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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

~

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: Harold Meltzer

Aside

My “-tions” and History as Conjunction Junction

02 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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American Exceptionalism, American Mythology, AP US History, AP US History Exam, Ben Carson, College Board, Conservatives, Curriculum Framework, Cypher, Educational Testing Service, ETS, Founding Fathers, Harold Meltzer, Joe Pantoliano, Lynne Cheney, Mealy-Mouthed, morison, Morison and Commager, Selling Out, The -tions, The Matrix (1999), WASPs


AP US History curriculum framework and Common Core, July 24, 2014. (Todd Wiseman; http://www.texastribune.org/).

AP US History curriculum framework and Common Core, July 24, 2014. (Todd Wiseman; http://www.texastribune.org/).

So, the College Board and ETS sold out last month to the willfully ignorant, ideologically conservative set, and will mythologize AP US History after all. The tales of the perfectly brilliant Founding Fathers, of great, rich, powerful White men who built this nation with their bare hands, who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps without any help, will be front and center now. AP US History has gone through a re-re-revision of its curriculum guide to spend time providing lessons in blind patriotism, in American civics as great legend, making a generation of already over-tested kids even more ripe for being underprepared for college and beyond. One more instance where providing an opportunity for independent thinking has knuckled under to the profit-motive for two so-called, multibillion-dollar nonprofits.

I wrote about the small scale of the College Board’s middle-of-the-road approach in its second revision of the AP US History curriculum in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in May, a few months before they showed flexibility to the right-wing nut-jobs. As a historian, professor, educator, writer, and critical thinker, I don’t think I was ever satisfied with AP US History or its mealy-mouthed curriculum. Just because one presents a complex concept that can be difficult to discuss in pleasant language doesn’t change the fact that people and even students will frequently resist that concept. The idea that slavery played a central role in building the economic infrastructure of the US, for instance. That’s hard for most Americans to accept, even with the evidence staring in their faces every single day.

Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, Volume I (unknown edition, but the edition I had access to in 1985), September 2, 2015. (http://www.booksoutofprint.com.au/).

Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, Volume I (unknown edition, but the edition I had access to in 1985), September 2, 2015.

As a student in the late Harold Meltzer’s AP US History class at Mount Vernon High School in eleventh grade back in September ’85, though, I found the once nationally recommended textbook for the course unacceptable myself. It was a textbook people like Lynne Cheney and Ben Carson would’ve loved, and can still be found in many high school classrooms even today. Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager’s The Growth of the American Republic, originally published in 1930, a time when rich WASP males were the only people of US history who counted.

I don’t recall exactly what edition we had, but it was a 1962 version, well-preserved by Meltzer. It was built fundamentally on what we academic historians call consensus history, meaning a unified, singular march toward a better society, a better American republic. Meaning that American Indian removal, slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, the Cult of Domesticity, the anti-immigration movement, the battles between labor and robber barons, got almost no play in the textbook. I was so bored with Morison and Commager that I stopped reading the book after the first eight pages, including the table of contents. I earned my 5 on the AP US History exam anyway.

That’s what the privileged set wants for our kids from pre-K through graduate school. A steady diet of history from a patriotic victors’ perspective, of progress and constant triumph, of narcissistic navel-gazing. But teaching history in the twenty-first century needs to be about more than powerful people, famous places, significant events or even a mass of faceless victims. Add to this the fact that most high schools and many undergraduate programs still teach US, European and most aspects of history around the world as if the subject was a trivia game like Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit. I know that’s what most of my students would want — although a few would pull their hair out from a well-learned hatred of the subject or from sheer boredom.

What I have done in my US and African American history courses over the years is talk about what I call “the -tions.” Assimilation, civilization, exploration, and gentrification, and especially immigration, industrialization, migration, and urbanization. The -tions represent large-scale processes and patterns that add up to defining themes in history, especially for the past 500 years. After all, history is about people, and what people say, do, and leave behind over the course of their lives. Not just famous, rich, slaveowning individuals who came together to found a country to maximize their own material advantages. But the millions of African slaves and dusky non-WASP European immigrants whom those same WASP males worked to death to build this great nation.

