Andrew Chapin

The possibilities truly are boundless

Throwback Thursday: The Last Christmas in Manhattan

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As we prepare for our first Christmas in our new home, I thought it appropriate to set it up with a Throwback Thursday. Originally posted on December 29, 2017, The Last Christmas in Manhattan recounts all of the emotions conjured this time last year. With reality setting in that we were going to move after our lease expired, my wife and I became sappy and nostalgic. We were coming to grips with how many memories we had made at 1737 York Ave. even though that particular unit wasn’t her first choice (and was really only mine because I’m economical). 

Anyway, I don’t want to spoil it. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Manhattan bustles in the holiday season with its mesmerizing storefronts and bright displays and deals that really aren’t deals at all, with its teeming streams of shoppers and sightseers, with its luminescent lights down Park Avenue that shine in the night.

I thought maybe we would get a little pristine snow and gander it before the machines taint it in grime. But, alas, that wasn’t the case. Just the sub-20 degree temperatures as my father-in-law sends me pics of the pool he’s next to in Florida.

This year, as my wife and I were about to set up our Christmas tree and decorate for the holiday that seems to come upon us quicker and quicker each year, we had a realization. This will be our last Christmas in Manhattan for the foreseeable future.

But, why would we leave the only place my wife has ever called home, a place where our closest friends and my wife’s family reside? Because most have to leave eventually, unless of course they want to rent their whole lives away or they have indispensable cash or are willing to buy and bet that Manhattan real estate value will continue to go up even if it appears it can’t go any higher. I think that’s called a bubble.

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On Hiatus Till December

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Regretfully, I am taking a hiatus from blogging and writing until December.

Why?

Well, I’ve started a new job that is a huge adjustment – and not in a bad way. When you have grown accustomed to a certain way of teaching and a certain way of functioning at a job you have been at for a while overall, there are bound to be some bumps in the road.

And that’s okay.

I will continue to grow, adjust, and eventually flourish. I am a teacher before I am a writer, after all.

Until I get a system down and achieve a level of comfort, I would be doing my students and myself a disservice if I weren’t giving my new position my undivided attention.

So, I’ll check back in December.

Or hopefully sooner.

And then, it’s one more round of edits on KNOWING WHEN YOU’RE TOO YOUNG TO GROW UP (thanks for the help KMW Editorial ) + continuing writing THE HEROIN TIMES (thanks for the help Foday Samateh).

Hopeful for the future,

Andrew Chapin

 

Throwback Thursday: Free to Wear Sunscreen

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Originally posted on October 16, 2017, “Free to Wear Sunscreen” is Andrew Brown’s last night in Italy where he must confront a past he’s avoided for too long, a past that might break him apart from his best friend Pete Goodman. 

See the ‘Knowing When You’re Too Young to Grow Up’ tab for more information on the project. As always, feedback is STRONGLY encouraged via the contact tab or comments section.

I staggered into the single, unisex bathroom ready to float away on the Arno in my drunken mirth. It was our last dinner on our last night. And I was finally content – finally – with Ant, Pete, with myself, with all of it. For once, I smiled in the mirror, I felt like I was ahead of the curve. Before I heard a stirring whimper behind me.

I turned to the craned back heaving over the edge of the toilet seat, spindly arms shaking, her whole frail frame shaking, meek face in between. It was Becky. I didn’t even notice her when I walked in.

And I stood stuck like a stroke in a place I knew existed but could never fathom, the difference between knowing about and experiencing, the difference between staying young and growing up. So lost in her own sickness, in not eating, in sticking her finger down her throat, she looked like an exhibit in the Museum of Natural History.

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Throwback Thursday: A Reintroduction: Chapter 1

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Originally posted on August 23, 2017, in “A Reintroduction: Chapter 1” protagonist Andrew Brown begins to tell the story of his trip to Italy with his closest pals. The real story, however, is his failing relationship with his best friend Pete Goodman.

The reason?

Pete’s affair with their art teacher Ms. Benevo.

See the ‘Knowing When You’re Too Young to Grow Up’ tab for more information on the project. As always, feedback is STRONGLY encouraged via the contact tab or comments section.

Based on what I’ve heard about past travel studies, from the partying and the sneaking out to the straight up orgies, I’m going out with a bang in my senior year. Sure, we’re a real traveling circus of American allure from Balaam Academy and I’m surrounded by plenty of people who flat-out suck. But, in a place I know absolutely nothing about besides that I love the food and the women, who gives a shit? At least I’ve got my friends.

So far, though, the trip I’ve been counting down the days for, for months hasn’t gone as smoothly as I planned.

First, after my parents kicked me to the curb at the airport – couldn’t wait to get the hell away from them anyway – I saw my best friend Pete Goodman who doesn’t have time for me anymore standing at our predetermined meet-up spot with our art teacher and chaperon, his main squeeze Ms. Benevo. That’s right. Pete’s taken her down the river. A lot.

