Page 50 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade7_Flipbook

aCTIvITy 1.5
continued
Mr. Irwin Lasher
1 My new school, the new P.S. 125, was quite close to my house. It was located
on 123rd Street, right across from Morningside Park between Morningside and Amsterdam Avenues. The school was ultramodern for the day, with table and chairs that could be arranged any way the teacher wanted instead of the rigid desks nailed to the floor we had been used to having. I was in class 6–2 and had my first male teacher, Mr. Irwin Lasher.
2 “You’re in my class for a reason,” he said as I sat at the side of his desk. “Do you know what the reason is?”
3 “Because I was promoted to the sixth grade?” I asked.
4 “Because you have a history of fighting your teachers,” he said. “And I’m telling you
right now, I won’t tolerate any fighting in my class for any reason. Do you understand.
5 “Yes.”
6 “You’re a bright boy, and that’s what you’re going to be in this class.”
7 My fight with Mr. Lasher didn’t happen until the third day, and in a way
it wasn’t really my fault. We were going up the stairs, and I decided that, when
his back was turned, I would pretend that I was trying to kick him. All right, he paused on the staircase landing before leading us to our floor and the kick that was supposed to delight my classmates by just missing the teacher hit him squarely in the backside. He turned quickly and started toward me. Before I realized it, I was swinging at him wildly.
8 Mr. Lasher had been in World War II and had fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He didn’t have much trouble handling me. He sat me in a corner of the classroom and said that he would see me after class. I imagined he would send a note home, and that my mother would have to come to school. I was already practicing what I would say to her when I gave her the note. But instead of sending a note home, he came home with me! Down the street we came, my white teacher and me, with all my friends looking at me and a few asking if it meant I was going to get a beating.
I thought it probably would, but I didn’t give them the satisfaction of an answer. Mama was sitting on the park bench across from our house when I came down the street with Mr. Lasher firmly holding my hand.
9 “Mrs. Myers, I had a little problem with Walter today that I think you should know about,” he said, sitting next to her on the bench.
10 He called Mama by my last name, not knowing that I was an informal adoptee. Her last name was Dean, of course, but she didn’t go into it. Mr. Lasher quietly explained to my mother that all the tests I had taken indicated that I was quite smart, but that I was going to throw it all away because of my behavior.
11 “We need more smart Negro boys,” he said. “We don’t need tough Negro boys.”
12 Mr. Lasher did two important things that year. The first was that he took me
out of class one day per week and put me in speech therapy for the entire day. The second thing he did was to convince me that my good reading ability and good test scores made me special.
13 He put me in charge of anything that needed a leader and made me coach the slower kids in reading. At the end of the year I was the one student in his class whom he recommended for placement in a rapid advancement class in junior high school.
My Notes
Unit 1 • The Choices We Make 23
indicated: showed, suggested
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