AN EMPTY DESK THAT HAUNTS ME

I've been teaching more than 20 years. So you don't have to tell me. I already know. A teacher can't reach every student. It's impossible. Too many factors affect a student's life - environment, genetics, personality, past experiences.  Just to name a few.

Plus, by the time students enter my college freshmen classes, most of their beliefs and patterns are already on their way to being set. No, they're not carved in stone yet. But it takes weeks of gently chipping away at their disbeliefs in order for relearning -- or unlearning - to take root.

Anyway, forget all of the above. What I wrote there is nothing but theoretical mumbo jumbo when it comes down to it.  Because no matter how hard I worked in this class, I  lost him.

Last week, through campus e-mail, I found out why his desk remained empty: "As of today, your student B. has been suspended. Please post his final grade as a 'W' for withdrawal."

Withdrawal - how ironic to give that mark to this particular student. In the past few weeks, he seemed on the brink of breaking into his own. I could tell. He showed genuine interest in the literary themes of the course: the mistreatment of Native Americans, injustice and racism in America, the complicit silences surrounding Hitler's demonic plan to eliminate the Jewish race.

"People act a certain way because of the place they grow up in," B. said the last time he sat in his desk. "We like to blame Germans soldiers and white people down in the South, but who says we're any different. Everybody goes along with what they learn from their culture."

I nodded. Then I began chipping away. So did he agree that our past determines who we are, and we can't change that? He shrugged and said maybe. Maybe not. He wasn't sure.  A few other students quickly joined the discussion.

"Well, I for one am not going to be defined by where I grew up," one young man said. "There's no way I'm going to be like everyone in my small, pathetic Maine town. That's why I came to college. It's my ticket outta there."

I nodded and glanced at B.  His eyes were closed. He was never his best on Friday mornings. Still, I hoped he was listening. That message about college being the ticket to achieving one's dreams, it held truth for him.

I had B. last semester, too, so I knew a little bit about his world before college. A world not like most towns in southern New Hampshire. As I recall, he came from a tough place in New York. The Bronx or Brooklyn. I forget which. I also knew he received a high school hockey scholarship to a private boarding school outside of the city.

Last semester, he wrote an essay about that experience. At first, he didn't fit in there. He loved rap. Everybody else liked some dude called John Mayer. He wore baggy jeans. Everybody else wore khakis and pricey Polo's. Eventually, though, he adjusted.

"But I didn't change who I was for them," his essay concluded. "They came around to me."

From his writings, I knew B. had potential. He may have lacked some technical skills, but his thinking was clear. He didn't just know facts; he knew about life and making connections.  He also knew how to play the game so that he could slip by.

But college isn't about slipping by. Or adjusting. It's about changing what you really need to change and unlearning what you need to unlearn in order to discover what really matters. And I know B. was within inches from discovering these truths.

Somehow, though, I failed to catch him before he slipped silently out of his desk.