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Module 2, Session 1
THE LAST CHANCE
THE SCHOOLS’ MOST TROUBLESOME TEENS GET SENT TO THE FOUNDRY. BUT IF THEY WANT TO STAY, THEY HAVE TO RECAST THEMSELVES.
San Jose Mercury News
Sunday, November 19, 1995
Section: West
By John Hubner
Day One, Week One
It is opening day at the Foundry, an alternative high school on Sunol Street just west of downtown San Jose, and 52 students are sitting in a circle, wondering why they are sitting in a circle. Not that they miss desks in neat rows, blackboards and teachers in crisp new clothes. These teen-agers have been thrown out of traditional schools. They have failed in continuation school, a tough thing to do. (Continuation schools are a kind of holding tank for troublesome students and are usually located off campus, which is where the high schools that run them want to keep these kinds of students.) In fact, the teens here have failed at pretty much everything except scoring and selling drugs, gang-banging, hanging-out, sex, skipping school and sleeping late.
Some of the boys have been through the California Youth Authority, a gulag of prisons for youth. Some of the girls have lived on the streets or have boyfriends who are abusing them. Many are on probation. The Foundry is their best hope to get an education.
“Most of you are here because you have not been held responsible,” John Malloy is telling the circle, explaining why the students must punch a time clock. “Here, we will hold you responsible.”
The first two weeks are a shakedown period at the Foundry, which takes its rather Dickensian name from a mill where scrap metal is melted down and poured into new forms. Students earn their way into the school by doing homework, shedding their insularity and showing they are willing to join a community. Students who do not will be told to leave. The spot they occupy is precious; the Foundry always has a waiting list.
If the students make it through the trial period without getting kicked out; if they make it through a year at the Foundry without dropping out, they will learn much more than math and English, though God knows most need help with the basics. These teen-agers are not dumb. They have not been able to learn because there is more noise in their heads than there is in a recording by Nine Inch Nails.
The staff at the Foundry will deal with that sonic dissonance. It will attempt to do what parents, teachers and vice-principals, therapists, judges, probation officers and all the rest of the king’s men have not been able to do: teach these students how to learn, so they can return to public schools and succeed. The staff will help them get off drugs and work through the personal problems that up to now have determined the course of their lives; help them join the larger community of law-abiding citizens.
“We’re going to go around the circle,” Malloy is saying. “Each of us will stand and say our name and the rest of us will clap. This is not a phony exercise. This is probably the first time you have stood up in school and received the right kind of attention. So say your name strong, claim your name. And clap for the last person as hard as you did for the first.”
Four students stand and say their names before Malloy asks everyone to close their eyes and see if they can remember all four names. These kids have street values, they have learned not to trust, and to close your eyes in a group, you have to trust the people around you. Hesitantly, they do it. When Malloy asks who can recite all four names, hands shoot up around the circle. The process continues, with Malloy continually interrupting to test who is aware of what is taking place and who is lost. When he finally steps back and lets things flow, students pop up to blurt out their names and dive back onto their chairs.
“You’re acting like over-amped, 7-11 people. When you don’t state your name fully, I feel chumped-off. Slow down,” Malloy says. Among teen-agers, nothing marks an adult as a phony faster than a self-conscious or awkward attempt to use slang, to be cool. Malloy’s language, a combination of street talk and terms he has learned from his studies with Native Americans, has the students riveted.
“Most of you have been playing at being something you are not,” Malloy continues. “You’ve got to find out who you are and to do that, you need to learn to focus. Did you notice that Elizabeth and Arturo said their names in breathy little voices? Why did they do that?”
The Foundry was started in 1973 by two women who were teaching in Juvenile Hall. They aimed to create a school teen-agers in the juvenile justice system would want to go to, a school that would turn kids around so they stopped breaking laws. A school like that would save a lot of money, the teachers said.
