HSAS-nostalgia. HS AStalgia…
You know what “nostalgia” is. And Ostalgie is nostalgia for the east (in German), like for the chunky crosswalk man from East Berlin, pictured above, who’s going through a revival (he’s called Ampelman).
But HS Astalgia? Yup.
In 2002 they opened the school, but not the building. We were upstairs.
Upstairs?
Yup, upstairs in the APEX. An office, 4 classrooms, a teachers’ lounge on one side, and a program roomlet – teensy – and a counselor’s office on the other side of the hall, with a fresh chlorine breeze. The bio labs were on the 3rd floor of Gillet. I think it was Friedman right from the start, but it’s a little fuzzy.
You’d recognize a few teachers – me, Mansdorf, Murphy, we’re still around. Rice, of course. I don’t know if you guys knew Ms. Fiorello, who taught bio, but I’m sure you’ve seen Villani around. She taught Spanish and Italian that year. Schulman was our part-time PE teacher. And there was no dean at first, and then Mansdorf did it intermittently the second half of the year.
Ms. Garcia was there from the start, and so was Ms. Flintall. Ms. Fiore signed up during that first year. Ms. Luftman was principal, you’ve probably seen her once or twice, but she had retired before you started. The counselor was Vergalee Taylor, who was gone the next September. There was no Assistant Principal, although Olivieri had done work over the summer, including setting up the first round of programs and schedules.
The classes only met three times a week – but anywhere from 58 to 70 something minutes. Each teacher except me and Fiorello taught Research, which looked nothing like what you do today (well, maybe Rice’s was a little like today’s).
We started with sixty-odd students, and sixty odd students is more or less what I remember. Along the way we lost some and gained some. Tiffany Boccagno, did she ever show up? Melissa Seymour, that may have been her name, transferred to HSMSE@CCNY and seems to have done quite well – she left before she made any friends. Annie Bermudez was only here freshman year. Melissa Singh, she made her way to JFK, but I don’t know what happened after that – I saw her at some of our basketball games over the years.
It was weird having only one grade. They really had their classes with the same kids all day – and I think the classes only mixed a very little. PE was the whole school, and so was lunch, so teachers could hang together if they wanted to when the kids were all gone, but I don’t remember that happening so much.We all had 100% of the kids, so we could talk and compare very easily. The first parent teacher conferences, I think all but one or two of the parents came. We were in the East Dining room, one big circle, and they just lined up. (that’s what I remember, someone else might remember differently).
Sturbridge was fun. I think Irina was in my group. And I remember Darren being disappointed when the blacksmith wouldn’t stay in character. Mansdorf trained the freshmen to shout down opinions they disagreed with – and the town meeting was a zoo. Boston, all of us went except Ms. Luftman. We went to Fenway that year, first and last time. We sat in deep right, foul, with an obstructed view. Jeffrey and Paul B and probably Phil and some others I am forgetting wrote the name of the other team (Royals) on their t-shirts, and got into throwing things fights with some adult Red Sox fans. Uncomfortable. Plus it was cold. Plus none of us really cared about the game. Some of the rooms stayed up way too late playing video games, and I remember Jordan R falling asleep on the trolley ride – to the walking tour. We never did the walking tour after that year (I kind of liked it, but I was alone) – lot’s of walking tired kids around.
It was a challenging year for teachers. We all came from places where there were rules, structures, procedures. But we were from 5 different schools, and adjusting to changes would have been one thing, but creating those structures when we had different ideas about what they should be was something else. We had different rules and expectations, graded in different ways, had different ways of dealing with academic and behavioral issues. At least lateness wasn’t an issue – there really wasn’t anywhere to hide – and there were no lockers to hang out by.
The classes were too long, and met too infrequently (in the Spring Ms. Rice and I discussed a few schedule ideas, and I fleshed some out and presented them. The faculty chose one of the proposals, which is still pretty much our schedule today.
Maybe some of the teachers were working off old curricula – but I am not sure. Me, I was making it up as I went along – calendars, Homework A/B and B/C, posters, Ghost the Bunny, everything. We bought a book that had been used in my high school, back in the day (that means a real long time ago).
But even with all the bumpiness, the newness, and the nervousness, it felt like we had a school rolling forward.
