Greenville, Mississippi
The high school I attended was rather small. I had about 45 students in my graduating class. There were around 200 students enrolled, including middle school. The academic wing consisted of a first and second floor, although the first half of the upper floor was designated for middle school and the first half of the first floor were the restrooms, art room, boiler room, and storage room. This left very few classrooms designated for high schoolers. As it was a Catholic school, money was always tight resulting in little to no heat during the notorious Maine winters. The memories of leaving school every day for four years with my nose, ears and toes frozen still haunt me. Classes were very rigorous, meaning about five hours of homework five nights a week. The workload tended to push everyone in the direction of neglecting the “little” assignments such as reading due to the lack of enjoyment mixed with other higher priorities such as an anatomy exam... After all, we had all discovered and later became dependent on the website Sparknotes which got us through countless shakespearean plays, class discussions, essays, and most importantly, helped us pass exams dedicated entirely to a specific book that almost nobody read.
As embarrassing as it is to admit this, up until second semester of my senior year I had not read a single book — little did I know that was all about to change. Without my older sister, Alexis, insisting on me actually reading the last book assigned to me, I would not have read a single book for four straight years. She had the exact same experience as me, but promised I would not regret reading this autobiography. She was right.
In the Deep Heart’s Core is an autobiography written by Michael Johnston. This man was a teacher, a graduate from an expensive prestigious college, who was taking part in the the Teachers of America program. He was assigned to Greenville High School located in Greenville, Mississippi. This was a predominantly African American and Hispanic community of poverty. As a young, dorky white male teacher, Mr. Johnston was often taken as a joke whom nobody respected for the first few years of teaching. He struggled with getting his students to sit and just simple look at the assignment he was asking them to complete, even though we all knew nobody would actually start it. Sometimes it got to the point where students would start fights between one another to be sent out of the class so they didn’t have to pay attention. He wrote about the awe inspiring stories of various students who were given little to no chance to succeed in life and how they persevered with his guidance. The fact that the stories were true made it some much more touching.
I distinctly remember sitting in my bed balling my eyes out as I read this book, but still unable to put it down. Tears stained the pages.I saw the dedication and passion Mr. Johnston had for helping these kids and I soon adapted the same feeling. I was eager to actually read for once. The autobiography was so grabbing, I felt as though I was a student at Greenville High watching all these events unfold. I felt as though I saw the transformation of empty book shelves, to shelves filled with musty used textbooks that Mr. Johnston had to buy himself for his students. I felt as though I observed the water stained ceilings and breathed in the dust floating in the air. I imagined stepping on the old, beat up, no good track that helped one student achieve a goal he presumed impossible. The girl who almost dropped out because of an unexpected pregnancy at the age of seventeen seemed to be my best friend. Car rides witnessing violent filled neighborhoods that surrounded the school with drug deals and broken homes was only an image in my mind — until it was not.
Prior to reading this book, I had committed to a mission trip through my own high school to a town call Mound Bayou, Mississippi — the poorest and oldest all African American municipality in the United States. Little did I know that Greenville was Mound Bayou’s neighbor. The coordinator of the trip happened to be an english teacher for the middle schoolers at my school, and knew all about the book and was inspired. She decided to take us to the Greenville High School. It made everything in that autobiography feel even surreal than it did just knowing it was nonfiction. Even though we did not enter the building I imagined what it would be like to walk the halls where an almost high school dropout became a well-known track star. It was so moving to be standing on the same ant-hill filled lawn, that desperately needed a rainstorm, that these students and Mr. Johnston stood on. Looking at the school I couldn’t even imagine what it must be like attending here. I would be sweating instead of freezing, and I would most definitely be in a rush to get to my next class because of how large the school was and I’d have to doge the classic fist fight. The book flashed before my eyes. I couldn’t have felt more thankful in that moment for what my experience in life has been and how I somewhat understood why the students behaved so nastily considering what their atmosphere is — both home and school. My coordinator, Mrs. Rioux, helped make this literacy moment literally come to life and further embed the individual stories that were told about various students throughout the book into my mind.
In the Deep Heart’s Core is the only book to as far back as I can remember to have me fully engaged with my nose in between the pages from cover to cover. It has taught me so many lessons about life. First, I learned never immediately categorize an assigned reading as unimportant and find an alternative to reading it because it may change your life. It made me take a step back and look at my life and how fortunate I am. I was given a opportunity to enhance my education without the obstacle of not being able to afford the application fee. It made me think of all those times where I complained about a textbook having water stains, where the Greenville High students didn’t even have a single textbook. I cringed at my own complaining of having a huge reading assignment when some students in Greenville could only read at a third grade level I had always hated to read, disregarding the fact that some people don’t have teachers and parents to help them stay on track of the level of reading they should be on. In the grand scheme of things, Mr. Johnston’s experience taught me to never take a single thing for granted, because there is always someone out there who would adore having half of the opportunities others have including a reading assignment.