(They were right. Today, it costs $46,000 a year to keep a youth in Juvenile Hall; $47,000 in the Wright Center, a ranch for boys and girls; $31,500 a year in the California Youth Authority. The Foundry costs $6,526 per pupil per year. The average cost per pupil in San Jose Unified is around $4,500.)
“We got to handpick the staff and one of the first people we went after was John Malloy,” says Judy Sabo-Goffstein, one of the school’s founders, who now works in advertising sales at the Mercury News. “John gives the school its soul and fire.”
Malloy is 49 and has blue eyes and steel-gray hair that curls just above his shoulders, the upper-body of a weightlifter and the legs of a long-distance runner. He has been working with delinquents-or “at risk” youth as they are now called-since 1968, when he was a counselor in Juvenile Hall. Malloy has turned down repeated requests to become a principal of other alternative schools and to become a consultant who travels the country, telling administrators how to start a school like the Foundry. “Long ago, I decided it was best to live a simple life and keep working with kids,” Malloy says. In the last two years, he has taken leaves of absence to care for his father, when he was dying, and his son, who died of AIDS.
When the introductions are finally complete, Malloy asks the students to stand and look around the circle and notice if there is “any prejudice you are laying on someone, anything that is holding you back from accepting someone,” important questions for a group where a Sureno and a Norteno, mortal enemies on the street, may be facing each other. Then he asks the students to “step inside the fence;” to walk up to someone they do not know and, “in an exchange of goodwill,” introduce themselves.
Legs are vibrating, eyes are flashing, there are giggles and muffled laughter. These kids do not trust themselves in strange situations, in part because they have learned that the people they rely on most could not be trusted. A father or an uncle may have molested them. A mother who promised to write every week when she went to prison has not sent a letter in all the years she has been behind bars. The last adult who was nice to them may have wanted sex.
Many of these students have learned to use drugs to dull the pain that accompanies these kinds of experiences. Some have joined gangs to throw up a shield and have covered themselves with tattoos to show the world how tough and impenetrable they are (Malloy likes to say that the more tattoos a kid has, the more pain he is in.) And now this guy John wants them to drop their carefully constructed armor. He wants teen-agers who have divided the world into “my homeys” and everyone else to abandon the values of the ’hood and approach someone they do not know.
The students exchange perfunctory greetings and scurry back to the safety of their places. That is not good enough for Malloy.
“Some of you stayed where you were and expected people to come up to you,” he says. “We broke off from England so we wouldn’t have kings and queens and we’re not going to have any here. Let’s do it again.”
The students do it again, and again.
If there is one concept these kids understand it is respect. The law that governs the streets and the penal institutions, respect is based on fear. When a Doberman and a pit bull eye each other but neither attacks because each knows he will pay a heavy price, they are showing respect. Now, Malloy redefines the term.
“Respect means I am willing to take you serious, to look at you in a new way,” he says. “Those of you who hung back and wouldn’t make eye contact, those of you who offered your hand like it was a wet dishrag, you were not showing respect. You were acting like mice. It looks really silly when you play that you are not a person. When you do something, be present.”
“He’s pretty goddamn pushy,” a boy with a long black ponytail whispers to David, an overweight redhead who attended summer school at the Foundry.
“John doesn’t take any bullshit and he doesn’t put any out,” David says with a big grin. Once a chronic truant, David was one of the first people through the door earlier this morning. “You’re gonna love it here,” he confides. “This school is real. You’ll see.”
Lunch is approaching and Paul Viramontes, a teacher at the Foundry for 16 years, raises his hand. “How many of you have been diagnosed as hyperactive or A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder)?” Viramontes asks. Ten to a dozen students raise their hands. “Look around you: Nobody’s bounding around, nobody is fidgeting, everybody is still concentrating and we’ve been in group over two hours. Go tell your doctors they’re full of it.”