The -tions give us historians the what and how, but not the why people did what they did. This would be where capitalism, sexism, imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism come into play. The idea of profit, whether for oneself or for king and country, drove the need for cheap labor, and thus, the use of kidnapped African slaves on plantations or starving Irish peasants in northeastern factories. Or, the idea that middle class WASP “ladies” shouldn’t work outside the home or have a say in public life, lest their moral centers become corrupted. 

"Ignorance is bliss" scene screen shot from The Matrix (1999) with Joe Pantoliano as Cypher eating a Matrix steak, September 2, 2015. (http://chicagoboyz.net).

“Ignorance is bliss” scene screen shot from The Matrix (1999) with Joe Pantoliano as Cypher eating a Matrix steak, September 2, 2015. (http://chicagoboyz.net).

I try to channel these ideas through my teaching, in smaller doses in introductory courses, in larger ones in upper-level courses. The majority of my students fight it like my teaching methodology is chemotherapy or like Joe Pantoliano’s character Cypher in The Matrix (1999), desperately desiring to be blissfully ignorant over knowing the full measure of US history. For me, it’s not even about ideology. It’s about truth, about viewing life and history and people with an independent and skeptical lens, as “everybody lies…but we don’t lie all of the time.”

To work through all this may be too much for many. But it’s better than taking the free ride of lazy history that the College Board and ETS are now providing, courtesy of the privileged class.

Aside

Part of My Real-Life Hunger Games

24 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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"Things Can Only Get Better" (1985), 10th Grade, 616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Addie Viggiano, Authority Figures, Chemistry, Disillusionment, Harold Meltzer, Howard Jones, Humanities, hunger, Iced Fudge Nut Brownie, Italian, MVHS, New York State Regents Exams, Paul Lewis, Poverty, Sara Lee, Trigonometry


Consequences of hunger in schools, NOKID Hunger, January 2015. (http://www.youthonassignment.org/).

Consequences of hunger in schools, NOKID Hunger, January 2015. (http://www.youthonassignment.org/).

This time three decades ago I’d started to recover from a week of seemingly endless tests and Regents exams at Mount Vernon High School, which couldn’t have come at a worse time for me. The cupboards and fridge at 616 were as bare as they had been since the days before my Mom had gone on welfare. There was only enough milk for my younger siblings, and besides cornbread and cabbage, we were SOL. That Monday we had our exams in World History and English. Tuesday was the Trig Regents, which I started preparing for at the end of February because our teacher Ms. Viggiano didn’t know the difference between sine, cosine and tangent. All of those went pretty well.

Then we ran out of food Tuesday night. I woke up the next morning with water, milk, ice and freeze-dried meat as my choices for breakfast and 50 cents in my pocket. I chose water and only water for the morning. And Wednesday was the busiest day of all. There were two Regents exams, one that morning in Italian, the other in Chemistry. I went to school feeling like I could overcome my hunger and do decently on the test. After all, I had been taking Italian since seventh grade, and I already knew I had scored an eight out of ten on the oral part of this exam. But deep down, I knew I just didn’t have the energy to get through the exam. I had a headache from the lack of food, which grew worse as I started to forget the difference between Italian in past, present, future and present perfect tense. I finished the exam and found myself just hoping for a 70 (anything below a 65 was an F, and the exam counted for a third of my total grade for the course).

Sara Lee Iced Fudge Nut Brownie (yes, they still make them), 2014. (http://saraleefoodservice.com/).

Sara Lee Iced Fudge Nut Brownie (yes, they still make them), 2014. (http://saraleefoodservice.com/).

I went to lunch and walked over to Chester Heights (Eastchester) to a deli and bought the only thing I could think of to eat: one Sara Lee Brownie. It cost 45 cents, and it was probably the best investment I had made up to this point in my life. I walked back to MVHS, slowly ate the brownie to make it last, and had just enough time to drink some more water before we sat down to take the Chemistry Regents.

