You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Teaching.”
It’s 2011. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed. I’m trying to figure out how to pay the rent for my small, dim apartment in Washington Heights. I have two weeks to come up with it. I have no prospects. I’m sixty-six years old. Sitting there, I think that after thirty-five years living in New York City, I should [...]
Lessons from Rikers Island That first morning, I was stopped by the correction officers just before the bridge that leads to the 413-acre, liver-shaped island in the middle of the East River between Queens and the Bronx. I was struck by how bored the COs acted. It was as if they were telling me there was nothing I could possibly [...]
On Match.com, Ken’s moniker was “Dull.” He wrote that among his favorite things were office carpeting, spam, and waiting rooms. “I bet he lives in one of those storage units off the highway,” my friend Meg said as she read over my shoulder. My own profile was styled after Nancy Drew. Hair color? Titian. Hobbies? Motor boating, driving too fast, [...]
In a school full of hard cases, Theresa Fulife was the hardest. She looked like the oldest kid in the eighth grade because at 16 she was. Her scarred, nearly six-foot muscular frame looked like it had been tattooed by a drunken sailor. Her face resembled the pitted surface of some foreign planet. Her hair rose knotted and wild above [...]
The students enter the building through a side door, where they promptly submit backpacks and any other personal items to the NYPD safety agent who greets them at the steps. There’s a male agent for the boys, a female for the girls. Everyone is scanned for weapons, cell phones and drugs upon entering the building. Some of the more committed [...]
