w/ Sigma Lambda Beta at Florida State University
Things Fall Apart
Chapter III
There were bright spots. I played baseball. I played basketball. And despite everything happening outside the classroom, I remained connected to education.
One of the most consequential people in my life was an educator I remember as Dr. Fechter. He was a white Frenchman who wore sandals in the winter and ate rice cakes—which, to a group of Harlem kids, already made him an unusual character.
But he taught us something far more important than anything contained in a textbook. He taught us that the things we assumed were not for people like us were, in fact, accessible to us.
Five students from our fifth and sixth grade cohort went on to attend New York City's specialized high schools. I went to Brooklyn Technical High School. One of my classmates went to Bronx Science. Others from our small group went to Brooklyn Tech with me.
Five kids from one single class in Harlem.
That was extraordinary. And I give Dr. Fechter considerable credit for helping us imagine possibilities that our circumstances had given us little reason to believe existed.
Brooklyn Tech
Getting into Brooklyn Tech should have been the beginning of an academic success story. Instead, my life outside school overwhelmed everything happening inside it.
I continued moving between adults and households. Eventually, I returned to live with my mother. Shortly thereafter, an incident involving my mother and drug dealers in the neighborhood led me, as an angry and frightened teenager, to make a terrible decision. I was arrested for carrying a weapon, fortunately the police officer didn’t write anything regarding my intent.
It was my freshman year of high school.
I had already failed every class.
Think about that trajectory for a moment. A child who loved school so much that he once snuck into first grade went from earning admission to Brooklyn Tech to failing his entire freshman year.
The intelligence had not disappeared. The circumstances had changed.
That distinction would later become profoundly important to how I understood education.