Death of a Teacher: Part 1

This is part 1 of chapter 24 from my memoir Teacher: Experiments in Education.  I will be 'leaking' this chapter to my blog; it will be a four part series.

Chapter 24 - Asaad

That, if I then had waked after long sleep, 
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, 

The clouds methought would open and show riches 

Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, 

I cried to dream again.

                        -The Tempest, Shakespeare

There was a rhythm to his life.  He would sing, hum, sway, create beats, and he taught his students to do the same.  His most well known chant he would do to pump his kids up before a big test was a mix of banging on desks and clapping to a beat he created a long time ago, way before he arrived at KIPP.  The kids loved it.  He would start the chant by yelling to his class, “Give me one!” his students would then drum their desks, boom boom clap boom.  He would then say, “Give me two!”  The kids would respond, boom boom clap clap boom boom clap boom.  “Give me three!”  Boom boom clap clap boom boom clap clap boom boom clap boom.  Then the kids would throw their fists up in the air and yell “Whoo!” in a rather high pitch yalp.  By the end of his first year at KIPP, all his students knew this chant.

           

Stupidly, I agreed to watch his dogs while he and his girlfriend – a parent of one of KIPP Charlotte’s students – went out of town for President’s day.  He had a large poodle and a small tepid Pomeranian that was terrified of the world; he scrambled to his crate when he saw a tiny cockroach scurry across the floor.  Knowing Mr. Asaad, I should have inquired about the dogs.  I should have asked if they were house trained in the bladder area, if they were anti-social, or if they spazzed out in their kennels and knocked over their water bowls when there was thunder outside.  But alas, I did not.  In some respects, it was similar to my mentality of getting into the teaching profession.  I was idealistic and naive, expecting the best, not thinking I had to ask anybody any probing questions to unveil the truth beneath the surface.  Sure I’ll watch your dogs for the weekend.  How much trouble could that be? 

Kendra was not home the weekend I dog sat Mr. Asaad’s dogs, and she was very fortunate not to be.  He dropped them off on Thursday and didn’t pick them up until late Saturday night.  By Friday evening, his dogs peed on my rugs so much that my rug started to look like leopard skin with all the yellow patches. The rug was so filthy that I ripped it off the floor and angrily threw it outside on the deck.  I had had it.  Not to mention that my dog Kima, who was a puppy and had recently spent month’s painstakingly becoming potty trained, started peeing in the house too, mimicking Mr. Asaad’s dogs.  I was furious.  On Saturday, I kept Mr. Asaad’s dogs in their crates, except for taking them out on walks, which I did four or five times that day since I felt guilty for crating so long.  When Mr. Asaad came to pick up the dogs on Saturday night, he asked how they were.

            “Did you see my rug on my front porch?”

            “Oh yeah, why was that there?”
            “Your dogs kept peeing on it.  They’re not really house trained, are they?”

            “Oh…I’m sorry man.  I forgot to tell you that they’re still working on that.”

            Forgot to tell me? 

            Intentionally didn’t tell me.

            I wanted to hold a grudge against my friend for failing to disclose this important tidbit of information when he first asked me to dogsit, but I could not.  Mr. Asaad was quite the charmer, always smiling and laughing, saying nice things like you got style man and your wife be so beautiful, you make such a great couple; it is hard to hate a guy like that for very long.  Plus, we were friends.  Fate put us in league, and by that point we had shared countless hours together.

            My first year at KIPP, Mr. Asaad and I were practically conjoined twins, squished together on a narrow patch of asphalt with cars rushing by us, from 4:30 to 5:15 everyday: from the early months of fall when allergies flared, to the rainy wet winters, into the scorching heat of May.  It was a metronomic relationship, a friendship designed by proximity.  For those 45 minutes, we - kings of the asphalt, the princes of the pavement - managed the parking lot dutifully.  Since KIPP Charlotte’s inception, parents were required to pick up their students at the end the school day because we couldn’t afford to bus the kids.  And according to state law we (the teachers and staff) had to run the some two hundred cars through our menial parking lot, and safely shuttle students to their parent’s vehicles.  It required careful planning; an orchestra like ensemble to pull off gracefully, and our conductor for the whole operation was Mr. Asaad.

           
I was his wingman in this parking lot enterprise, and we were quite the odd couple.  Mr. Asaad: a rhythmic fifty year old single, unrestrained Muslim, black man from Barbados, who would say just about anything to anybody, would tell knock-knock jokes to the queen of England; a man who spoke with a musical Caribbean accent; a Math teacher, inclined to singing 1950’s Motown hits while directing traffic; and – in contrast - me: a white Christian male in his mid-twenties, introverted, diplomatic – sometimes to a fault – calm and collected, an English teacher, some thirty years Mr. Asaad’s junior.  He the ying, I the yang.  He the Butch Cassidy, I the Sundance Kid.  An odd couple, paired by fate through the destiny granted us by our mutual talents in directing traffic.