Death of a Teacher: Part 4

The gripping conclusion to the Death of a Teacher series.  Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 before Part 4.  It makes more sense that way.

Death of a Teacher:  Part 4

Since KIPP Charlotte could not afford to hire substitutes, it was burdensome for a teacher to be absent, since an absent teacher’s workload fell on co-workers.  For that reason, Mr. Asaad made it a point to be at work, sick or not.  On the rare occasions he knew he would be absent, he planned it out weeks in advance and coordinated coverage for all his classes and duties.  Which is why everyone’s feathers were ruffled when he didn’t show up to work on May 17^th, 2011, the same day his students were taking the North Carolina state high-stakes Math test.

            It was quite a big deal for Mr. Asaad to be absent, and it being the day of his end of grade test made his vacancy all the more odd.  There was no message for the office workers and no message for either of the principles.  He was M.I.A.

            Mr. Plume sent me a text message mid morning.  “I’m surprised Mr. Asaad isn’t here today.  His kids are taking the Math EOG.” 

            “Agreed.  Weird.” I replied.

            “Not weird…spooky.” he texted back.

           

            The following morning, May 18^th, he did not show up again.  No one had heard from him.  Mr. Asaad and I were good friends, to the point to where I invited him to my wedding, so I sent him a text message thinking that if he would reply to anyone on staff he would reply to me, even if he were playing hooky.  Two hours after sending the message, and I still received no response. 

            Mr. B, one of the principals, and Mr. Brown, the sixth and seventh grade science teacher, decided to leave campus during their shared planning period and go to his apartment to scope it out.  Mr. B shared their findings during a whole staff meeting at the end of the day after the kids had left.

            The staff meeting was held in my room at 5:30, and everyone promptly gathered, huddled in anticipation, awaiting some answers as to the whereabouts of our beloved coworker. 

            Mr. B began, “Today Mr. Brown and I went over to Mr. Asaad’s apartment.  The first thing we noticed was his Dodge cruiser in the parking lot.  We walked to his door, knocked, but didn’t hear any answers.  At that point we called the police and waited for a while.  They came, and knocked on the door, hoping that were Mr. Asaad inside, he would respond to them.  But nobody answered.  So the police called the landlord and the landlord came over to open the apartment.  The police went inside, and Mr. Brown and I waited at the doorway.  What they discovered…well…there’s no easy way to say this…”

            I suppose we all knew what Mr. B was going to say.  But the weight of those words, when spoke, were so heavy. 

            “Mr. Asaad passed.”

            The room went catatonic.  I heard several subtle gasps heaved from teacher’s guts; eyes coiled; legs tingled; heads bowed. 

            Mr. Asaad passed. 

            Immediately, I thought of my grandfather.  He was sitting in the back yard of my parent’s house in Louisville when he died.  He came to visit us for my brother’s graduation from medical school.  While sitting on back porch, he had a heart attack, and fell face down against the iron-grated outdoor table.  My brother was the first person to see him lying there, and he tried to revive him, but it was too late.  Did Mr. Asaad die a similar death?  Did he have a heart attack in his bedroom?  Did his poodle Kenya lick his face and try to revive him as he lie on the floor?  Was he found face up or face down? 

            All these questions.  Rushed my mind.  Then came the flood.

            We all sat together in my room – possibly seconds, possibly minutes – until someone began to cry, someone who was sitting close to me.  It was Mr. Khosravi, whose classroom was directly across the hall from Mr. Asaad’s.  Mr. Khosravi used to send kids to Mr. Asaad’s room when they were disruptive in his English class.  Now, where would he send them?

            Mr. Khosravi melted against the wall, blubbering, pushing out pain in silky tears.  He was the first to openly weep.  Then Ms. Meyers, the seventh grade Grade Level Chair began to cry too.  Her tears were soft, curdling, falling onto the fingertips of teacher’s who sat beside her, rubbing her back to comfort.  After that, the floodgate opened, and nearly all eyes were wet.  Everyone deals with loss in different ways, but even I was teary eyed; I who had been given the ‘Ice Award’ several months early for my constant poker face composure.  I lifted my glasses every minute or so to wipe away the tears before I lost it.

            I sat in silence, looking around at my co-workers, wondering when Mr. B was going to say something more.  He hadn’t really spoken since he released those painful words, Mr… Asaad… passed.  Or if he had, I hadn’t noticed.  Eventually, Mr. B was the first to leave the room.  He got up out of his seat and walked out the door, leaving all of us alone in that heavy heavy room.  Mr. B would later tell me that it was the worst meeting he ever had to conduct.