Malloy nods and seizing yet another opportunity, he asks the students to display their lunches. “What you eat and when you eat are as important as anything you do,” Malloy says. “In a junk culture, we eat junk foods. Poison in, poison out. Some of you don’t know what foods are good, what foods are bad. So, tell me, who do you think brought a good lunch?”
The students critique each other’s lunches and Malloy announces that tomorrow, students who bring a good lunch will be rewarded with a free meal at the Mexican restaurant on the corner. After telling the students to make certain they have lunch with someone they do not know- “Too many of you have been using your cliques as a crutch”-he dismisses the group.
“These kids come in here hard, caring only about themselves,” Julie St. Jean says over lunch. St. Jean, 23, works at NASA and spends every free moment volunteering at the Foundry. “This program is tough, it’s challenging, a lot of them aren’t going to make it,” she says. “They have to be ready to change, and they have to learn to bite their tongues, which these kids aren’t used to doing. Those who make it will go through amazing changes. Graduation is wonderful! You see mothers hugging the staff, saying through their tears, ‘Thank you for giving me back my child!’ ”
After lunch, during physical education, part of the group goes outside to play soccer and basketball. Another group stays inside where Malloy, who knows karate, teaches a Japanese kata, a combination of punches, blocks and kicks designed to fuse the body with the spirit. Participation is everything for Malloy-“If you are not participating, you are not getting an education,” he tells the group-and after demonstrating the kata several times, he asks a student to come to the front to see if she can complete it.
“I’m not going to make fun of you,” Malloy says. “I had to do this 20,000 times to get it right.”
It takes courage to do something where you will not appear cool, but one at a time the students step before the group and do their best. Until Dan, who refuses.
“What are you afraid of?” Malloy asks.
“I don’t feel comfortable doing something I don’t know how to do,” says the stocky youth with brown eyes and black hair he keeps oiled. Dan lasted only a day in the Foundry summer school before storming out, threatening to sue Mike Smith, an exceptionally even-tempered teacher.
“I know that, but get over it,” Malloy says. “You came here to learn.”
“I didn’t come here to learn karate!”
“You are either adding to the group or subtracting from it and right now, I’m carrying you!” Malloy says. There is fire in his eyes. Wherever Dan wants to take this, Malloy will go.
“I just don’t want to do it!” Dan insists.
“You don’t learn from here,” Malloy says, pointing to Dan’s head. “You learn from here,” and he points to Dan’s gut. “Get past whatever is hanging you up and do it.”
“I won’t!”
“Do it or go home,” Malloy snaps.
Dan strides off and is picking up his backpack when Malloy yells, “Dan, come back here!” Dan turns and walks back. Malloy looks him in the eye and says, “That was a real stupid decision you just made. Where would you be tomorrow? What school would you go to?”
Dan says nothing.
“What is it that was going to make you leave?” Malloy continues. “It was false pride. Somebody hurt you a long time ago and now you’re walking around like we all owe you something. We don’t owe you anything. You owe the group something.”
Dan performs the kata, quite well as it turns out. But what Malloy is trying to teach does not get through.
“I don’t feel comfortable doing karate and I don’t like doing things I don’t feel comfortable doing,” Dan says after the class.
That Dan does not understand this was not about karate, it was about trusting someone enough to learn, about breaking through the confines of the self to join a group-a society-is not at all surprising. The juvenile justice system is full of belligerent, hard-shelled adolescents. This is why the Foundry is crucial.
“The community school system is one of the safety nets for kids who can’t make it in mainstream schools, and the Foundry is the star of that system,” says Judge Leonard P. Edwards, presiding judge of the Santa Clara County Juvenile Court. “Every community would love to have a Foundry.”
The Foundry staff claim 90 percent of their graduates are never arrested again. Dan will either deal with the wounds and anger that are running his life and will absorb the lessons of the Foundry. Or, down the line Dan will hurt someone; or, he’ll get jumped and be hurt. Or, in an era when we are locking up more young people at younger ages than ever before, Dan might go to prison. And if he doesn’t learn in prison, he will keep going back to prison.
