Missing the Big Picture Page 5
In late September, my mother attended the meet-the-teachers night. Someone brought up that most of classes had between twenty-six and thirty-four students, when most public schools in the area only had twenty-five students in each class. As a result, the school hired Mrs. Binda, a woman from Mexico to who would teach honors math and earth science classes, which broke each class in about half.
The only qualification that Mrs. Binda had was a college degree in clinical engineering. She had no teaching experience. Her thick accent made her difficult to understand. When I started her class, my grades soon dropped drastically. In fact, she was the first teacher who had to call my mother. Like a good and attentive parent, my mother immediately returned Mrs. Binda’s phone call—but then Mrs. Binda said she never meant to call my mother. My mother thought she had just called her in error—until, that is, Mrs. Binda left another voicemail stating that she wanted to talk to my mother. Again my mother returned the phone call, and again Mrs. Binda was adamant that she didn’t call my mother, even though we now had two voicemails from her. After having the second conversation with Mrs. Binda, the next afternoon my mother received a third voicemail from Mrs. Binda saying that she wanted to talk to her and she was upset that my mother hadn’t called her back yet. My mother never ended up calling Mrs. Binda back, and I switched math teachers.
Sophomore year, I was also required to take biology. My teacher, Mr. Patterson, was himself was a former Christian brother. He was known for his odd and eccentric behaviors. He would drive around the parking lot during his lunch break for fun. Patterson once told my biology class that he used to test drugs for Benedictine monks. He would usually go to the faculty lounge each day and say, “I am coming down from the mountain today.” Most of the teachers just appeased him and never knew what he was talking about. Mr. Patterson believed that the best teacher was one who did the least. He actually made fun of students for wanting to take notes and for being so dependent on them. He would often deviate from the assigned curriculum and make us write short essays on oceans or the Eurasian gypsy mouth—a special type of insect that wasn’t even included in most high school biology curricula.
In tenth grade, I really wanted to give Saint John’s a chance. I decided to get more involved in extracurricular activities. I wasn’t athletic at all—I was made fun of because I couldn’t do a pull-up—so I joined the speech and debate team instead. Most every Saturday, the team would meet students from different schools and have debate competitions. My main motivation was that I could meet girls, which actually made me feel like even more of a loser for having to use the debate team as my main way of trying to find a date. My mother still worked part-time at a local grocery store, Price Chopper, so the group’s faculty advisor, Mrs. Brady (also my Spanish teacher), drove me to and from the debate competitions.
I enjoyed the speech and debate team very much. It was a very positive experience because I got to meet other high school students and socialize with my classmates at Saint John’s. I wasn’t a debate person and I didn’t enjoy spending hours researching why the death penalty was wrong, so I participated in something called declamation, in which each competitor was judged on how well he or she presented the speech. In my first competition, I came in third place and won a trophy. There were only three people in the competition, but I was very proud of the award. It was like when I worked at Home Depot and won the Cashier Olympics; I was so proud that I put the Cashier Olympics accomplishment on resumes and job applications for the next three years.
During my time on the debate team, I got to go to Chicago, Boston, and other high schools in the Capital District. In the spare time we had between the competitions, I would mainly socialize with some of the girls I met. There was one girl I ended up having a crush on—Janine. I never dated her, and she thought I was weird, but I enjoyed her sense of humor. One time she broke into a chemistry lab and pretended to be Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.
Mainly I remember Janine because for years when I had to defend myself to other guys, as I hadn’t dated anybody or done anything sexually with a girl, I said we made out so that I didn’t seem like a complete prude. It worked well. There was actually a senior student who got kicked off the team after getting caught receiving oral sex in the hotel room at a debate competition, so my claim was certainly plausible. People had seen me talking to her, but she didn’t know anybody from my school well enough to have heard the rumor. It was adolescent gold.