When I opened up the exam booklet I started laughing. Our idiot Chemistry teacher Mr. Lewis had told us the month before to “not worry” about organic chemistry as part of the Regents exam even though he had never covered it in class. Listening to him had me averaging a C in his class all year, with my highest exam grade an 87. So I bought a Barron’s Chemistry Regents test prep book the weekend after his pronouncement, and did nothing but study organic chemistry for this exam. It turned out that the first ten questions on the exam were organic chemistry ones, and something like thirty-five out of 100 total covered organic chem. With my brownie digesting, I was ready to kick some butt. I left that afternoon knowing that I did pretty well. But after that shaky morning, I found myself still wondering, did I do well, or was my malnourished mind playing tricks on me?

I found out on Friday, June 21st that I had failed the Italian Regents, with a total score of 45 — I’d only earned a 37 out of 90 on the written party of the exam (I’d taken the oral part with Ms. Maldonado a couple of weeks earlier). On the Chemistry Regents, I had the third highest score in the school — a 95 out of 100. I was bummed, ecstatic, pissed and disillusioned with my teachers and with myself, all at the same time. The goofy-assed Howard Jones tune “Things Can Only Get Better,” a hit at that time, popped into my head from that morning and off and on for the rest of June.

Luckily on the Friday we found out our scores was also the same day we were to meet our AP US History teacher. I’ve already described my late friend and mentor in a previous post. But it’s worth mentioning again how he broke down my protective wall to talk to me about things I’d never discuss with my classmates or my Mom or Jimme. One of those issues was hunger. Not just my constant need for food even when there was food at 616. My hunger, my drive for something better in life. Meltzer noticed it, and gradually got me to exhibit that side of myself in class.

NO KID Hungry campaign logo, Share Our Strength, June 24, 2015. (https://www.nokidhungry.org/).

NO KID Hungry campaign logo, Share Our Strength, June 24, 2015. (https://www.nokidhungry.org/).

For years after AP, Meltzer would say, over and over again, “You know, I never worried about you.” I guess it was because I didn’t take the world around me at face value. I had a healthy disdain for authority figures and the daily bullshit that the world attempted to feed my mind with every day. I wasn’t intimidated by my classmates, and I wasn’t going to allow myself to engage in worrying about grades and pleasing teachers the ways in which they did.

Meltzer picked up on this, and laughed about it all the time. He said that I had that one-of-a-kind look of a student who wasn’t just hungry for good grades, but hungry for knowledge, hungry for something to make sense of a senseless world. I guess that this is all true. Boy, it’s remembering days of hunger past that I miss people like Meltzer the most.

Boy @ The Window Origins: Meltzer Conversations

14 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Benetton Group, Black Elites, Black Identity, Black Masculinity, Black Migration, Black Washington, CMU, Colorism, Dissertation, Doctoral Thesis, Harold Meltzer, Harper Stewart, Humanities, Hypermasculinity, Inequality, Internalized Racism, Logic, Manhood, Multiculturalism, Personal Insights, Race, Racial Identity, Rationalism, Self-Discovery, Social Injustice, Taye Diggs, The Best Man (1999), Washington DC, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)


X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) scene, where Wolverine frees mutants kept as experiments by Colonel William Stryker , March 13, 2015. (http://cdn.collider.com/).

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) scene, where Wolverine frees mutants kept as experiments by Colonel William Stryker , March 13, 2015. (http://cdn.collider.com/).

Of all the tangents I took related to writing Boy @ The Window, the most direct path that got me to write a memoir about the most painful period in my life was through several conversations with my dear teacher, friend and mentor in the late Harold Meltzer. I’ve discussed bits and pieces of some of those conversations here and in longer form in Boy @ The Window. It’s still worth rehashing some of those conversations, at least in terms of what was and wasn’t good advice, as well as in explaining how some of the main themes of the memoir developed over time.

As I wrote in Boy @ The Window, though my “first interview with him was in August ’02,” the first time “we discussed the possibility of me doing Boy @ The Window went back to February ’95.” Meltzer had been retired from teaching about a year and a half, while I was beginning the heavy lifting phase of my doctoral thesis, “living in DC for a couple of months while hitting the archives and libraries up for dusty information. In need of a writing break, I gave him a call on one cold and boring Saturday afternoon.”