Day Four, Week One
Much has happened in the past two days. On Day Two, the students went on an eight-mile hike in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The group was told that nature was not a place to be a showoff; it was a place to be silent, to learn. This was their chance to leave the 7-11 culture and stop, look and listen.
“The Foundry is an adventure program,” Randy Klein said as he hiked up a trail that offered a spectacular view of the Pacific. Klein, a teacher at the Foundry for 10 years, is the junior member of the staff. “Kids go rock climbing, horseback riding, backpacking, they do long-distance runs, we take them out on the Bay. We do this to broaden their horizons, give them a feeling of accomplishment and something new to talk about so they’ll stop telling their old war stories.”
“The Foundry should be a model for the public schools,” Paul Viramontes added as he walked along. “All schools should have programs that are as personal, as broad and as challenging as ours.”
The hike was indeed a challenge for kids who rarely leave their neighborhoods, who in the recent past have soaked their systems in THC and nicotine and other toxic substances. Elizabeth and Arturo walked with their heads down, putting all their energy into getting through the hike, exactly the way they are trying to get through life.
As he trudged along, 17-year-old Gustavo wondered what the hell he was doing, sweating on a dusty trail. Gustavo’s intelligent eyes and sensitive features give him the appearance of an A student in a college prep program-from the neck up. The tattoos that begin on his neck and go down to his hands mark him as the gang-banger he once was. Gustavo “doesn’t bang anymore,” but like many youths who have immersed themselves in street life, Gustavo has come away filled with ennui. He has been more or less on his own since he was 12 is wondering if anything is worth the effort.
“I feel like I’ve got nothing ahead of me,” Gustavo says on the trail.
After the first few miles, at least a half-mile separated the hikers at the front from the stragglers. There were asthma attacks and blisters, but everyone made it. The only wrong note was struck when hikers in the lead constructed an arrow to point to the right trail and someone who came along later thought it would be funny to change the arrow so that it pointed to the wrong trail. A group in the rear followed the arrow, got lost and missed having lunch beside a cool, clear stream.
Malloy had stressed that the Foundry staff had the memories of elephants and would let nothing slide. All during Day Three the students waited, but nothing was said about the arrow.
By the morning of Day Four, it is evident that something magical has happened. The circle at the Foundry is based on an American Indian tradition. The tribe sits as equals in a circle; all things important are settled within it. At the Foundry, the circle has become a haven of safety. Students who were wary and terribly self-conscious only a few days ago are now secure enough to reveal who they are.
The students have brought in objects and placed them on a blanket in the middle of the circle. One at a time, they walk to the blanket, pick up their object, and say why it is important to them.
Jeremiah, who has braces and a big smile, picks up a medallion. “This is my sobriety coin. I wear it on this chain, keep it close to my heart. I used to do a lot of drugs, they ruined my life. Every time I have a craving, I think of this. It keeps me strong, strong-willed.”
Anthony, 17, who has served a sentence in the Youth Authority and looks 35, picks up a wristwatch. “This was my dad’s. My dad was in the hospital when I got locked up and I used to get O.T.’s (Outside Temporarily) to visit him. One day they came to get me at a different time and they were acting real weird and I kept asking, ‘Did he? Did he?’ and nobody would answer. When we got to his room, he’d died. This watch was one of the things he was wearing the last time I gave him a hug in court.”
Vicki marches to the blanket and picks up a brown teddy bear. Vicki is 16, with mysterious brown eyes and a smile that lights up a room. Until recently, she lived on the streets, where she fed herself LSD every day.
“This is my bear,” Vicki says. “Wherever I’ve been, whatever I’ve been through, my bear has always been there. He’s, well, he’s my bear!”
After several other students have spoken about their objects, Malloy asks the group for thoughts on what has transpired. Most of the students stand and say things that show they were listening and, in some way, moved. A few mumble “Thanks for sharing” and quickly sit down.