Can’t say I blame him, though. Sure, I’d just as soon slit her throat, but she’s something to look at. Not thin, not fat either – voluptuous is more like it – she’s got these curves and a little chub that’s more than compensated for by her enormous birdfeeders. If he only knew what I do.

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Billy Joel Kind of Weekend

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It’s not a fantasy. The wife and I are seeing our annual Billy Joel concert this weekend in a tradition that started when our close friends gave us tickets for our wedding.

As a Long Islandite, I’ve long been a fan – how can you not be? – but seriously if you haven’t seen this national treasure, do yourself a favor.

Even if you’re a hater who thinks he’s a hack. For a hack he’s still got it.

Even if Elton John is better.

Maybe.

Throwback Thursday: The Excuse of All Excuses

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Originally posted on October 23, 2017, “The Excuse of All Excuses” bemoans the lack of accountability from students and their parents nowadays. 

I’ve always said – and I’ll reiterate it here – that I have much more respect for the student who owns his/her behavior and choices; that’s the first step to understanding and improving. 

If only all kids were given that chance.

I remember the days when a student misbehaved and you reprimanded him or her. Maybe you made a phone call home. You might’ve even made an example out of the student and kicked him or her out of class. Lessons were learned. Respect was commanded through action. Insubordination and disruption were quelled. And that was that.

Not anymore.

Teachers pretty much can’t talk in a stern voice or give detention to a wayward kid. They’re not allowed to demand a student stay on task when working on a laptop or stop disrespecting a classmate they’re trying to talk over because I guess their point is that much more profound and important – trust me, it’s likely not.

That’s obviously a bit played up, but I recently heard an obtuse account of a parent’s complaint pretty much about me because nothing is ever direct from the source where I work. Anyway, what I gathered from it was that this woman felt her son was being bullied by his insensitive teachers.

So now we call being kicked out of class bullied.

Why was he excused exactly?

Oh, because he disrespected a classmate in the midst of an explanation by interrupting him and proceeding to talk until the other student stopped. When called out on this overtly rude behavior, the boy laughed.

That’s when another student looked at him and said, “You’re dead,” as I told him to get out in no uncertain terms. Forget about disrespecting me, which I neither accept nor take lightly, but there’s no place for that lack of concern for peers in a positive learning community.

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‘For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood’

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I must admit that when I received For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Ya’ll Too from my new job as the required teacher read for the summer, my feelings were those of ambivalent indignation.

Why? Do I not respect the cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds of my students? I absolutely do, in both words and actions.

Yet, as I alluded to in “I Just Finished Reading” when I hear “white folks,” I hear it in as a pejorative phrase, which it is. Emdin supports his use of it as an allusion to Langston Hughes’s The Ways of White Folks, “stories that revolve around interactions between white and black people that can only be described as unfortunate cultural clashes…Hughes constructs a context where the societally sanctioned power that white people have over black people results in…overall outcomes that are largely unfavorable for the black characters” (15). And I can wrap my head around that, but still why the need to set up an us v. them, or an either/or paradigm? How can one bridge cultural and ethnic divides by setting up a confrontation before one even opens up the book?

‘For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood’ via Amazon.com

In my head, I bristled, Why does this have to be an exclusively-white-person problem? I’m not this type of educator. Other white educators I know aren’t either. Weren’t there also educators from minority backgrounds who failed to connect with “neoindiginous” students? Why did the narrative have to make me feel like the oppressor who for generations has deprived students of color the basic opportunity of a quality education?

Then, I had my Aha! moment. Well, actually the first of a few.

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Throwback Thursday: The Pain of Growing Up

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Originally posted on December 22, 2017, “The Paint of Growing Up” acknowledges how hard it is to be a kid, especially when faced with a tragedy most adults never have to confront.

In this piece I give the students praise they seldom hear, plaudits for comporting themselves as adults and representing their school in its toughest time. 

I mentioned in “A Letter to My Lost Student” how appropriate – really fateful – the posting of “Throwback Thursday: Letters to My First Students” was in light of what happened. I was originally going to write about how middle school-aged kids were so consciously and unconsciously cruel to one another and how it’s amazing how so many kids survive middle school.

Then, Thornton-Donovan School suffered a nearly unbearable tragedy on December 11 when one of our former students who was still very much connected to the school took her own life. Consequently, I pushed that piece of childish cruelty, for this piece had to be written first.

For years I’ve had students whose maturation and actions and accomplishments have filled my heart with pride. This is specifically the reason why I have remained at Thornton-Donovan School; this strange place has granted me the opportunity to impart above-grade-level knowledge and strategies on precocious middle schoolers to prepare them for high school. Whether they are actually granted the opportunity to apply their skills in high school is a discussion for after I leave Thornton-Donovan.

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