If there was one thing that I took away from my experience on the speech and debate team, it was the quote that I referenced in the speech that I gave almost every Saturday, which was from an unknown author: “I take people as I find them, I like them for who they are, and not despise them for who they are not.” As a sixteen-year-old, I would practice this speech to make sure that I had spoken clearly, demonstrated good body language, and had good stage presence, but the meaning of the speech, and especially that quote, was as foreign to me as organic chemistry.
I turned sixteen that February. My mother told me in the weeks and months before my birthday that over the summer I would have to get a job somewhere. She told me that she worked when she was sixteen and actually had to pay rent. I wasn’t expected to pay rent, but my mother wanted me to experience what it was like to work as soon as I could, even though she had just received a promotion that increased her salary by about fourteen thousand dollars. She was promoted to a senior computer programmer/technology specialist and had the luxury of quitting her part-time job as a bagger in a grocery store.
Shortly after my sixteenth birthday, I started looking for a part-time job. Since I had gotten into that fistfight a year earlier, I had spent a lot of time at home and my mother thought it would be a good way for me to branch out, meet people, and boost my self-esteem. While I really wanted to get a job at Hannaford (a local grocery chain in Albany), mainly because the cashiers got to wear cool jackets, I ended up applying at McDonald’s and started working there in April 1999.
I would spend my days in school with students who came from financially sound families, and during the evenings and on weekends, I would spend my time working with co-workers. Some were teenagers, others were adults working for minimum wage. Some had former criminal histories or substance abuse issues, and others were just struggling, hard-working adults.
Once word got around at school that I was working at McDonald’s, I got made fun of even more. Most of my classmates didn’t have to work, so getting a job at McDonald’s was the last thing they would ever do. I was often told, “People who work at McDonald’s are the stupidest people on earth.”
Toward the end of my sophomore year, I told my mother that I wasn’t going back to Saint John’s. The school did nothing for me. I wasn’t one of those kids who had to be yelled at by a teacher an inch away from my face to do my homework. I didn’t fit in, hated the culture of arrogance, and thought that it was just a waste of time and money. At first, my mom was a little disappointed, but she agreed that paying the tuition at Saint John’s was just throwing money down the drain.
In tenth grade, I had to take three state Regents exams. In the late 1990s, the state began a push to have 100 percent of high school graduates earn Regents diplomas. One of the largest criticisms about these exams was that teachers only taught the material that was on the tests, and not broader subject matter.
From March to the end of the school year, most of my classes would just study and use the Barron’s Regents Exam Prep review books that we had to purchase at Barnes & Noble. At the end of the school year, I really didn’t care about my grades. I hated geometry, the math class I was required to take, and I started to get seventies. About six weeks before the Regents exam, we had to take a full-length practice exam. Mr. Robertson, the math teacher I had as a freshman, decided to announce all the grades in class, regardless whether the student wanted twenty-five of his classmates to hear his grade or not. I got a sixty on the practice test, and I was worried that I might fail the Regents; I had usually gotten nin
eties in math before geometry. I went to Mr. Robertson, and he gave me the opportunity to do extra credit by grading other students’ tests. I remember the morning of the Regents exam, Mr. Robertson went up to a large group of students who were hanging out in the guidance office. One by one, getting right in our faces, he asked in a very obnoxious way if we were going to pass. I was no exception. Usually I was very timid, and my face would turn bright red if anybody yelled at me or brought negative attention to me in front of a group. However, this time I was very calm and simply said to him, “Yes, I am going to pass and get an eighty-five.” Mr. Robertson was surprised and said, “Really?” Actually, I got an eighty-six.
I was so happy to leave Saint John’s. I am Catholic, and I love Jesus. Saint John’s in the 1990s was not about teaching the values of Jesus Christ or Saint John Baptist de La Salle. It was about people spending twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars (over 4 years) for a high school education that they felt their public school district couldn’t provide. Some came for discipline, others for athletics. One common thread was that everybody thought that Saint John’s was the best. In reality, the school didn’t even have qualified teachers to teach the same high school curriculum that every other high school in New York State was providing.