It was in response to a letter he sent congratulating me. I’d recently published an op-ed in my hometown and county newspaper, “Solving African American Identity Crisis.” I was writing about issues like using the n-word, hypermasculinity, and internalized racism in the short and, for me at least, dummied down piece. Somehow our discussion of that piece led to a discussion of my classmate Sam. Did I really want to spend an hour and a half talking with Meltzer about Sam and some of my other Humanities classmates and their possible identity issues, considering some of my own serious growing pains — the Hebrew-Israelite years, my suicide attempt, my Black masculinity and manhood issues? Absolutely not!

But I learned quite a bit about how I might want to approach writing Boy @ The Window through that phone call. Not because Meltzer had given me any sage advice, which he didn’t, or because he revealed things to me that I shouldn’t have come to learn during our conversation, which he definitely did.

Benetton ad, 1980s, January 2013. (http://fashionfollower.com/).

Benetton ad, 1980s, January 2013. (http://fashionfollower.com/).

No, it was the idea that a lot of the things that I had pursued as a historian and researcher were things that came out of my experiences growing up. Multiculturalism as a historical phenomenon (at least if one linked it to cultural pluralism)? Can anyone say Humanities Program, or, what I used to call “Benetton Group” when we were at A.B. Davis Middle School? Writing about African American identity issues? Obviously related to living in Mount Vernon, the land where any hint of weakness translated into me being called a “faggot” or a “pussy.”

And what about any scholarly concerns with racial and socioeconomic inequality and Black migration? Anyone ever meet my Mom and my father Jimme, 1960s-era migrants from Arkansas and Georgia/Florida respectively? An examination of the Black Washingtonian elite and their looking down upon ordinary Blacks because of their own colorism or the latter’s lack of education? Come on down, Estelle Abel and any number of well-established Black Mount Vernon-ites who never gave me the time of day! As much as academia had been an escape for me, into a world of rationalism and logic, a place of dispassionate scholarship, it was all personal for me, without realizing it until that phone conversation with Meltzer.

Fast-forward to November ’02, the last interview I did with Meltzer before his death two months later. We spent the last couple of hours on that brisk fall Thursday discussing the book idea that would become Boy @ The Window. Meltzer thought that it should be a work of fiction, “based on the real flesh and blood folks in my life, but with different names of course to protect me from any potential lawsuits. He did make me rethink the project from a simple research study of my high school years into narrative nonfiction or a memoir.” 

Screen shot of fictional character Harper Stewart's bestselling novel nfinished Business, from The Best Man (1999), March 14, 2015. (hitchdied via http://s785.photobucket.com/).

Screen shot of fictional character Harper Stewart’s bestselling novel Unfinished Business, from The Best Man (1999), March 14, 2015. (hitchdied via http://s785.photobucket.com/).

Was Meltzer correct? Should I have done a Harper Stewart — played by actor Taye Diggs in The Best Man (1999)? Should I have fictionalized all of my experiences and those of my family, teachers, administrators and classmates? I’m not sure if it would’ve made a difference. Stories of fiction tend to have a tight symmetry to them. Or, the theme of “what goes around comes around” is usually a big one in any novel. You can’t leave too many loose threads or unresolved issues, even if the novel is part of a series. For my purposes, since my life remains a work in progress, a story of relative — not obvious or absolute — success, telling it as fiction would hardly ring true to me, much less to any group of readers.

Whatever else anyone wants to say about the late Harold Meltzer, the dude got me to think about difficult things until I was no longer comfortable in leaving my uncomfortable experiences and assumptions unchallenged. The very definition of a mentor, the very purpose of Boy @ The Window.

AP US History Exam Day & Harold Meltzer

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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AP, AP American History, AP US History, AP US History Exam, Appreciation, College Board, Coping Strategies, ETS, Exam Day, Harold Meltzer, Kaplan, Mentoring, Photographic Memory, Princeton Review, Privilege, Self-Discovery, Teaching and Learning


AP Day (cropped), May 9, 2014. (Tim Needles/http://artroom161.blogspot.com/).

AP Day (cropped), May 9, 2014. (Tim Needles/http://artroom161.blogspot.com/).