            After he left, no one else got up.  We all just sat there for a very long time, many teachers holding one another; others just sitting, staring into themselves, arms crossed, wiping there eyes every so often.  Then eventually, we all began to trickle out.  I stayed for a while, not wanting to leave, knowing that when I did, the water works would come. 

            At about 6:30, I tossed my laptop and binders into my carrying case, and walked as quickly as I could to my car.  In the parking lot, a parent spotted me.  She yelled, “Goodnight Mr. Stich!” with a smile.  Neither the students nor the parents had been notified at that point, and I didn’t want them to see the puffiness under my eyes and cause alarm.  I quickly waved back, conjured up a fake smile, and continued to my car, whereupon I flung on my sunglasses as fast as possibly could, and drove home.

            When I got home, the good cry I had anticipated came to pass.  Thankfully, Kendra wasn’t around.  I don’t like crying in front of anyone, even my wife.  However, my dog Kima was there, and she looked at me curiously, cocking her head sideways, not understanding the sounds the odd human creature was making.  Not understanding that I was crying for the guy who had indirectly taught her to piss in the house. 

            Thinking about that made me cry all the more, and laugh a little.

           

            The next day was the hardest because we, the teachers, knew we had to tell the students.  As a precautionary, the administration brought in several grief counselors.  We wanted to be ready for all varieties of mourning, to make Mr. Asaad’s passing as easy as possible on the kids.  We waited until the very end of the day, got the entire seventh grade together in Ms. Meyer’s room, and got the entire eighth grade together in my room.  It was decided that the fifth and sixth graders would be notified by mail since Mr. Asaad had not taught any of them directly.  The seventh and eighth graders, however, were Mr. Asaad’ students, and they would be hit hardest be the news.  The principals met with the seventh graders first, and when they broke the news the seventh graders didn’t believe them.  One boy even yelled out, “You’re joking, right?”

            Before long it was our turn.  Mr. B and his co-principal entered the eighth grade group meeting and solemnly told the students everything they had told the teachers the day before. 

            The room was silent. 

            In two years of teaching those same kids, I never saw them as quiet as they were that afternoon.  Much like the teachers, the kids reacted in different ways.  Some shut down, while others openly burst into tears.  Mr. Plume said to the whole group, “Some of you are going to want to cry, for others it may not hit you for several days, some of you may even laugh at first.  I just ask that we all withhold judgment.  Everyone is going to deal with this on their own time and in their own way.” 

            I was glad he said that.  Many of the kids had already experienced loss and were all too acquainted with it’s turbulence, but for others, this was the first time, and they were having trouble understanding the complex emotions involved.  I recall one particularly troublesome student name Neko reacting in a very unusual way.  This kid had been suspended at least three times for slapping students across the face for no particular reason.  He was impervious and unmoved by the school’s attempt at discipline, and seemed rather emotionless altogether.  However, I saw a new side of Neko that day.  After our group meeting, he went to the back of the classroom, and wrote a eulogy to Mr. Asaad that read:

           

            I don’t normally feel much emotion, but today I’m stricken.  I cannot believe you are gone.  You, who whipped me into shape more times than I can count, are no longer with us.  I feel I will cry when I get home. 

            When his Dad came to pick him up, Neko took the letter and thumb tacked it to the wall in the hallway.

            After a few minutes together, we broke off into smaller groups, so the kids could have some space and grieve in a more intimate environment.  I went with the all boys group across the hall to Ms. Leslie’s class.  In that room was Keyshawn, Langston and Jacory.  Their shock was transparent.  Langston sat slumped in his chair, staring aimlessly at the floor.  Jacory silently cried to himself: never weeping, but tears dripping from his eyes no less.  Keyshawn cried for a bit too, then got up from his seat and went into the bathroom.  Mr. Plume went in to check on him, and found that he had written something on the boy’s bathroom mirror with an Expo marker, “R.I.P Mr. Asaad.” 

            Other kids from other classrooms followed Keshawn’s lead and took Expo markers and wrote Mr. Asaadisms and little notes to him all over the modular unit on white boards, bathroom stalls, and windows, to the point where nearly all the glossy surfaces had something written on it.  The phrase that appeared most: What’s your major malfunction?

