The Angel

 Approximately a million years ago, a man walked into our school asking what he could do. This happened before I got here, so it's really pre-history we're talking about here. This man was a graduate of Oakland public schools and in the wake of yet another flurry of violence in the streets of cities across the country, he decided to devote some of the time he had to giving back to the people and places that made him the success that he had become. 

He could have written a big check to the district or swooped in to pay for everyone's lunch, but instead he asked if he could get a regular gig coming in to read with students who were struggling. Which he did. For several years. When budgets were being cut and help was hard to find, he was there, doing his part and then some. 

Which didn't keep him from writing an occasional check. Like the one he wrote to help revitalize our tired old school library. New books. New tables and chairs. And suddenly it was a place where kids wanted to be, not a place they were sent when they hadn't finished their work in class. It was a great place to pull up a chair and read with a student who needed just a little of that one-on-one magic.

When I arrived as the new Computer Teacher, I was introduced to our "business partner," a title that never fully described the commitment he had to our little corner of East Oakland. After a year or so of working with a room full of ancient Mac LCIIs and a bunch of tractor feed printers, he came to me and asked "what it would take" to get a new computer lab. Initially I gave him a lowball estimate that would allow us to get a marginal replacement for the tired old equipment in my room. He smiled, patted me on the shoulder and asked if I could try again. "What would you really like to have in here?" He pointed into the room that I had brought back from the brink of extinction, and I started to imagine. 

It took a while, a couple years, but when all was said and done there were twenty-eight student PCs, a new laser printer, and furniture for it all to sit on. Our benefactor even showed up to plug them in and help sort the trash. 

Best of all, this was an Internet-ready room. As we began to drag CAT-5 cable around the hallways to connect us to Al Gore's invention, we began a new era. We were connecting to a whole new world of potential curriculum and possibility. The same Internet that students now don't think about when they sit down in my room and read a book from a library they have never seen. They just know it's there. 

Time passed and our generous angel stopped making his regular visits. Which is sad, but he paved the way for so many kids, making a smooth path where it wasn't always smooth. 

On behalf of all us Horace Mann Jaguars past and present, Thank you Jeff Schwartz.