In college, I heard a guest speaker who talked about health care as a multidisciplinary approach. The speaker pointed out that you could have the best physicians and nurses, but if the room wasn’t clean, where was the patient going to stay? Basically, in any work environment, every person from the CEO to the custodian has an important role to play. If somebody thinks that he or he is too good to be a part of the team, that team will not be able to function. When I was at private school for two years, I was constantly being told that I was the best for attending Saint John’s and that public school students were disobedient, drug users, and juvenile delinquents. Every job I’ve had, I’ve had to work with people who went to public school. If I adopted the philosophy that was taught at Saint John’s, I probably wouldn’t have been a good employee.
After I left Saint John’s, I was curious to see what happened or what changes the school made. After the class of 2001 graduated, there was a sizeable increase from four hundred to over five hundred thirty students in 2005. Enrollment had decreased to approximately 381 students for 2011–12. 3
In 2005, the school made national news when an English teacher and mother of one of the students slept with several of her students. The teacher and a student, who was only sixteen, were found committing a sexual act in a parked car.
The teacher was separated but was still married to a successful businessman and had a history of abusing alcohol.4
The school now has, according to its website, Advanced Placement courses in English, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science, etc and even offers college credit courses from the University at Albany and Hudson Valley Community College. All of the surrounding school districts by St. John’s (Albany, North Colonie, South Colonie), also offer these types of courses. According to the current Director of Admissions, teachers now have to be certified to work at the school. This means that up until 2011, some teachers were teaching multiple subjects that they were not certified to teach. In 2010, on a flier for an open house, the school continued to boast that it had 100-percent pass rates on five Regents exams. However, some of these Regents exams were required for graduation in New York State. On the school’s website, there is no mention about SAT scores, class sizes, or how much the tuition costs. There is only one Christian brother left at the school now, according to the school’s current website. All classes, including religion, are taught by lay faculty.
I thought by enrolling in Saint John’s, my biological father would accept me. In actuality, it didn’t change anything or help me develop any type of relationship with him. The way I see it, if somebody is going to be that big of a douchebag by having a child and never attempting to make any connection with him, that is one less asshole I have to deal with in my life.
I still touch base with some of my classmates from Saint John’s. The salutatorian, who was extremely bright and one of most arrogant students in the school, ended up graduating from Cornell University Law School. The valedictorian, who as a senior led the military brigade, ended up graduating from West Point and became a paratrooper in the army. When he returned from duty, he completely covered himself in tattoos. In January 2010, after the earthquake in Haiti killed two hundred thousand people, he wrote on his Facebook page, “Haiti finally got what they deserve; only now if a hurricane could strike Florida and kill all of the Cubans.” Some of my other classmates have become Albany police officers and have had the privilege of arresting Saint John’s class members. One became a professional blogger, and a few have remained unemployed or are “writers” or “musicians.” Many of my classmates are now married, have great jobs and have beautiful children.
There were also very nice students and teachers at Saint John’s. Overall, though, I felt that the prevailing attitude of Saint John’s was arrogant and unrealistic and that many Saint John’s community members lacked compassion for anybody different from them. I wanted to include these stories in my book so that these individuals could examine their lives. Hopefully Saint John’s can one day become a school operated by Christian brothers, not just lay faculty members. It is very sad that the De La Salle Christian Brothers are close to becoming extinct. There have been many men who have lived full lives that have impacted hundreds of individuals by living as a Christian brother. I hope it can become a place where compassion and the teachings of Jesus Christ and Saint John Baptist de La Salle are not just taught, but are put into practice.
CHAPTER 3
HIGH SCHOOL, THOSE WEREN’T THE DAYS
If you a hater, I got a full-time job for you.
—Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino
As an adult, I dread waiting in a check-out line with a group of teenagers or sitting on a train or an airplane with them. Many seem very happy and laugh at nonsensical things. I’m glad that they’re happy, but most of them time I can never understand how they can think their teenage drama is as important as the situation in Afghanistan or how to fix Social Security.