“Arturo, stand up,” Malloy commands. “Why did you say ‘Thank you for sharing,’ and then sit right down again?”
A small boy with black hair, Arturo is very quiet and his face is usually void of expression. In the past, Arturo has lashed out and hurt someone. Malloy is trying to lift the mask, a bit at a time.
“I don’t know,” Arturo replies.
“ ‘I don’t know’ is dishonest,” Malloy says. “You just don’t want to share.”
Arturo stares straight ahead.
“Do drugs play any part in your life?”
Arturo is silent. When he thinks he can no longer be still, he says, “Yes.”
“Are you proud of that?”
“No,” Arturo whispers.
“We kick out 20 kids a year on drugs,” Malloy tells the group. “You can’t deal with your issues, whether it’s molest or abandonment, if you’re using.”
Malloy turns back to Arturo. “You use drugs because you’re not strong inside. You use drugs because you’re bored. Boredom kicks you in the ass, gets you up and doing something. Drugs interrupt that process.”
Malloy turns to Elizabeth, a small, painfully shy girl who seems incapable of talking above a whisper. “You’re like Arturo,” Malloy tells her. “You’re quiet, but that’s not the reason people don’t see you. You don’t share yourself with anyone. You have learned you can’t trust the people you love the most, so you think you can’t trust anyone else. You’re faking it. If you want to go to school here, you’re going to have to get real.”
Malloy turns away from Elizabeth and asks, “Who changed the arrow on the hike the other day?”
Eyes widen. Two boys quickly raise their hands: Joe, an overweight boy with blond hair that is long on the top and shaved on the sides; and Dan, the boy who refused to do the kata.
“What was your intention?” Malloy asks Joe.
“To send people the other way,” Joe says nervously.
“What did you think the outcome would be?” Malloy asks.
“I don’t know. It seemed funny at the time,” Joe says.
Malloy is about to speak when Aja, a girl with short hair and remarkably expressive features, interrupts. “What you did was so stupid!” Aja says. “I really care about the people that were in that group and you put them in jeopardy and now you’re laughing and that just really pisses me off!”
“I’m not laughing. I can tell you mean what you are saying,” Dan says from across the circle.
“I know we’re supposed to be open and include everyone in the group,” Aja continues, ignoring Dan, “but I don’t know if I can do that for you two guys!”
What is happening is called “Positive Peer Pressure” and is basic to some of the most effective residential treatment programs for youthful offenders in the country. Aja is doing Malloy’s job more effectively than he can.
“I want to apologize,” Dan says, and Joe quickly adds his apology.
“Apologies don’t work here,” Malloy says. “Don’t put yourself in a position where you release your responsibility by saying you’re sorry. You now own a problem with people like Aja who don’t know if they want you to be part of the program. You’re gonna have to deal with it.”
Day Three, Week Two
Arthur Hull, a drum and rhythm instructor who describes himself as “half-elf,” gives the students hickory sticks and within an hour he has them doing a wonderful dance that combines Sufi movements with a traditional Pakistani stick dance. Hull then produces a huge assortment of drums and clangs and cymbals and wood rasps. Arturo and Elizabeth, who have hidden themselves deep inside themselves, are flushed with joy as they bang and clang away.
Hull makes good money using drums and rhythm to teach teamwork, community and cooperation to employees in corporations like Hewlett-Packard. Here he performs for free. Hull uses rhythm to get across the Foundry message: Don’t be so far into yourself that you lose the beat and end up playing for yourself and against the group; by all means be inventive, but be inventive off the beat the group is laying down.
Joe, one of the boys who changed the arrow on the hike, is not here. He kept showing up late and his mother accused the staff of singling out Joe for ridicule; Joe was dropped.
