HIS DAILY CHECK-IN
Istarted the second semester of tenth grade on February 1, 1978. On February 2, when I woke up to go to school, my mother didn’t. She had passed away in her sleep during the night. After we laid my mother to rest, I went back to school, but I didn’t care much to be there at all.
Since it was a new semester, my teachers didn’t know me very well. My English teacher, Mr. Goldberg, would ask the class questions and call
on people to answer. When he called on me, he’d pretty much be waking me up from wherever my mind would be. I’d say, “’Scuse me? What was that?” He’d ask me again, and I’d have the correct answer.
One day, he asked me to meet him after class. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” he said. “You always seem lost. Your mind is always someplace else during class, but you know all the answers.”
I told him the reason I came to school every day was because my mother made me. Now that she wasn’t here, I didn’t really feel the need to go anymore.
Then he said, “Well, just do me a favor. I want you to meet me in my office during sixth period.” So I met him, just to talk. Afterward, he said, “Meet me tomorrow, same time.” This went on and on, every single day. He had me meet him during his prep period. I would help him grade papers, and we would talk.
When open-school night came, I went with my sister, who had just graduated from the same school, because I had no one else to go with. My social studies teacher wouldn’t talk to her, because he thought it was some kind of trick. Mr. Goldberg happened to be outside the room, so he came in
After my mother passed away, I didn’t care much about going to school.
and said, “Wait a minute! Talk to her. I’ll explain later.”
In fact, Mr. Goldberg went around to all my classes and talked to all my teachers. He said, “If you have any issue with Maxie Jones, come to me.”
The next year, he did the same thing. I met with him every day, and he talked to all my teachers about whatever was going on with me. Again, he told them, “If you’ve got any problem with Maxie, come and talk to me.”
By the time I graduated from high school, I had never missed a single day of school.
At my graduation, Mr. Goldberg told me, “This feels funny. I teach tenth graders, not seniors, so I never come to the graduation.”
“Well, why are you here?” I asked. He replied, “Because I wouldn’t miss seeing you graduate for anything in the world.”
It took me years before I realized what he had done. I graduated from high school in the top 15 percent of my class. I had a Regents Scholarship and a full ride to college. The truth is, I was always academically capable of that. But at 15—having lost my mother and not really seeing the value of education—i was in line to be a statistic, a high school dropout. I realized that the reason I showed up to school every single day was because somebody there was expecting to see me. That somebody was Mr. Goldberg.