Twenty-eight years ago on this day/date, I was on my way to Mount Vernon High School, listening to Mr. Mister, Simple Minds, Sting and Whitney along the way. I was a few minutes away from a three-hour exam that could change my future. It wasn’t exactly the sunniest or warmest of days, though. That second Tuesday in May ’86 was brisk and heavy with clouds, a high of only 52°F. Still, with the way I felt that morning, May 13th might as well have been sunny with a high of seventy-two. 

I’ve written about my AP US History exam experience and Harold Meltzer ad nauseum here in this blog, as well as in Boy @ The Window. How I felt in the months and weeks before the exam. My expectations for a “5” and what that meant in comparison to taking something much less representative of the college experience, like the SAT. My perspective on my AP classmates and the general sense of obnoxious whining that permeated our classroom in throughout March and April ’86, and in whispers the following year. The keys to my academic success, and me being conscious of those keys, for the very first time. And, of course, the mentoring and tutelage of the late Harold Meltzer, the only teacher after elementary school who took a genuine interest in my development as a human being, not just in my grades or in my intellectual abilities.

I was a high school junior whom, at sixteen years old, had more wisdom about what would leave me well prepared for college than most parents, teachers and so-called education reformers possessed in ’86 or in 2014. Taking Algebra in eighth grade, AP courses in eleventh and twelfth grade, accelerated math and science classes all through high school. I knew even then that the APUSH exam was far more representative of my academic preparation than any SAT score would indicate, no matter how high.

AP US History For Dummies cover (2008), May 13, 2014. (http://bookoutlet.com/).

AP US History For Dummies cover (2008), May 13, 2014. (http://bookoutlet.com/).

Yet I’ve found myself in debates with folks in recent months over an issue that’s been well settled in the education world for more than a decade. Over a single four-digit score that many thought should be the difference between going to an elite school and attending a no-name local technical institute. These folks refused to recognize what even the College Board and ETS recognize. That social class and racial privilege have been infused in the SAT process for years, with so many students taking SAT-prep courses at Princeton Review and Kaplan being all the prima facie evidence I need.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Advanced Placement (or International Baccalaureate, for that matter) is much better. But in terms of the actual amount of time spent in direct preparation, with the right teacher, even an impoverished Black kid like I was could attend a public school with a magnet program and earn a “5” — without spending $1,500 on Kaplan or Princeton Review. 

Enough on that. Today, I can truly say that AP US History Exam ’86 Day was a fundamentally important milestone for me. It sealed the deal I made for myself in the midst of the summer of abuse, to get out of 616, out of Mount Vernon, and into college. Thanks Humanities. Thanks, Mr. Meltzer. Thanks, classmates. And, thank God!

The Lazarus Woman

22 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Barbara B. Lazarus, Barbara Lazarus, Brandie Weston, Carl Zimring, Death, Friendship, Graduate School, Harold Meltzer, Joe Trotter, John Hinshaw, Life and Death, Maurice Eugene Washington, Maurice Washington, Mentoring, Politics of Academia, Politics of Graduate School, Sarai Washington, Susan McElroy


Barbara B. Lazarus, obituary picture, July 17, 2003. (http://cmu.edu).

Barbara B. Lazarus, obituary picture, July 17, 2003. (http://cmu.edu).

Now that my book’s been out for a couple of months (between two and four months, depending on the e-book platform, actually), I’ve found that my thoughts sometimes drift toward those that are no longer around to read it.

Not so much my family or nemeses, though. Sarai, my only sister, who died in July ’10, would likely have never read a word of Boy @ The Window — it would be too honest an assessment of life at 616 for her. My late idiot ex-stepfather Maurice Washington was already unhappy with my numerous posts about his borderline personality issues and constant psychological and physical abuse of me and family when I picked up the phone one day that same week my sister passed.

As for my former classmate Brandie Weston — to whom I’ve dedicated my memoir (actually, a co-dedication that includes my son) — maybe, if she had been well enough. My favorite teacher, the late Harold Meltzer, though, would’ve begun reading  Boy @ The Window five minutes after it had gone live on Amazon.com!

But of all of those folks who are no longer a part of this corporeal world (or who have gone into some state of seclusion from it), one other person stands out today. My dear friend and mentor from my Carnegie Mellon years (and the six years after I finished), Barbara Lazarus. I’ve discussed her here before, but not lately. Probably because I do tear up sometimes when thinking about her support of me specifically and her work at CMU in general. Barbara helped make my otherwise rough and dehumanizing experience at CMU manageable and even career-affirming.