Even some of my adult friends who work in grocery stores or at Starbucks tell me they remember being as obsessed as those kids are with their social lives. I tell them that I remember high school, too, although I wish I didn’t. First, I was a very awkward teen. I was a late bloomer, and I didn’t start showing any signs of puberty until I was fifteen. I was scared of girls, and I was often very shy with groups of people until I felt comfortable. The worst part of my adolescence experience was that my testicles didn’t descend and my left testicle hung lower than my right one, which was so embarrassing that I was afraid to tell my mother to make a doctor’s appointment.
During the summer of 1999, before I transferred back to public high school, I mainly worked my part-time job, forty hours a week or more, at McDonald’s. I really didn’t have any expectations of school; I was more concerned about taking AP U.S. History and AP English than meeting girls or finding a relationship or a clique of friends.
When I was at McDonald’s, I enjoyed working with Sam, who just started working there a few months after I did. I had known Sam since third grade. Sam was smart, athletic, and had a good sense of humor. He played golf and baseball and had great grades, too. He actually made the time working with all that grease bearable. We used to talk about the girls who would come in or just make fun of our co-workers or the customers. He was easy to talk to.
Just before school began that summer, I was walking home from McDonald’s and heard a car horn and someone yell, “Hey, Donovan!” It was one of the kids from Saint John’s who I remembered—and didn’t like—from the bus freshman year, so I politely yelled back, “Shut the fuck up, asshole.” A few minutes later, he stopped his car, got out, and asked me to repeat what I was yelling. I told him that he had a nice car, and then he started laughing and got back in his car. H
is name was Mike, and I absolutely hated him. Once he got back in his car, I asked if he was still going to Saint John’s or if he’d been kicked out and had to go Colonie High School, since he only lived a few streets away from me. Mike said, “No, I’m still at Saint John’s, lucky for you.” He didn’t know that I had transferred, and I felt a smile come over my face. I then told him, “You don’t know how happy I am to hear that.”
I was very nervous my first day as a junior in a new school. The way that South Colonie worked was there were two middle schools and one high school. So of the 450 students in my class, I went to middle school with half of them. The school at the time had over eighteen hundred students. This was very different from Saint John’s, with only seventy-two students in my class and four hundred students in the entire school. In fact, I wasn’t the only student in my class to depart from Saint John’s after my sophomore year. The class went from seventy-two students to graduating fifty-five.
I remember seeing some people I hadn’t seen in two years. I just wanted to go up to them and yell their names, but then I realized that would be socially inappropriate, so I just walked to my locker. Even though I was a junior, I didn’t really have any typical junior classes. I took AP English and AP U.S. History. Colonie offered biology for freshmen students, chemistry for sophomores and physics for juniors. At Saint John’s, I had to take Earth science as a freshman, biology as a sophomore, and chemistry as a junior. I was in Spanish 3, when all the other Colonie juniors were in Spanish 4. I took Spanish 1 in middle school, but Saint John’s made everyone repeat Spanish 1 as a freshman. So, for two classes, chemistry and Spanish 3, I was with sophomores.
My biggest fear going to a new school as a teenager was finding out who to eat lunch with. Most teenagers plan this out as soon as they get their schedules. I didn’t really talk to anybody at Colonie, so I just walked in the cafeteria and found a table. My nerves were eased when I saw Ray, somebody I knew from Sand Creek Middle School, who was friends with Eric. Ray was known for his short stature and his off-the-wall sense of humor. Once in seventh grade, Eric and I went to his house to hang out and I waited in his driveway while Eric went inside. I remember smelling something and wondering if I forgot to wear deodorant, so I nonchalantly smelled my armpits. A little while later Eric brought me inside and introduced me to Ray’s mom. After the introductions, he said, “We all saw you smelling your armpits.” Everybody laughed.