a
war?”
Kambui asked.
“Well, perhaps Mr. Scott could take his six-foot frame, his weird hairstyle with dreads on top and Indian braids on the side, and simply make them all go home,” Mr. Culpepper said. “I personally would attempt to negotiate a compromise. Maybe something can be learned from the history of the war itself, I suppose. You’ll also have to have more luck than any of you deserve. But it’s up to you, isn’t it?”
When we left Mr. Culpepper’s office we were all down. We knew what he was saying. The “one more chance” had boiled down to just that: one more chance.
“Anybody getting a bad feeling about this?” Bobbi asked in the hallway. “Sort of like he’s handing out menus for a final meal?”
“Look, we’ve got our newspaper started,” I said. “Maybe we can write a series of articles talking about how stupid war is. Let’s everybody think about it overnight and have a meeting tomorrow morning before the first class.”
“Maybe LaShonda shouldn’t have quoted Mr. Culpepper,” Kambui said.
“What we are doing, Kambui Owens, is publishing a newspaper that speaks for the real people of this school,” LaShonda said. “I’m not holding back just because he’s got a little power.”
The Palette
was the official school newspaper and Mr. Culpepper was its adviser. Ashley Schmidt was its editor and she was cool, but Mr. Culpepper had final approval on anything, and as far as I was concerned the paper was just a way of putting out school propaganda. When the school got a printer that prints eleven-by-seventeen-inch pages I came up with the idea of an alternative paper. On the masthead of
The Palette
was the quote from Mr. C.:
Education is a journey on the high seas of life.
We played off of that and said we weren’t on a journey, we were justcruising. I called our newspaper
The Cruiser.
It was LaShonda’s idea to call our staff—LaShonda, Bobbi, Kambui, and me—the Cruisers.
We published the paper once every two weeks unless something special happened and we put out a special edition. We tried to charge a quarter a copy but Mrs. Maxwell said we couldn’t make it a commercial venture.
“And in the future”—Mr. Culpepper stepped from his office into the hall—“you will not quote me or any other teacher, official, or staff member of this school without written permission. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, O mighty one!” Bobbi said.
Mr. Culpepper started down the hall muttering something about Cruisers rhyming with
losers.
No way we were losers, and if Mr. C. didn’t know it, we did. The thing was that Da Vinci Academy was supposed to be all world. We had been written up in the
New York Times
and
Newsweek
as a Harlem school that was taking care of business. Three quarters of the kids at Da Vinci were from outside of Harlem and were into that heavy competition thing. Who got the most A’s and turned in the longest papers, that kind of thing. But there were somekids who just were into the sweating and fretting jam. LaShonda called them the “real people.”
LaShonda Powell lived in a home with about fifteen other kids. Every morning she had to take her little brother to school in the West Bronx and then had to take the train downtown to Harlem to go to Da Vinci. She was late three or four times a week.
Barbara McCall was a math whiz and played second board on the chess team. She scored straight A’s in Algebra but D’s in about everything else. Everybody called her Bobbi.
Kambui Owens, my main man, lived with his grandmother a few blocks from me. Sometimes, when his father was out of jail, he lived with them. Kambui was deep into photography and I figured he had the best chance of becoming famous one day.
My name is Alexander Scott, but my friends call me Zander. Language Arts is my thing and one day I’d like to write screenplays. I don’t really have serious issues but I can’t seem to get myself to deal with the work. I usually liked Da Vinci because there
war?”
Kambui asked.
“Well, perhaps Mr. Scott could take his six-foot frame, his weird hairstyle with dreads on top and Indian braids on the side, and simply make them all go home,” Mr. Culpepper said. “I personally would attempt to negotiate a compromise. Maybe something can be learned from the history of the war itself, I suppose. You’ll also have to have more luck than any of you deserve. But it’s up to you, isn’t it?”
When we left Mr. Culpepper’s office we were all down. We knew what he was saying. The “one more chance” had boiled down to just that: one more chance.
“Anybody getting a bad feeling about this?” Bobbi asked in the hallway. “Sort of like he’s handing out menus for a final meal?”
“Look, we’ve got our newspaper started,” I said. “Maybe we can write a series of articles talking about how stupid war is. Let’s everybody think about it overnight and have a meeting tomorrow morning before the first class.”
“Maybe LaShonda shouldn’t have quoted Mr. Culpepper,” Kambui said.
“What we are doing, Kambui Owens, is publishing a newspaper that speaks for the real people of this school,” LaShonda said. “I’m not holding back just because he’s got a little power.”
The Palette
was the official school newspaper and Mr. Culpepper was its adviser. Ashley Schmidt was its editor and she was cool, but Mr. Culpepper had final approval on anything, and as far as I was concerned the paper was just a way of putting out school propaganda. When the school got a printer that prints eleven-by-seventeen-inch pages I came up with the idea of an alternative paper. On the masthead of
The Palette
was the quote from Mr. C.:
Education is a journey on the high seas of life.
We played off of that and said we weren’t on a journey, we were justcruising. I called our newspaper
The Cruiser.
It was LaShonda’s idea to call our staff—LaShonda, Bobbi, Kambui, and me—the Cruisers.
We published the paper once every two weeks unless something special happened and we put out a special edition. We tried to charge a quarter a copy but Mrs. Maxwell said we couldn’t make it a commercial venture.
“And in the future”—Mr. Culpepper stepped from his office into the hall—“you will not quote me or any other teacher, official, or staff member of this school without written permission. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, O mighty one!” Bobbi said.
Mr. Culpepper started down the hall muttering something about Cruisers rhyming with
losers.
No way we were losers, and if Mr. C. didn’t know it, we did. The thing was that Da Vinci Academy was supposed to be all world. We had been written up in the
New York Times
and
Newsweek
as a Harlem school that was taking care of business. Three quarters of the kids at Da Vinci were from outside of Harlem and were into that heavy competition thing. Who got the most A’s and turned in the longest papers, that kind of thing. But there were somekids who just were into the sweating and fretting jam. LaShonda called them the “real people.”
LaShonda Powell lived in a home with about fifteen other kids. Every morning she had to take her little brother to school in the West Bronx and then had to take the train downtown to Harlem to go to Da Vinci. She was late three or four times a week.
Barbara McCall was a math whiz and played second board on the chess team. She scored straight A’s in Algebra but D’s in about everything else. Everybody called her Bobbi.
Kambui Owens, my main man, lived with his grandmother a few blocks from me. Sometimes, when his father was out of jail, he lived with them. Kambui was deep into photography and I figured he had the best chance of becoming famous one day.
My name is Alexander Scott, but my friends call me Zander. Language Arts is my thing and one day I’d like to write screenplays. I don’t really have serious issues but I can’t seem to get myself to deal with the work. I usually liked Da Vinci because there
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