As I wrote about Barbara for the memorial service at CMU in September ’03:

I want to communicate to you that I am in complete solidarity with everyone who attends the gathering at CMU on October 17.  For me, Barbara’s work was more than about women’s equity in the engineering and science fields.  She was about ensuring that all (regardless of gender or race, and regardless of the degree) who attempted the grand enterprise of competing for a degree actually made it through the process … Barbara was a dear friend and mentor who truly believed in me, even in spite of myself.  I loved her, and I will surely miss her, as I am sure you will also.

That only approximated how much she meant to me during and after my four years of doctoral success and failures at CMU. The months immediately before my advisor Joe Trotter and my committee approved my dissertation were the worst, as is well documented on this blog. Barbara convinced me to not become hot-headed and drop-out of the program with a completed first-draft of my dissertation under my belt. She also managed to keep me from requesting a change of advisors so close to the finish line. She did offer to “step in” as her duties as Associate Provost would’ve allowed, but warned me that this political solution would delay my graduation. My connection with Barbara kept me from meeting Trotter in one of CMU’s parking lots late at night wearing a ski mask and dark leather gloves!

She became my best reference professionally and otherwise after those dark days ended with the end of ’96. She read my articles and my first book before they went to print. We swapped stories about family and life and religion. We stayed in touch even after I moved to Silver Spring, Maryland in ’99. Barbara died on July 14, ’03, just sixteen days before my son Noah was born. It’s been a decade, a month and eight days since she passed, nearly as long as I actually knew Barbara (roughly between October ’92 and July ’03). Boy, I wish I could’ve shared my first photos of my son with her!

There were a few people like Barbara at CMU during those years. Susan McElroy (now at UT-Dallas), John Hinshaw (at least prior to my Spencer Fellowship), Carl Zimring (before the O.J. verdict), the Gants and the other Black doctoral students I’d met there (all fourteen of us) were my CMU lifeline beyond multiculturalism and Trotter tired sense of migration studies.

But Barbara Lazarus and I had a friendship that went well beyond academia and career, and went undamaged by petty jealousies or sudden bursts of outrage from jury verdicts. I’d been to her home, met her husband and her kids, learned something about her as a person, and in the process, managed to be my better self even in the worst of circumstances. That is being a good mentor, friend and person. I just hope that I was the same to her, and that Boy @ The Window proves to be the same to others.

Harold Meltzer Appreciation Day

21 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Youth

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Advanced Placement, AP, AP Reader, AP Readings, College Preparation, CollegeBoard, Critical Thinking, Educational Testing Service, Essays, ETS, Harold Meltzer, High Schools, Historical Analysis, K-12 Education, Profit Motive, US History, World History, Writing


MVHS AP US History/Mock Trial Team visit to Mount Vernon's City Hall with Harold Meltzer and Frank Pandolfo, March 18, 1986. (Frank Pandolfo).

MVHS AP US History/Mock Trial Team visit to Mount Vernon’s City Hall with Harold Meltzer and Frank Pandolfo, March 18, 1986. (Frank Pandolfo).

Today marks twenty eight years (both day and date — the ’13 calender and the ’85 calendar are in the same sequence) since the end of tenth grade for the Class of ’87. It’s also the day that fourteen of us met Harold Meltzer in “Room 275 of the Mount Vernon High School” for the first time. We were a grumpy bunch that third Friday in June, having gone through days of Regents exams and other tests from a rather underwhelming (though well-meaning) group of teachers. Again, it’s all in Boy @ The Window. But because I’ve had some experience teaching high school students, not to mention AP reader and ETS (Educational Testing Service, the exam developers) consulting experience, my appreciation for Meltzer has grown over the years.