            Back in the boys group, we sat soundlessly for a while, until I broke the silence by suggesting we do something constructive with our grief.  I asked the guys to share stories about Mr. Asaad. 

            Kahari was the first to speak up, “Once, last year in Math class, I was failing at the end of first quarter.  Mr. Asaad pulled me aside after class, told me I could do better, told me that he was disappointed in me.  He said it would be one thing if I had tried my hardest and gotten that grade, but he said he could tell I didn’t.  I was settling.  From then on, I tried harder, and he really pushed me.  I ended up with a much better grade because of that.”

            Then another boy named Tony spoke up, “You know, I know this is sad, and we’re all not feeling good right now because we’re missing Mr. Asaad.  But I don’t think we should be really sad about him.  I mean, I don’t think Mr. Asaad would want that.  He would want us to be happy, kind of celebrate his life and move on.  So we should be kind of happy.”

            Just then, one of the boys yelled, “Give me one!” and in unison, the rest of them banged their desks, boom boom clap boom. 

            “Give me two!” 

            The kids responded, 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 boys threw their fists up in the air and yelled “Whoo!”  It was a cinematic moment, something that – dare I say – seemed to come straight out of a Hollywood movie about an inner-city teacher who made a tremendous impact on this lives of his students.

           

            A week later, after students, parents, and school stakeholders had been informed of Mr. Asaad’s abrupt death, we held a memorial service after school in his honor; the purpose being to celebrate his life and dedication to the field of teaching.  Mr. Asaad’s family had flown in from Barbados and bumped back their flights to depart on Friday so they could attend the Thursday evening memorial.  Before the service began, an African-American woman who looked vaguely familiar approached me.  She was dressed in all white, had a hoop nose ring, and a pearl colored cloth wrapped around her hair.  She was Mr. Asaad’s fiancé.  She handed me an envelope.  I thanked her for whatever it was and expressed condolences for her loss.  She said, “It happened so suddenly.  Thank you.” and she walked away smiling.

            I was curious to see what was inside, but I waited until after the ceremony.  On the way home, while stopped at a stoplight, I opened it.  Inside was a picture of Mr. Asaad: his head shaved, dressed in karate uniform, posing for the camera.  The back of the photograph read:

            Stich!  You were his best friend.  The only one he had at that place.

            I had no idea I was his best friend.   

           

            A month after his passing, I had a dream where I was sitting in a large, orange and yellow cafeteria.  It was filled with people.  I sat down to eat, and I saw Mr. Asaad a few seats down from me, talking with people I had never seen before.  When he saw me, he turned and smiled his great white smile.  I told him that he had everyone fooled, because everyone in Charlotte thought he was dead.  He laughed.  It was his plan all along, to fake his death to miss the last week of school.  We both thought that was pretty funny. 

            Then I woke up.

 

Death of a Teacher: Part 2

This is a series, so if you haven't read Death of a Teacher: Part 1, read it first.  Otherwise you may think of my friend as a womanizer.  He did like woman, which is why I included this part of his life in the chapter; but he was also a very complex man.  

I hope think look into his life captures who he really was.  As a teacher and as a human.

Death of a Teacher: Part 2

In the parking lot, my job was to call the names of students as I saw their parent’s cars approach, radio those names into the grand room, and move the cars along through the pick up line.  Mr. Asaad’s primary job, as far as I could tell, was to flirt with student’s mothers; however, he sometimes used his trafficking skills – the skills he garnered working as a cop in Phoenix - to allocate the cars into two separate pickup lines that would wrap around the parking lot, making the pick up go twice as fast as in years prior.  With minimal effort and master skill, he kept traffic moving, save for the times an admiring mother would stop and bat eyes at him, giving him batches of cupcakes and cookies that they “just happened to have” in the car, still neatly wrapped in plastic.

            That was our beat.  And like two cops assigned to a squad car together, we got to know each other by sheer proximity.

            Each day, with nothing to do besides chat between the strands of cars piddling by, Mr. Asaad and I learned more and more about one another: each other’s families, each other’s hobbies, each other’s favorite brands of vodka, etcetera.  There were never silences between conversations since Mr. Asaad was the perpetual banterer, never pausing to catch his breath nor think about the words that came out of his mouth.