Chris, a studious-looking boy with glasses and a rich head of hair parted in the middle, is also gone. Chris is into graffiti. When members of his tagging crew were arrested, Chris figured he was next, panicked, and ran away. On their own, the Foundry students printed a poster with Chris’ picture on it and a plea to call home or “John at school.” They papered downtown San Jose and the Boardwalk area of Santa Cruz with the posters. So far, there has been no word from Chris.
In two days, the rest of the students will find out if they will remain in the Foundry. Some are ignoring Judgment Day, just as they have ignored other, more disturbing events in the past. Others are so caught up in daily events, they are not looking beyond the next activity. For the first time, they feel fully alive in, of all places, school.
“Public school? It was always, ‘Nah, I’ll go tomorrow.’ I’d meet my friends and we’d go for a ride and end up sleeping all afternoon at somebody’s house,” says Shauna, 17. “This is the first school I’ve ever wanted to go to.”
Just before lunch, Cleveland Prince, a member of the gang unit in the Santa Clara County Probation Department, walks in looking for Malloy. Prince is a high-profile probation officer whose reputation on the streets is as big as the arms and chest he has developed lifting weights. Youthful offenders all know Prince and most want to be on his caseload.
“John,” Prince says, “I’m here to see if I can get my kid David back in.”
“No chance,” Malloy says. “The door’s been open almost two weeks and he hasn’t walked through.”
“Sometimes kids need a push through the door, John. I’ll push if you hold the door open,” Prince replies.
“Prince, they’ve cut our budget. We’ve lost two staff members. We’re dealing with more than we can handle now.”
Malloy stalks off, leaving Prince stunned and uncharacteristically silent. “John and the Foundry do an excellent job, but sometimes when you run a successful program, you think you are the only one that has the answer,” Prince says. “You forget that other people in the system have a heart for kids, too, and that to be successful, we’ve got to work as a team.”
Judgment Day
“It’s real important you realize there’s a chain of events that got you here,” Mike Smith tells 18 students who have been called out of the circle. “A lot of times in the past, adults have ripped you off, told you that something will happen and it doesn’t happen, so you think that words don’t matter and adult life is bullshit. Here, we don’t play games, so there shouldn’t be any surprises. While you are waiting your turn, think about what got you here.”
“We’ll be going in alphabetical order,” Malloy says.
“John, can you tell me mine first?” Dan interrupts. “I think I know what it is, so can I have mine now?”
“I’m sorry your name is at the end, Dan, but that’s the way things work,” Malloy says.
Dan sighs and mutters a curse but the other students are too preoccupied to notice. They are wondering if they will be told to leave.
“The old cliché about one bad apple spoiling the barrel is true,” Mike Smith says. “Those kids suck up all the energy and the quiet kids get no attention. The group has to come first and the individual has to come second. Otherwise, you have chaos.”
Malloy tells the student at the top of the alphabet-shy Arturo-to stand up. Arturo has done his homework, but he has contributed almost nothing to the group. Malloy tells Arturo that if he wants to stay, he must scream as loud as he can.
Arturo can’t believe it. When he sees that Malloy is serious, he produces a weak little scream.
“That’s not enough to stay!” Malloy shouts. “Yell! Blow some soul! You’re a prisoner! Break the barrier. You want to stay? Yell!”
Arturo produces another weak scream. Malloy goes face-to-face with Arturo, screaming, “When you’re here, your job is to be here! How come you’re all tied up?”
Arturo starts to sob.
“Yell, ‘Screw you, John!’ Yell it three times.”
“SCREW YOU, JOHN!” Arturo shouts three times. Malloy relaxes and sits down.
“Are you mad at me?” he asks Arturo, and Arturo nods through his tears.
“I’m not your problem, Arturo,” Malloy says. “I’m showing you what your problem is.”
