The Lost High School

Day one.

He put a syllabus on each desk, along with the reading list for the class. Walking back to the front of the room he stood surveying...everything was ready. In its place.
Then he opened his door, the little neon green "open your mind" sign swinging invitingly into the hallway. He sat down behind his desk, pushing the four orange elephant shaped paperweights back into the four corners and adjusting his glasses on his button nose. Folding his hands and closing his eyes he leaned back to wait. The bell would ring in exactly 37 minutes.
 Inevitably there was the student who wandered in before the bell rang, interrupting his moment of mediation with footsteps and rustling jacket, scraping chair and tapping fingers. He opened his eyes and settled his gaze on boy who had chosen a second row seat, in the process of removing his green windbreaker. He smiled welcomingly and opened a folder in the center of his desk, scanning a page full of names and ages.
There were 23 minutes left.
The boy reached into his backpack and retrieved a sketchbook and pencil and began to create in quiet scribbles, eyes down. He said nothing.
In the minutes before and after the bell the room seemed to flood with students. He sat quietly behind his desk and smiled serenely as they enetered, in a myriad of colors and voices. In the midst of finding seats he watched as the desks filled and the carefully laid syllabus was buried under backpacks or scanned by anxious eyes. Once evryone was seated a hush seemed to fall over the room and faces turned forward expectantly toward the front of the room and his figure behind the desk.
Examining the new faces he sensed that the crowd held all kinds of students...defiant ones, bored ones, serious ones, angry ones. The faces looking at him were mostly white with a scattering of darker skinned but not black faces, indistinguishable, and forgettable...he was reminded again of the situation of this town, how it had held for him the promise of a slight and delicate hope. Not because of opportunity and excitement, oh no, but because of statistics.
Students here had a 1 in 10 chance of making it to college. Drop outs were as common as adolecent acne, teenage pregnancies were announced at least once a month, and the last football championship had been in the 80s. There was a sense of acceptance that this was just a stop on the way to an unexciting and uninviting life here in the same town...maybe pumping gas or sitting behind the counter at the local library, or stocking the shelves at the grocery, styling the same women with the same haircut and color at the salon. The vast majority of the people who were born here died here too, and surrounded by cornfields and removed from the highway there was little contact with the rest of the world, apart from television and the occasional trucker or vacationing family at one of the two motels in town. Yet a kind of desperation hung over the people here, sometimes strengthing enough to be felt over the thick layer of acceptance, and potent in the young people who still dared to dream dreams of a life beyond this small town.
And so he had arrived to fill the vacant post of English teacher at the local high school, a fresh face on a staff that was worn in and worn down after years of teaching the same subjects and watching the same kind of student rise and fall, only to escape graduation, or to escape to college and then return to a minimum wage job. It was the lost campus, the lost school in a lost town somewhere in the middle of America mediocrity.

He stood up and took a deep breath.
"Welcome, everyone, to Freshman English 102."
Eyes took in his plain black slacks, shined oxfords, pressed blue pinstriped shirt and glasses. He was as nondescript as the students before him in Levis and off brand sneakers. But there was a growing energy in the room, transmitted by his voice and the curiosity of the young people before him. He had been excited to have a freshman class...the newest students, all full of promise and hope and dreams.
"This year we are going to be studying all the basics. You will see on your desk a required reading list, and I will tell you now that there will be a required 6 page essay following each piece of literature." He smiled a small smile as a groan rose upon hearing this last announcement, and put up a hand to call for silence. "At the end of the academic year you will have to present a research portfolio on a topic of your chosing, subject of course to my approval."
Now there were only sullen and dismayed faces looking at him, and some eyes had begun to turn away in disinterest as pencils drew idly on the margins of his syllabus.
"If everyone would please look at the syllabus on your desk, and note the assignment listed under today's date?"
There was a shuffling of paper and backpacks as students took the syllabus in hand. He pointed at the early bird in the second row.
"Young man, will you please read the assignment out loud for the class?"
The sketchbook boy looked petrified at being singled out, but swallowed and did not hesitate, reading in a slightly high pitched but steady voice.
"Day one: Write a short, one-page description of what your life is now and what you hope it will become, due at the end of class." He finished and looked up, eyebrows raised.
"Very good. Thank you." He turned his bespectacled gaze on the rest of the class, poised for instruction. "Well, you have about 40 more minutes to complete this assignment. You may begin now."
There was a bustle as notebooks were opened and pages turned, pens and pencils being taken into hands and eyes narrowed or widened at the blank page and a quiet scratching began as students started writting.
"Please do not forget to put your name at the top of the page. Take your time. And there will be no homework today." He sat down behind his desk again and folded his hands, eye flicking to the nearest elephant on his desk.
One by one students finished the assignment, putting down writing utensils and scanning the page, occasionally correcting a word or adding a little something. When the bell rang signaling the end of class there was a collective scrape of chairs and students filed up to his desk, handing in a single page and scurrying out the door.
"Thank you and see you Wednesday!" His voice was barely heard above the conversation and movement.




When the classroom was empty and he held 24 pages in his hands he sat back down and started comparing the names to the class list, catching a first word or sentance of each assignment...
"I come from a family of..."
"My Mom has told me..."
"My life is..."
"The life I live..."
"'Ordinary' might be too ordinary..."
"Someday..."

As he began to read the first page, written in blue ink and only about 3 paragraphs long, he thought to himself that while some educators might consider this hopeless, he was filled with the desperate hope that these students would not end up where he had...at a lost high school in a lost  little town that stank of middle of America mediocrity.