            We usually talked about anthropological topics, since both of us spent a chunk of our educational careers teaching in foreign countries.  For instance, he told me how in Barbados teacher’s still use corporal punishment.  I in turn explained to him that Taiwanese public schools do not have janitors; the students clean the facilities daily.  By years end, I learned a fair amount about the educational field in Barbados, and he in turn learned a fair amount about Taiwan, and we both learned how vastly different Barbados and Taiwanese student’s are from their American counterparts.  The work ethic is unfortunately not comparable. 

            We also wratched jawed about Mr. Asaad’s past in the United States army.

            One day, we were standing out in the parking lot, drowning in the heat.  It took me a matter of minutes to sweat through my underwear, and I glanced back at Mr. Asaad, dressed in a black button down short sleeve shirt and thick black slacks, the antithesis of temperature appropriate clothing.  He was barely perspiring, and compared to me, where a sixth great lake was forming at my feet from all the sweat run off, he looked like he was standing in his own little air conditioned atmosphere.

            “Aren’t you hot in that?”  I asked, wiping the perspiration from my brow with my tie.

            “No way man.  I love this.”  He lifted his arms and face to the sun, soaking it all in.  “This is Barbados weather.  I wish it were like this all year round.”

            “Why did you move here, to the States?”  I asked.

            “I knew I wanted to live here, get out of Barbados, not for the weather, but for the opportunity.  A lot of people in Barbados can’t move up.  There stuck in whatever socio-economic class they’re in.  So I jumped ship to America and joined the army.  I fought in the Middle East during desert storm, and after that was over I moved to New York.”

            I nodded, “That makes sense.  I bet you saw some crazy stuff in Iraq.” 

            “Man, some of the things I’ve seen, these kids they don’t even want to know.  These kids think they have it rough?  Take them on one trip to Iraq and they be second guessing their second guesses.”

           

            Mr. Asaad had an effervescent way of speaking that was like the way Bobby Fischer handled a chessboard: with charm and ease that comes from years of practice.  Mr. Asaad would lasso words and phrases together, making a limerick, a rhyme, or a pun out of nearly everything he said.  I heard him say the most poetic yet inappropriate things to students; things that would undoubtedly get my ass fired, but he was somehow able to pull off.

            “You needs to grab a hold of life before life grabs a hold of you boy!” 

            “What’s your major malfunction son?  You got rocks in your brain or rocks in your stomach?  Either way, something slowing you down.”

            “You better shape up or ship out, because I’m comin’ after you.”

            “You got something to say you better say it now cause’ your mouth will be swollen shut when I’m done wit’ you.”

            “Shut it down!”

            “If you don’t pull it together you leave me no choice but to slap the black off you.”

            One afternoon on a day when Jacory, a pencil thin kid who had the mouth of Chris Rock, was obnoxiously foolhardy in all his classes, Mr. Asaad forced him stand outside on the hot asphalt, baking in the Charlotte heat until his Mom picked him up.  I have heard of prisoners in jail receiving similar punishments. 

            “Boy, you don’t stop being silly you leave me no choice but to slap you silly.” he told the young man.  Just as Mr. Asaad was saying this, Jacory’s Mom rolled into the pick up line.  She undoubtedly heard everything Mr. Asaad had just said.  And since she was obviously in earshot, I assumed a lawsuit was in KIPP Charlotte’s future.  Jacory, however, got in his mother’s SUV, and Jacory’s mother drove off, smiling and waving to Mr. Asaad as if Mr. Asaad had done her a favor by doing something she would have done herself.

            “Mr. Asaad.” I said, “I’m pretty sure his Mom heard that.”

            “Oh it don’t matter.  I know that boy’s Mom.  She said that I could slap him upside the head if he don’t get his act together.”

            I didn’t question it.  Mr. Asaad did know kids Moms, sometimes a little too well.  There were moments I thought he had only volunteered to work the parking lot beat for the chance to coquet.  As certain single parents drove up, he would motion for them to pull off into the grass, and then he would saunter up to their cars, lean in on the open window, tilt his glasses on the rim of his nose, and say in a slow soft voice, “How you doin’ today?”  Since a lot of the kid’s parents were single mothers, they seemed flattered, especially since Mr. Asaad was very fit and rather handsome for a fifty-year-old. 

            Once, a fifth grader’s Mom was coming to coming to school for an afternoon parent teacher conference.  She drove past us and parked her car.  As she opened the driver’s side door and stepped out, the struts screeched, and the car lifted two inches from it’s former resting place.  This woman was a healthy 250 pounds.  Mr. Asaad stared at her, even cocked his head down and to the side, making it obvious he was staring at her ass.  Then he looked over at me and said, “You see that there,” pointing at the Mom, “that’s my ideal woman in bed.  Totally my kind of woman.”