In all, I’ve given up forty-five days of my life to scoring AP US and World History essays over the years, in the not-so-nice towns of Louisville, Kentucky, Fort Collins, Colorado, Salt Lake City (not to mention Princeton and from my own home). Scoring exams in a factory-esque setting is about as appealing as being an antibiotic-infused chicken at a Tyson’s egg-laying factory in Arkansas. Aside from the long hours of sitting around reading documents-based question essays, comparative essays, other essays and listening to long discussions of rubrics and accuracy in “meeting the standard” for scoring exams, it’s a blast. Especially with all of the coughing, sneezing and farting that can be heard throughout the week!

AP logo, The College Board, June 21, 2013. (http://www.stjacademy.org/).

AP logo, The College Board, June 21, 2013. (http://www.stjacademy.org/).

But the one thing I’ve learned is that many of America’s best and brightest students have significant reading, writing and analyzing issues, and not just because AP exam essay questions are written to be deliberately opaque. I’ve scored about 3,500 essays for the AP folks in all, and I can honestly say I’ve never read more than ten in any session that would’ve been A-level material in any of my college courses (or when I’ve taught high school students, for that matter). My last AP read, every one of the nearly 800 essays I read made my eyeballs ache and my teeth grind.

Most of these essays lack an introduction, a thesis statement, organization of ideas, examples that provide evidence of understanding or analysis, transition sentences between paragraphs and main ideas, and a conclusion. So many students don’t even try. They spend three hours drawing, journaling, writing short stories, poems and haikus, quoting rap lyrics and theme songs, or write in detail about their terrible AP US or World History teacher.

My pretend version of an introduction to a documents-based question essay for AP World History (in my best-worst handwriting), June 21, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

My pretend version of an introduction to a documents-based question essay for AP World History (in my best-worst handwriting), June 21, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

Aside from the almost indecipherable handwriting, that’s what has bothered me most in scoring these essays. That there are tens of thousands of unlucky students out their who by virtue of having a teacher unable to teach US or World History for advanced students. Or worse, teachers who don’t care to find out how best to teach these courses, to teach students how to write a proper introduction and thesis, to teach students how to bring in outside knowledge and intertwine it with documents or other materials within the actual exams. The inability of so many students to draw solid connections and to make a critical examination of the questions that these AP exams pose stems from both teacher neglect (benign and malignant), school districts hungry for ETS and College Board (the latter runs the AP program) dollars, and ETS and the College Board pushing these exams to more and more schools.

That reality makes me still appreciate all that I learned from Meltzer during the 1985-86 school year. Eccentric? Most def. Counterintuitive beyond what was necessary for AP US History? Without a doubt. Strange and somewhat meddlesome compared to our other teachers to be sure. But if any of us paid attention in his class even twenty percent of the time, we not only scored a 3 or better. We learned how to think beyond an answer, to ask “How?” and “Why?” for the first time. We learned how to read for an argument, and not just to read for understanding. We learned how to write a college essay (not just an AP essay) two full years before college.

And all of this learning began this day and date twenty-eight years ago. I can honestly say that I’ve had more than my share of life-changing teachers growing up. Meltzer, though, is at the top of my list, giving the time in which he was my teacher. May he rest in peace.

Remembering Harold Meltzer

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

≈ 5 Comments

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AP US History, Bitterness, Confirmed Bachelor, Death, Dedication, Egalitarianism, Eulogy, Friendship, Harold I. Meltzer, Harold Meltzer, Homophobia, Humanities, Humanities Program, Learning, Life, Mentoring, Metropolitan Opera House, Morison & Commanger, Perseverance, Politics of Education, Self-Discovery, Teaching


Harold Meltzer obituary (via Frank Pandolfo), January 9, 2003. (Westchester Journal News).

Harold Meltzer obituary (via Frank Pandolfo), January 9, 2003. (The Journal News).

Harold Meltzer, my favorite and best teacher of all, died on January 2, 2003 at the age of sixty-six, ten years ago last week. He was all too young and all too bitter about his years as a history teacher at Mount Vernon High School. But then, dealing with entitled parents and unrepentant administrators in Mount Vernon, New York for thirty-five years would do that to most people. Despite that, Meltzer was a rock, the first teacher since my elementary school years that I genuinely trusted with my family secrets and my inner self. He was the first and maybe only teacher I had in my six years of Humanities who actually seemed like he wanted to teach us (see my post “No Good Teaching Deed Goes Unpunished” from May ’11).

