Losing My Faculties: A Teacher's Story by Brendan Halpin

Author:Brendan Halpin [Halpin, Brendan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781504009690
Publisher: Open Road Distribution
Published: 2015-03-31T04:00:00+00:00

35

So while our first class is in attendance, here is what a typical day at Famous Athlete Youth Programs looks like. Devon and I arrive at eight. About half the time the building is locked up tight. Nobody from Famous Athlete Youth Programs has a key, so sometimes we’ll all be standing there—me, Devon, Sandra, Edward, the director of education, and Clinton, the executive director, waiting on the stoop in the cold for a maintenance guy to come and open the building. Sometimes a student or two will join us—usually it’s Alan, a super nice kid who does good work and seems to enjoy it.

Alan and I attack the stack of newspapers that Famous Athlete Youth Programs gets for free, and typically discuss the Celtics, who are no good this year but who have an exciting new rookie. “Paul Pierce is Nasty!” Alan says appreciatively after checking the box score almost every day.

Devon calls the houses of all the kids who aren’t there, then gets in the van and goes to get them. (This is how I know about John playing PlayStation in his underwear—Devon catches him at it more than once.)

Sometime about midmorning, Mariette rolls in. She later disappears, ostensibly to do the home visits, which are supposed to precede the kids getting services. She just barely gets to all ten kids in the four weeks we have them. The appropriate forms are filled out, but the kids never end up getting any services.

Eventually Devon and the kids return, and we have class from nine till about twelve, when Devon takes a couple of them over to a nearby elementary school to pick up the school lunch. They always give us too many. I end up eating a lot of Tater Tots.

After lunch we do a little more work, typically writing at the computers, and then we have “community meeting,” at which Devon tries to get the kids to see the error of their ways by having a conversation or showing a movie or something. One day he brings in a really nice young man who talks to the kids about how low he sank in his drug addiction—how he used to laugh at the crackheads until he became one. The entire staff notes that Jomo, one of our favorite students, has tears in his eyes during this part. The crackhead is a nice guy—we talk about Jackie Chan at lunch. This kind of thing is the most the kids ever get in the way of counseling.

On Fridays we have field trips. Sometimes we try to make them educational—science museum, aquarium, et cetera—and sometimes Devon takes them to the movies. I get to see Tarzan for free this way.

This all goes along swimmingly until one day at lunch when Ken, Jomo, and Tina all head over to Tina’s house, which is nearby and free of adults, and get baked out of their gourds. Well, at least Ken and Jomo are baked out of their gourds. They reek of weed, their eyes are bloodshot, and their eyelids look like they’re made of lead.

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