            I was bemused.  I didn’t want to prolong this conversation, since making sexual references about our student’s parents seemed precipitously unprofessional to me.  But I had to add, “She would crush you.”

            His response was, “Oh yeah she would.”  He smiled as he said it, then eyeballed her leg fat juggle as she wobbled into school.

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.

Chapter From My Upcoming Book

Hey world. I have been MIA for a while, because I've been working on a book about my experiences in the world of inner-city school teacher. Here's a chapter from the book: free! Let me know what you think.

-AJ.

Marquavius (Mar-kwave-e-ous)

"I want to take that kid and punt him."
-My English Department Chair

This is an actual conversation I had with Marquavius in the parking lot, while oodles of parents were driving past us, picking their kids up at the end of the day. Marquavius was with me because he was in trouble; this was quite normal, one might even say bi-monthly normal. He was always sent to shadow me when he got in trouble, which always seemed like a silly punishment to me, since he liked me, and his "punishment" (so to speak) seemed to only encourage his bad behavior, rather than curve it.
Marquavius' thought pattern, 'If I get in trouble, I hang out with Mr. Stich. I enjoy the company of Mr. Stich. Hence, I should get in trouble!' Nonetheless, once again, Marquavius was shadowing me. We were standing in the parking lot, baking in the Charlotte spring time heat, and he was rattling his mouth, as usual. As soon as the one-sided conversation started, I quickly was entertained by the ridiculousness of it, and so, like any good writer, I whipped out my pocket notepad (I'm oldschool) and started writing what Marquavius was saying, word for word.

Marquavius: Mr. Stich, were you born with six fingers?
Me: No.
Marquavius: Some babies when they're born have a little finger at the bottom of the their hand right here.
He pointed to the place on his hand after the pinky.
Marquavius: It's a knub. It's like a fish nimble. Just so little...
Pause.
Marquavius: Mr Stich, how old are you?
Me: 26.
Marquavius: Ah!
He yelled for a solid three seconds.
Marquavius: You never told me you were 26! Why haven't you told me that?
Marquavius touches my shoulder.
Me: Get out of my bubble.
I endearingly call my personal space "my bubble" because some children have zero concept of such a thing as personal space, and I like to have a kid-friendly way of saying, "get the heck away from me."
Marquavius: What bubble?
Me: My personal space.
Most students, that is any other oxygen-breathing-student-on-this-planet, besides Marquavius, at this point would back off, or, at the very least, apologize for invading my personal terf. Kids are generally very polite creatures when directed appropriately. Marquavius, on the other hand, was a different beast entirely.
Marquavius: I'm going to pop your bubble!
Marquavius said this, then he proceeded to prance around me miming poking holes in my invisible bubble.
Marquavius: Ha! I poked it. It's swiss cheese now.
He lifted his index finger in the air as his eyebrows raised in sync with this move.
Marquavius: Ha! That gives me an idea. Since you're swiss cheese, I'm going to eat you!
You can't make up this stuff.
Mind you, there is a half mile long line of parents picking up their kids while Marquavius is doing all this in the middle of parking log. He's running circles around me, poking at the air, then gobbling the air up like a sandwich, all part of his imaginary game. Each parent who drove by Marquavius and I standing there, empathetically shook their head at me; their eyes were saying, "Why does that poor teacher have to babysit that fool of a child?" There's a very definite reason for that.
Eventually his Mother picked him up. Thirty minutes late. His grandmother, a woman probably in her fifties, drove the van and Mom, who looks quite young, rode in the backseat. A lot of my students parents were young: Marquavius' mother was no different. More likely than not, she had Marquavius in her teens, and, along with Grandma's help, raised him up as best as she could. Whether or not they succeeded in raising him, well...the jury is still out on that one.
When she pulled the car up, I motioned for her to roll down the window. I leaned in, and I told his mom what Marquavius had asked me to tell her; that he was well behaved in my class that day (which he was) because it was his Grandpa's birthday. He wanted to make Grandpa proud. She seemed happy. Then she asked why he was sent to my room in the first place. Did he threaten a student again? Did he refuse to do his classwork? Was he yelling and hitting his head in the corner again? No, Ms. Marquavius. Not this time. This time Marquavius was sent to my room because he told his female special ed teacher to suck his balls. Classic Marquavius. She shook her head in disgust and smirked a little. There was no sense in yelling at the kid, since that had already been done several times over. It would be beating an already dead and bludgeoned horse. Instead, she looked at her son and said, "Why would you do that?" She didn't even raise her voice when she said it. She looked back at me and apologized, thanked me for watching him, again.
It was no problem mam. For whatever reason, your son and I get along, and besides carving muscly anime book characters into my desks, he's harmless in my class.
She rolled up the window, shook her head some more to herself, and she, Grandma, Marquavius drove off into the sunset. I stood in the parking lot for a moment, lingering, wondering how long it will be until Marquavius was again sent to my class for suspension.

