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 3

Part 3 of a four part series.  If you haven't read Part 1 or Part 2 yet, here are the links.

This is a true story about a unconventional teacher who left us too early.  R.I.P Mr. Asaad.

Death of a Teacher: Part 3

Mr. Asaad’s unconventionality was not limited to parking lot duty; it spilled over into his classroom methods.

            In May of 2009 I flew to Charlotte to do a sample lesson and interview for the job at KIPP.  On that same day, Mr. Asaad flew to Charlotte from New York City with the same purpose.  As part of our interview, we had to observe each other teach, and formally assess one another’s pedagological methods.  I sat at the back of the room to observe his Math instruction, and from the minute he started to the minute he ended, he was badass.

            He taught a simple lesson on multiplying complex fractions, and he explained the steps so effortlessly and transparently that even the dumbest kid in the class understood how to do it.  After his mini-lesson and after working through a couple examples, he said to the class, “Now it’s your turn.”

            He wrote a problem on the board, then whipped around facing the kids.  He peered across the room, making eye contact with each and every student.  He slowly began to meander through the rows of desks, looking for his victim.  Finally, he stopped, and stood over to a girl with pigtails.  He swiped his open palm over her head like a preacher giving a blessing. 

            “Stand up.” He told the girl.

            He then asked the class, “Ok, I’m looking at this girl – what’s your name girl?”

            “Alexus.” She replied.

            “I’m looking at Alexus, and you know what I’m thinking?  I’m thinking that Alexus…she got this.  What do you all think?” he asked the rest of the class.  They nodded their heads in agreement, mesmerized by his pizzazz.  He then handed Alexus an Expo marker and asked her to approach the white board and solve the equation, which she did successfully.

            He smiled, “That’s good.  Very good.  In fact, I think that’s,” and here he broke into song, “Redddd hotttt, that girl is redddd hotttt, that girl is R-E-D, red, H-O-T, hot, once she starts she can’t be stopped.” he sang, clapped his hands, and bobbed with the rhythm. 

            Once he had finished the chant, he stared at the class, and said, “What is this girl?”  And he sang his little song again, this time the class chimed in as each student learned the words, “That girl is redddd hotttt, that girl is R-E-D, red, H-O-T, hot, once she starts she can’t be stopped.”  By the third time, everyone joined in.

            Then the song ended, and he approached the board and wrote another equation.           

            “Now, who wants to give this one a try?”

            All hands in the room shot up like bottle rockets; each student competing for the chance to be redddd hotttt.

            Unconventional, but totally talented.

            A karate-chop to the gut, then a thumb-twist hurling the victim sideways, followed by a forearm block, and top it off with an elbow strike to the incisors.  On more than a dozen occasions, I watched Mr. Asaad inflict this type punishment on KIPP Charlotte students.  He was a black belt, and he told me at least fifty times what brand of martial arts he mastered, but I could never remember exactly which type it was.  What I do remember, however, is keeping a running tab of his potential lawsuit bill as I saw him assault kid after kid. 

            Oh, Mr. Asaad just air chopped Jacory?  That’s a couple thousand. 

            A hammer fist to Tyler’s jugular for incorrectly answering a math question?  Another thousand and a half. 

            The roundhouse kick to Keshean’s shoulder?  That one did some damage.  Maybe three and a quarter? 

            A four knuckle strike to Langston’s forehead?  Langston had that coming; plus, Langston’s Mom, if anything, would thank Mr. Asaad for whipping her boy into shape.  He might actually make a buck or two back on that one. 

            He whacked kids, put them in headlocks, twisted their noses, and everything in between, but he never ever hurt them.  It was a ploy, like a puppy play fighting.  His physicality added life and toughness to a profession that is overrun with laws and bureaucracy that - although designed with student safety in mind - often stifles the bond between teacher and student.

            In addition to all the physical abuse he dispensed, he would verbally insult KIPP students as well: in an endearing sort of way.  At the end of our first year at KIPP, the principals threw an end of year banquet at a local Mexican restaurant.  As part of the event, each teacher had to randomly draw another teacher’s name out of a hat and make a paper plate award for that teacher.  Ms. Myers, my co-teacher, picked my name, and she awarded me the ‘Flava Flave’ award, since she had never seen a teacher use more clocks and timers in a classroom than myself.  I, ironically, picked the name of my confidant: Mr. Asaad.  I awarded him the ‘most-likely-to-get-arrested-for-saying-something-innappropriate-to-a-student’ award.  An award he would never fully live up to, but an award well earned no less.  I handed him the award, shook his hand, and snapped a picture to commemorate the event.