“Elizabeth, what do you think of the way I treated Arturo?” Malloy asks the small, beautiful girl who, characteristically, shrugs her shoulders and drops her eyes. “Elizabeth, you’ve got to learn to contribute,” Malloy says, picking up a contract that he reads to the girl. To stay, she must complete 10 hours of volunteer work in the next two weeks. She must also complete a family journal that will be kept confidential. At that, Elizabeth balks.
“I don’t want to write things down about my mom,” she says. “All we do is fight.”
“Are you willing to change that pattern? To teach her not to yell? To carry herself with some grace?” Malloy asks.
“I don’t know how!” Elizabeth wails.
“You’ll learn. You have an advantage over your mom, you have all of us to help you,” Malloy says.
Malloy takes his time with each student, explaining exactly how the staff reached its decision. There is no boilerplate in the contracts; each has been tailored to the individual. Malloy tells the students to think about what is in the contract and discuss it with their parents. If they decide this school is not for them, there will be no hard feelings. The staff will help them find a new school.
When Malloy gets to Gustavo, he produces a letter saying that the staff has dropped him from the program, but before he can read it, Paul Viramontes interrupts. Although Gustavo has not turned in one homework assignment, Viramontes says he is willing to function as his mentor, to call him every evening and the first thing every morning, if Gustavo will make up the work he has missed.
“You’ve had two weeks to get focused. Why haven’t you?” Malloy asks.
“I’ve been adjusting to living with my brother,” Gustavo says.
“You’re putting it all on him. What have you been doing?”
Gustavo is silent.
“I’m not willing to work a brick,” Randy Klein says. “I’m not going to work with someone who can’t save himself.”
Huge tears start rolling down Gustavo’s cheeks. The tattoos seem meaningless, a farce. This is a sad, lonely boy.
“I want to stay,” Gustavo says, choking out the words. “I...like...it...here.”
Malloy and the staff decide that Gustavo will spend the next week working on his missed assignments with Viramontes. If he completes them, he will be readmitted.
“You wouldn’t respect us if we gave it to you free,” Malloy says, and Gustavo nods.
Finally, only Dan is left. Malloy apologizes for taking so long to get to him, then reads Dan a letter. Dan has been unproductive, argumentative, selective in his participation. The staff is dropping him from the school. Dan’s head drops to his chest.
“This is not meant to hurt you, it’s meant to hold you responsible. How you handle this bitter disappointment will go a long way to determining how you live the rest of your life,” Malloy says.
“You didn’t give me a chance,” Dan says.
“You didn’t let me teach you,” Malloy counters.
“There’s kids you kept who did less than me,” Dan says.
“This was your choice, Dan,” Malloy says.
“No it’s not, it’s your choice,” Dan says, and there is fury in his voice.
“What you do next is your choice. You can cut us out of your life or we can help you make the next step. It’s up to you.”
Without a word, Dan stands up and leaves the room. Malloy exhales a long slow breath and suddenly looks exhausted.
“Sometimes, a kid has to lose something he cares about before the gears start to mesh and he starts to store wisdom,” Malloy says. “Dan was poking holes in our boat and the boat is leaving shore.”
No one says anything. The staff is as drained as Malloy. They have been in the room for more than four hours.
“Classes begin tomorrow,” Randy Klein finally says to no one in particular.
“That’s right, classroom work officially begins tomorrow,” Mike Smith adds.
“It’s going to be a good year,” Malloy says. “I like this group. A lot of great kids.”
Epilogue
Chris, the tagger who ran away, was picked up by the police and returned home. Chris will not be returning to the Foundry this semester.
Gustavo, the young man who came within an eyelash of getting kicked out, did all his homework on a computer and is back in the Foundry. Except for occasionally arriving late, he is doing well.
Elizabeth and Arturo have come out of their shells. Elizabeth recently completed a three-day backpacking trip where she eagerly pitched tents and cleaned pots. Arturo is becoming an accomplished boxer. Recently, he did to Gustavo what John Malloy had done to him: He made Gustavo scream.
Reprinted with permission of the author, John Hubner.