The Following Day: Mr. P, the fifth grade grade level chair, escorts Marquavius into my classroom at nine in the morning.
"Can Marquavius stay with you again today Mr. Stich?" Mr. P asks me.
I look at Marquavius, gently tucked under Mr. P's arm. Mr. P holds him firmly too since Marquavius could run at any moment. He's a runner when he wants to be. Marquavius' two inch thick bifocal looking glasses are sagging down his nose, he's scowling, and his mouth looks like he's sucking on a handful of sour-patch kids.
I look over at Ms. Meyers, whom I shared a room with at the time, typing away at her computer.
"You want this kid in our class all day?" I ask her.
Without looking up from her computer, she politely shrugs her shoulder as to say, "Fuck no I don't want him in here all day. But my wants don't matter. He will be with us regardless because he's always with us regardless."
Ms. Meyers was right. All we can ever do is shrug our shoulders when he comes around. Marquavius would be with us. He was always with us: sitting in the back of our classroom, in what our charter school generously calls "detention", playing with his fingers as if they were action figures, and etching Dragon Ball Z characters in his desk.

My odd-ball relationship with Marquavius started with a kung-fu movie, as to be expected. In fact, any interest Marquavius has in life in one way or another connects to kung-fu. Although not a student of martial arts himself, he is obsessed with it. If you have the pleasure of running into the kid and having a conversation with him, you will, not matter how you intend to steer the talk, end up listening to a very descriptive narrative about an action sequence in a Bruce Lee movie. It's inevitable. Don't fight it. A conversation with Marquavius is a proverbial quicksand; the more you twist and turn, futilely attempt to talk about something other than martial-arts, the faster you sink into the unavoidable.
That is why Marquavius likes me. On one fateful Saturday, he signed up for my film club class. That was the very Saturday where I decided to show the movie Kung-Fu Kingsbury, the parody kung-fu movie I had made with my film production class in Memphis. The lights went out, the dramatic trumpets blared during the title sequence, and Marquavius was hooked. The television screen reflected off his thick glasses as he sat starry eyed watching every fastmotion chop, kick, and elbow drop. When the lights came back on, I had a new best friend.

That friendship became a real asset around school. As fifth grade teachers caught wind of Marquavius' willingness to do anything I said, I quickly became the go-to-guy for all issues that came up with him. And there was no shortage of those. On one occasion when I was late to school, the powers at be put Marquavius in the hands of Ms. Aseen. Mr. Aseen - an athletically built black man, former desert storm soldier, former Phoenix police officer, and current jujutsu master — could easily maneuver through warzones and urban gang-slums; however, he met his match with Marquavius. When I entered the lunch room, I walked in the middle of a shouting match between the two. Mr. Aseen and Marquavius both fuming, both screaming, both of their brows furrowed in disgust. I quickly stepped in, and used my jedi-master powers to separate Marquavius from him. I made Marquavius sit down at a nearby table, and then I pulled Mr. Aseen aside and asked him if he wouldn't mind if I took Marquavius off his hands for the rest of the day.
"Would I mind?" Mr. Aseen gasped. He continued under hushed tones, "You can take that little shit away from me, because if you don't I may end up slapping the black off of him."
Another time, I saw Mr. P yelling at Marquavius at the end of a school day. We had this thing at KIPP Charlotte where we made students "track the wall". Essentially, it was a polite way of saying, "go put on your dunce cap on and sit in the corner staring at the wall." Although I didn't personally agree with the practice, I reluctantly used it on several occasions because it was one of the behavioral management systems engrained within the school culture. That is to say, the kids responded to it. Marquavius, on the other hand, wasn't. Mr. P was yelling at the child because he was supposed to be tracking the wall, but menacingly refused to do so. Mr. P was railing into the kid, yelling in every tone imaginable to get him to track the wall, but it just wasn't happening. Time for an intervention.
I again entered the scene, and used my powers of the force to separate Marquavius from Mr. P. I took Mr. P aside and said, "Look, I don't understand it because Marquavius is the most anti-subservient kid I've ever met, but he listens to me. I'll handle him if that's ok with you."
"Sure." Mr. P smiled. We then walked over to Marquavius.
"Marquavius, can you come with me and tell me what happened?" I asked.
With that sour patch look on his face, and arms folded across his chest, he said, "Mr. Stich, Mr. P was just sitting here yelling at me! I wasn't doing anything, just sitting here, and he starts yelling at me!"
"Alright," I replied, "you can tell me all about it. Come on, lets go."
Just then Mr. P, as to give the appearance of control, said, "Marquavius, you go with Mr. Stich. And you're lucky he walked in on this conversation, because you wouldn't have liked how this would have ended otherwise."
Mr. P winked at me and whispered, "Nice good cop bad cop routine," as I walked Marquavius out of the gym.
I took him to my classroom, where he, as usual, began to run his fingers along his desk, action figure style, and etch caricatures of Dragon Ball Z people into my desk. All in a days work.