I met Meltzer on our last day of tenth grade, after three days of finals and Regents exams, on June 21, ’85. He had summoned fourteen of us to “Room 275 of Mount Vernon High School,” as the invitation read. We had all registered to take Meltzer’s AP American History class in eleventh grade, our first opportunity to earn college credit while in high school.

Meltzer started off talking to us about Morison and Commager — who I now know as the great consensus historians of the ’50s, until the social history revolution made their textbooks irrelevant by the ’80s — as we sat in this classroom of old history books and even older dust and chalk. Meltzer himself looked to be in his late-fifties (he was actually a day away from his forty-ninth birthday), tall and lanky except for the protruding pouch in the tummy section. His hair was a mutt-like mixture of silver, white and dull gray, and his beard was a long, tangled mess.

Met Logo and A full house, seen from rear of stage, at the Metropolitan Opera House (former bldg, 39th Street), for a concert by pianist Josef Hofmann, November 28, 1937. (National Archives via Wikimedia). In public domain.

Met Logo and A full house, seen from rear of stage, at the Metropolitan Opera House (former bldg, 39th Street), for a concert by pianist Josef Hofmann, November 28, 1937. (National Archives via Wikimedia). In public domain.

The way he spoke, and the way his eyes looked when he spoke made me see him as a yarmulke-wearing preteen on his way to temple. The force with which his words would leave his mouth hit me immediately. As much as I noticed how frequently spit would spew out of Meltzer’s mouth, the rhythm of his speech was slow and sing-song, like an elder or grandfather taking you on a long, winding, roller-coaster-ride of a story. Most of all, I knew that he cared — about history, about teaching, about us learning, about each of us as people. Maybe, just maybe, for some of us, he cared too much.

But for at least for me, Meltzer’s eccentric space in which he told Metropolitan Opera House stories and talked about egalitarianism extended beyond the historical. He was the first teacher I had since before Humanities who’d ask me if things at home were all right, and knew intuitively that things weren’t. He was the first to ask me about how poor my family was and about hunger. And he was the first teacher ever to ask if I had a girlfriend. Needless to say, these questions were unexpected. Yet through these questions, Meltzer had begun to crack my thin, hard wall of separation between school and family.

Because Meltzer cared deeply about reaching students — about reaching me — our student-teacher relationship because a friendship after high school and a mentoring one as well. I wasn’t looking for a mentor, and Meltzer was only being Meltzer. Still, his stories about his battles with MVHS administrators, Board of Education folk, and with upper-crust parents who believed their kids were entitled to A’s just for showing up, were filled with lessons of perseverance, patience, and looking beyond everyday headaches in order to reach people. While this wasn’t a factor in my going to graduate school and spending a significant part of my life as a history professor and educator, these stories have helped me over the years.

1972 Dodge Dart Dark Green (similar to '74 Dodge Dart Meltzer owned when I was at MVHS), December 25, 2009. (http://www.fotosdecarros.com).

1972 Dodge Dart Dark Green (similar to ’74 Dodge Dart Meltzer owned when I was at MVHS), December 25, 2009. (http://www.fotosdecarros.com).

But unfortunately, it was a factor in why Meltzer became embittered and took early retirement in June ’93. The end of the Humanities Program, the intolerance of some administrators toward Meltzer as a “confirmed bachelor,” the lack of decency — forget about gratitude — from many of his most successful students. Those changes, these things, all would take a toll on any teacher who’d stay after school day after day to run Mock Trial, to facilitate study groups, to work on letters of recommendation for students. But no, most of my former classmates who had Meltzer between ’85 and ’87, all they could say was that “Meltzer was weird” or that “I didn’t understand” his lessons.

I’m thankful that I did have Meltzer as a teacher, friend and mentor between ’85 and ’02. I’m thankful that I had a chance to interview him for what is now my Boy @ The Window manuscript in August and November ’02, just a couple of months before he passed (see my post “Mr. Meltzer” from June ’09). I’m glad that despite his physical and psychological pain, Meltzer welcomed me with open arms and answered my questions about his life and his career. I just wish that my former classmates and some of Meltzer’s more cut-throat colleagues had taken the time to really know the man.

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