYU dorm key.

  Due at the fair at 8 a.m. and psyched up about the idea of leaving college and beginning a new era, I decided to catch a midnight movie and pull an all-nighter in the Odessa Diner by Tompkins Square with some cherry pie and my notebook. Over lukewarm black coffee, I scribbled in my journal about the crooked path that had led me to this new life chapter.