A Young Father Loses His Life
A Teacher Remembers
Today, Facebook notified me that it was one of my former student’s birthdays. He would have been 30 years old today. I thought I would share a story I wrote about him (names have been changed):
“I hate this kid!” José’s exasperation tumbled out after he finished reading the chapter aloud.
I smiled, and tilted my head. I respected that José hated Holden. In fact, him hating Holden told me that he was paying attention. I was reading the book with a group of seniors who needed to make up English credits to graduate. I had picked Catcher in the Rye because it was the classic book for kids who hate school. But I was teaching at a charter school in Southwest Detroit in 2011, and this mostly Latinx group of students lived lives far removed from the private school experiences of Holden Caulfield. Still, many of them identified with Holden’s angsty narrative and societal critiques. José, however, just saw a privileged white kid whining about everything while he spent loads of his family’s money around New York.
José needed to graduate. School was taking away from time to work to support his two year-old daughter, and her mother, Erika. Erika had graduated the year…