            When I looked at Mr. Asaad, I saw a dear friend (as well a legal liability to the school); however, when students, particularly the boys, looked at him, they saw someone they deeply admired.  Behind Mr. Asaad’s back, during lunchroom conversations, the boys at KIPP Charlotte would mock his timbre, yelling across the table at one another in their best attempts at a Caribbean accent, “What’s your major malfunction?”  On the playground, they mimicked his karate moves; yelping and kicking like a kung-fu parody.  Nonetheless, the same boys who lampooned him the most were the same boys who would spend hours after school with him on Saturdays, getting free martial arts instruction.  Deep down, they worshipped him.  Strong black role models were something of a commodity in the neighborhoods most of these kids were raised in, and Mr. Asaad was the archetype of a black role model: strong, domineering, eloquently opinionated (although brash at times), charming, educated, and a physical acme.  In short, there was a lot to for the kids to admire. 

            Mr. Asaad could get through to students who were to me a concrete slab of indifference.  If I had a dime for every time I asked Keshawn to stop talking during a mini-lesson and then he would throw his hands up in the air declaring, “It wasn’t me!” I could easily pay a respectable down payment on a Manhattan condo.  Yet to Mr. Asaad, Keshawn was a lemming, awaiting his command.  On one particularly muggy afternoon following Saturday school, I noticed Keshawn doing an exercise on an outdoor bench in front of the eighth grade building.  He thrust his leg up on the bench, fully extended it, achieved balance, and proceeded to kick with the other.  He repeated this arduous move over and over again while sweat dribbled down his face and formed a ring around his black Nike T-Shirt. 

            “Keshawn, what are you doing?”  I asked as I passed by him.

            Between huffs and puffs he said, “Martial arts training.” his eyes grimacing with exhaustion. 

            “What for?”
            “For Mr. Asaad.  He’s teaching me…huff…how to do…puff…Tae Kwon do.” 

            “Good deal.  Carry on.”  I said, as I walked away in veneration, just glad that someone was teaching Keshawn some discipline.

            Another student that Mr. Asaad got through to - more so than any other teacher at KIPP – was Jacory.  Jacory was a perpetually silly child, with a clownish incriminating disposition, that earned him a three-year rap sheet of tomfoolery at KIPP.  When I think of the epitome of a ‘class clown’, I immediately picture Jacory.  Not a single word of sincerity ever crossed his lips, unless, of course, you’re counting a sincere attempt at humor; in which case he was sincere to a fault.  At KIPP Charlotte we had something called ‘paychecks’, which are more or less behavioral markings teachers give students based on positive or negative behavior in class.  The kids start out the week with forty paycheck dollars, and each student moves up or down based on how well he or she follows or disobeys school rules.  Jacory, although never having been suspended and never having been in a fight, had the lowest paycheck out of all eighty-four students in the eighth grade.  He earned a fourteen-dollar weekly average by years end: solely due to his unbridled silliness.  Yet he too was no match for Mr. Asaad.

            At the beginning of his Math classes, Mr. Asaad would greet each student with “Good morning” as they entered his room.  When it was time for Jacory’s class to rotate to Math, Mr. Asaad would conduct his meet and greet with his right hand, while his left arm was wrapped around Jacory’s neck in a headlock. 

            There was a space in the back of Mr. Asaad’s room that he called ‘China’.  Mr. Asaad had a pre-industrial view of the country and considered it a decrepit state, a place of vagabonds and fascists.  I suppose he got this opinion of China from coming of age during the Cold War era.  If a student misbehaved in Mr. Asaad’s class, he would yell, “Go to China!” and the student would then get up and move to the corner seat, facing the wall.  Jacory spent so much of the year ‘in China’ that one would think he could speak Cantonese. 

            But for every ounce of army discipline and tough love that Mr. Asaad dished out, he provided an equal amount of paternal nurturing.  Towards the end of my first year at KIPP, Mr. Asaad would haul Jacory outside with him for parking lot duty, coach him to use the police hand signals he used to direct traffic in Phoenix, and asked Jacory to direct traffic on his own.  Jacory loved it.  By May, Jacory was a pro, directing cars into the appropriate lanes of traffic, effortlessly keeping the pick up lane moving.  All the while, Mr. Asaad would stand at his side, keeping at watchful eye on him, arms crossed, smiling at his apprentice. 

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.