He's maybe four feet tall, has the squat features of Gary Coleman, and has the thickest glasses I've ever seen a child wear, easily a solid three quarters of an inch. And when he gets mad, those glasses scurry down his snoot until they reach the precipice, where they come to a screeching halt like road runner to a cliffs edge. Usually, Marquavius' arms are crossed because he's pouting. About the teachers. About other students making fun of him. About the low grade he scored on a test. About just about anything. He is a very talented pouter.
Along with his sulky disposition, Marquavius is one of the worst students I've come across. He had already failed the fifth grade once, and when I last checked in with him, was well on his way to failing it a second time. His grades and test scores were generally horrendous. And it goes without saying that he was a special ed student, although that did little to help him. His special ed teacher, who worked with him in a one on one setting, could hardly handle his constant pouting. For that matter, nearly every teacher and student in the school could not stand him. His vehemence with other classmates ran so deep that one time he reportedly told another student that he was going to cut his arm off with an axe. An Axe!
Similarly, his personality is palpably polarizing: you either love it, or you hate it. Most hated it, but for whatever reason, God Almighty, in all His wisdom, designed me to find his personality wholly charming. Nearly every thing the kid does, I see the comic value for. This is quite odd for me, since I'm not one to laugh with or cajole students. Normally I'm pretty straight faced at school, even-keeled, mellow-yellow. Interacting with teachers, you often hear them tell stories about a student saying something or doing something in class that makes the teacher laugh our loud in front of everyone. Not so with me. I have heard and seen students do some pretty dumb shit in my class, but I've always managed to keep a pretty good poker-face. Marquavius, however, is the one student who is able to make me crack. For instance, he was, as usual, in "detention" in the back of my class one day, and I was teaching my seventh graders about irony exemplified in a book we just read. Students were raising their hands pointing out ironic anecdotes from the story. Three or so students shared, and then I saw Marquavius' hand pop up. Being that a student in detention is supposed to be isolated and under no circumstances allowed to participate in a lesson, I was about to tell Marquavius to put his hand down. He couldn't participate. He was in "detention". Nonetheless, his winsome mien was too much to resist. His hand was stretched so high. His eyes were wide open, his head flushed back, his hand twitching as he grunted "ohs" and "ahs" in an effort to get called on. This sort of thing broke me down. I knew I shouldn't call on him, but I did.
"Yes Marquavius?" The whole class turned and looked at him. He has this certain look that he gives where he looks like he's entered an ancient coliseum and is admiringly taking it all in. He gave the class that look, then went into his comment.
"I have a connection to make." A connection is when a student can connect something they're learning in school to something else, like another subject, a television program or movie they've seen, things like that. It's a way we teach kids to think synthetically. However, Marquavius had a history of making connections that were completely unintelligible. To Marquavius, all roads lead to Mecca. That is to say, any connection he makes in class leads back to one thing: martial-arts, in various forms and fashions.
"What's your connection Marquavius." I threw him a fucking fastball right down the plate, in front off all these seventh graders too. It was wrong of me.
"Well, I think that connects to this time I watched a Dragon Ball Z show on cartoon network. Goku was transforming into a super saiyan, and fighting this one guy, and they were crashing back and forth into outer space. Bam! Boom!" He made his two little hands smash into one another as to dramatize the sounds effects he was making. "Crash! They just kept fighting and fighting. And that to me is like what we're talking about. Umm..." he put a finger to his mouth and tapped his chin, "what was it again that you were talking about?"
"Irony." I managed to say with just a tiny smirk cracking my lips.
"Yeah! That's it! Irony. That to me is just like irony." He smiled at himself, satisfied with the connection he had just made.
A silent moment hung in the air. The entire class looked at me to see what I was going to do. They gave me a look that said, "If you laugh, we're really going to laugh." I knew that look, and I did everything in my power to hold it in. I bit my lip, thought the most sobering thought I could imagine (my grandmother making love to my grandfather), but no amount of restraint worked. In the most hilarious way, what Marquavius said didn't make any fucking sense, and I couldn't help but laugh. In turn, the entire class laughed with me.
Marquavius lowered his head to his desk in shame. It's one thing to see a lame child who always gets picked on get picked on, because that happens regularly. We're desensitized to that kind of pity. Yet, when a bully, a total-say-whatever-I-want-whenever-the-hell-I-want-to kid gets picked on, my heart goes out. I know he deserves it, as much pain and suffering as he emotionally delivers to others, he deserves a good kick in the crotch every now and then. Yet, it was very sad to see such a spirit as his crushed.
Guiltily, I stepped in and, in an attempt to lift him up, lauded his brave attempt to make connections. It was bullshit, but I had to save him some face. After all, Marquavius, as the Gods had destined, was my buddy. So I complimented his valor in front of everyone and that he seemed to perk him up a bit. Battle haphazardly won by Mr. Stich.

