It was another balmy, sticky late August day. Kids shuffled around me. Bumping into me, ignoring me, happier than me. Why was I here? Where was I supposed to go? I didn’t belong. Welcome to high school.
The year was 1999. I was 14. It was the '90s when I started high school. Some of you weren’t even born. That makes me old. Well at least to you it does. For me, it blows my mind that some of you were born after the '90s.
Anyways 1999…I was probably about five inches shorter and even skinnier, if that’s possible. My mom made me return the leather Lugz boots I had bought because they were cool, or as she said – not preppy enough - and in turn made me buy oxford dress shoes (if you don’t know what they are, picture an old man with his pants hiked up to his armpits and then the shoes that he is wearing – those). She said everyone else would have them too. Yeah that didn’t happen. No one else had them. I looked like a gigantic tool. My collared shirt was tucked in. I was wearing baggy dress pants in public for the first time since I was about five (cool kids only wore jeans when I was a kid) and those freakin’ shoes just topped it off. Knowing me, I probably hadn’t had a proper haircut in awhile either…not too hard to imagine I’m sure…but not long like this, more like - yo man you need a haircut cause no girl will ever talk to you looking like that. To sum it up, I felt like a huge dork, and I was lost and alone. That night and for the rest of the nights for about two or three months, I went home and cried. I hated it. Hated it. Everyone in my family told me I could go back to my public school, everyone but my mom. She told me that she would not allow me to quit. Her son would not be a quitter. If I still wanted to leave after I finished my freshman year, I could…but not in the middle of it.
My high school was called Blair Academy. It is a super expensive private school in central Jersey. I had worked my butt off as a kid, played sports, participated in extracurricular activities, etc so I was given a scholarship to pay for the $34,000/year tuition. Hard work pays off – some seniors here will tell you just the same as they are getting their college financial aid packages back.
My parents had gone through a horrible divorce a year and half before, so my mom was raising me and my brother on her own. We were struggling a lot…a lot – financially, emotionally, all of it. We were all lost and disconnected. And here I was, a low income, working class country kid at this rich boarding school. My mom was an hourly wageworker at a vet hospital, and my dad was a carpenter trying to find his way back from a broken marriage and lost to his kids. In the meantime, everyone around me was rich with moms and dads that were lawyers, doctors, CEOs, royalty from Asia, you name it, even, get this, Nelson Mandela’s grandson was at my school. Needless to say, I didn’t fit in. And I convinced myself that I never would. I had no friends, no community, and seemingly no hope…and certainly no girlfriend.
I think that some of us can relate here…new high school, academically rigorous, new teachers, new students, new location, totally new world, being raised by a single, struggling parent, broken home. I probably share more in common with a number of you than you or I thought.
So what happened…well, I buried myself in my studies (we had class six days a week), joined some after school groups and played soccer. Getting involved helped, but I still struggled. I was still alone.
Life went on. Soccer changed to basketball. As I adjusted to the rigor, the work became more manageable. I started writing for the school paper and got into the Community Service group. After remembering I couldn’t quit (remember my mom doesn’t allow quitting), I resigned myself to the fact that I’d be there till June.
But as all things do, Blair got easier and I couldn’t help but like some of the kids around me. As winter turned to spring, I realized that I had friends and that my teachers really cared about me. I mean really cared about me. It wasn’t just some ploy to get me to do my homework. They actually cared about me, and I felt it. And those friends, they seemed to like me for who I was. It started to become apparent that the relationships that were growing around me were making life better, making me feel more at ease and more at home. As June rolled around, my mom asked if I wanted to go back to Bangor, my neighborhood school. I smiled and said no – how could I leave such an amazing community that I felt like I was just really becoming a part of.
A month ago, I went to a birthday dinner with two friends, Anwar and Christian – they were my roommates in high school. The sense of community, home and love I felt in high school were real… and still are. I am because we were and we still are now.
Blair changed my life, because of the people in it. I still talk to some of my teachers and counselors. And my friends, excuse me my family, well they’re like my brothers and sisters. About two weeks ago, we actually just had a “family weekend” with about eight of those brothers and sisters. They’ve been my friends for 17 years.
Now that I’m old – relatively speaking given the present company- I would never work in a school that didn’t have the same mission…to build a community, which is why I still work here after 8 years of coming and going. Freire is a community. The teachers around you now do truly care about you, and the seniors here can tell you that the friendships they’ve made here won’t end after they graduate. We administrators care about you too. That’s why I tell you to take your hat off in the hallway – because I care. But seriously, this is much more than a school, much more than a grade level, much more than a job. We are a family here, and I truly hope you feel that. If not, stop by my office and we’ll talk about it, even if we don’t know each other. That’s a sincere invitation. I am here because we are here. I am Freire. You are Freire. We are Freire. Thank you.
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