He laughs. “No, but I wear one when I exercise.”
“Let me guess. That’s every day at the crack of dawn?”
“You got it.”
I tap my foot. We sit in silence for a beat, listening to the coffee brew. “Tell me a story.”
He smiles. It seems private somehow, as if he doesn’t mean for me to see it. “What do you want to hear?”
“What’s your most embarrassing story?”
“In life?”
“No, at work. No, actually, I changed my mind. I want to hear a different story. I want to hear your origin story,Batman. Why are you the Doogie Howser of the NYC DOE? How old are you, anyway?”
“I’m thirty-eight.”
“That’s young for a principal.”
“A bit, I suppose.”
“So let’s have it. How’d you end up here, Oh Great and Wise One? Who hurt you? Tell me, and I’ll decide whether the condescension and the arrogance are forgivable.”
“I thought we’ve moved past that.”
“Maybe you have.”
“All right, that’s fair. Well,” he says, loosening his tie and giving me a better view of his throat, “it’s not very exciting. But I’ll oblige. I was born and raised in Fort Greene. Before it got all,” he waves his hand towards the outside vaguely, “gentrified. It didn’t use to be like this. We never had much money growing up. Both my parents were public school teachers, back when it was the NYC ‘Board of Education.’ They were always tired.” He shakes his head.
“Anyway, I didn’t have some childhood dream like many teachers do, like, ‘I always knew I wanted to be a teacher.’ I graduated from college with a useless degree and moved back to Manhattan because all of my friends were moving there. We all got a place together. A four bedroom, one bathroom, veritable frat house. They were all working in finance in some capacity, and I knew I wanted no part in that. Which is funny now, considering the budget I am now responsible for managing.”
“Is it a lot?”
He eyes me. “It’s a lot more than you think a public school would ever function on. Anyway, I messed around for a little, bartending in the East Village. There was this group of teachers who would come into my bar for happy hour every Friday. They were wild. I mean, you know, obviously,” he says, giving me a look.
“The way they partied every week, you would think they just got home from war. Which now that I think about it,” he says, tilting his head, “is not too far from the truth. The stories they would trade, the simultaneous hate and love they felt for teaching. I respected the hell out of them. I thought they were the coolest people in the city. I got to talking to one of them about teaching, and he told me about the New York City Teaching Fellows. I applied and got in that year.”
I smile, loving hearing about this. “I’m a Teaching Fellow, too.”
“It’s a strong program. My first placement was teaching in a fourth grade Integrated Co-Teaching classroom in Brownsville. I was the special education teacher. I spent seven years working as a teacher at that school, and to this day, it was the most demanding job I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
I nod, commiserating. “I understand. My first placement was in a middle school in the Bronx. That school taught me everything.”
“It felt like hell for us definitely, but those teachers, my old coworkers, were some of the smartest, most intelligent, hardest working people I’ve ever met. They, like you said, taught me everything. I learned how to be an excellent teacher there. The teachers ran that school.” He pauses, reminiscing.
I watch his handsome face, thinking about how much I appreciate him saying that. Remembering his humble beginnings, respecting the hell out of teachers, the ones doing the dirty work. I like that he actually got his hands dirty, that he isn’t one of those administrators who cruised to the top without knowing what the bottom felt like.
“Many times, in Title I schools, staff turnover rate is high. People learn quickly that it isn’t the right fit for them,” he says.
I look at him closely for any sign of judgement, of arrogance, relieved when I don’t find any.
“That was the case for the administration atthat school,” he continues. “We had new assistant principals and principals every year. After maybe my fifth or sixth year of teaching there, ripping my hair out every time any progress we made as a school was erased every time we got a new administrator, I decided to get my administrator’s license myself. The superintendent at the time knew who I was and made me the assistant principal as soon as I graduated. I spent two years as AP before I was made principal of that school.”
I narrow my eyes at him but keep my mouth shut. This, I’m not so sure about.
He clocks my expression, his own hardening. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘White-passing man’ swoops in and saves the poor Brownsville school. I certainly struggled with a lot of feelings during those years. But I had a strong team, and an idea that is surprisingly novel to most administrators.”
“Which was what, Sir White Passing Savior?” I push back.
