Read the excerpts from “Bad Boy” by Walter Dean Myers.
I was in class 6–2 and had my first male teacher, Mr. Irwin Lasher.
“You’re in my class for a reason,” he said as I sat at the side of his desk. “Do you know what the reason is?”
“Because I was promoted to the sixth grade?” I asked.
“Because you have a history of fighting your teachers,” he said. “And I’m telling you right now, I won’t tolerate any fighting in my class for any reason. Do you understand?”
“You’re a bright boy, and that’s what you’re going to be in this class.” . . .
“Mrs. Myers, I had a little problem with Walter today that I think you should know about,” he said, sitting next to her on the bench.
He called Mama by my last name, not knowing that I was an informal adoptee. Her last name was Dean, of course, but she didn’t go taken indicated that I was quite smart, but that I was going to throw it all away because of my behavior.
“We need more smart Negro boys,” he said. “We don’t need tough Negro boys.
Mr. Lasher did two important things that year. The first was that he took me out of class one day per week and put me in speech therapy for the entire day. The second thing he did was to convince me that my good reading ability and good test scores made me special.
He put me in charge of anything that needed a leader and made me coach the slower kids in reading. At the end of the year I was the one student in his class whom he recommended for placement in a rapid advancement class in junior high school.