I cannot make sense of my relationship with Marquavius. Like George and Lennie from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, it has that terribly wonderful sense 'je ne sais quoi', that x factor bond that makes what shouldn't be be.
From my experience, it seems that every teacher everywhere has their own Marquavius. My friend Karl, a Spanish teacher at Kingsbury had Raymond, who we endearingly made a Nintendo Wii character of. Mr. Plum, the KIPP Charlotte Math teacher, had Xavier, who was suspended on multiple occasions for texting pictures of girls breasts to other students. My wife, a former Kindergarten teacher, had Kentavius, who once brought in a living animal into her classroom from recess. Every teacher has their own Marquavius - a child that is such a pain in the ass, a child that reeks Godzilla like havoc on the rest of the school school, a child that is disproportionally aggressive, moronic, weird looking, smelly, and devoid of human emotions. Likewise, every teacher has their own Marquavius - a child, for reasons unknown to all but God, that that teacher, and only that teacher, cherishes — kung-fu dialogues and all.

The very last conversation I had with Marquavius before we parted paths, was a memorable one. It was at the end of the last day of school. We had entered the part of the day where we started silent dismissal. My end of school duty was to supervise the parking lot, and I was walking towards the exit when I saw a hand shoot up amongst the otherwise focused and studious crowd. It was Marquavius'. Teachers were not allowed to answer questions during silent dismissal, but how could I resist. On my way out, I stopped by to see what he wanted. He had a huge smile on his face.
"Mr. Stich!" He said in a very loud whisper.
"Sh..."
"Sorry. But I'm excited! I have something to show you." He reached into his backpack, pulled out an envelope addressed to his mother, and handed it to me.
"This envelope was addressed to your Mom. It's from the school. Why did you open it?" I asked. It was a pointless question. Logic and human decency were all but lost on him.
"Open it." He said beaming.
I lifted the already broken seal and took out the paper. It was his scores from the North Carolina state examination.
"Read, read!" he implored.
I scanned the letter and came to the section that detailed his test scores. He didn't pass a single one.
I looked at him questionably.
He was smiling.
I looked at the test scores again to make sure my eyes were seeing straight.
Then I looked back up at Marquavius. Why was he smiling?
"Marquavius, you realize you didn't pass, right?" It was a harsh question, but by the look on his face, it didn't seem to be registering with him, and I wanted to make sure he understood what the scores actually meant.
"I know." He replied.
"Why are you so happy then?" Forgive my frankness.
"Didn't you see my scores? Last year when I took the fifth grade test, I got much lower. This year I improved by two points!" His smile got bigger. He was so damn proud of himself.
I gave him a fist pound, put the letter back in the envelope, and reminded him to give it to his mother when he got home. He assured me he would.
I couldn't help but smile as I walked away from him that day.