A Day in the Life of the Class of 2000
In 1996, as part of the Post-Gazette's 12-year coverage of the Class of 2000 at Northgate High School, I spent a hectic, exhausting, typical school day with a handful of growing 8th graders.
The Opening bell
In the front lobby of Northgate Junior/Senior High School is an adult's worst nightmare.
At 7:45 maybe 100 kids — ages 12 through 18, grades seven through 12 — are standing in sex-segregated circles of five and six, socializing like there's no tomorrow.
Most of them are innocently talking, laughing or lightly jagging around. But near the door to the main office, a boy and girl are engaged in a 15-minute slow-dance of teen love.
Kissing, hugging and groping as if they were all alone, the twosome — and their less libidinous schoolmates — are enjoying their last few minutes of adult-free time before the bell will ring to start day No. 150-something of the 1995-96 school year.
Scattered somewhere in the lobby's sea of Levi's, Nikes and No Fear T-shirts are many members of Northgate's Class of 2000 — 145 eighth-graders like Chris Biswick, Andy Blazek, Chenoa Stock, Keri Jones, Anthony Di Lembo and Tom McDowell.
The Post-Gazette has been writing stories about these and other members of the Class of 2000 every year since they entered Bellevue's Lincoln Elementary in 1989. That year, the PG focused on 21 children in Mrs. Fischer's first-grade class. Today, only 11 of those original kids go to North-gate Junior/Senior High School, where they are turning 14 and finishing eighth grade.
Though boys like Chris Biswick have sprouted into giants and others have acquired Nixonian facial hair, acne, bad attitudes and even run-ins with the law, most of the Class of '00 still look like typical baby-faced middle schoolers.
They come from either Bellevue or Avalon, unassuming communities along the Ohio River and Route 65 where neighborhoods are tight, tidy and safe. They share parallel lives in and out of school.
At home they watch "The Simpsons" and "Friends" and "My So-Called Life." They play computer games like Doom and Solitaire or rent favorite movies like "Speed," "Pulp Fiction" and "A Walk in the Clouds." They listen to alternative bands like Bush or Live, metal bands like ACDC or punk pioneers like the Ramones. They read Seventeen and Sports Illustrated but not Sassy and Time and certainly not many big books, unless they're part of a school project.
After almost two years inside Northgate, they know the ropes. They also are beginning to formulate opinions. Ask them what's good about school and some will tell you it is nice and the teachers are good. Or that they like the dress code and that they're trusted more and given more freedom as eighth-graders.
But ask some of them what's bad about school and they'll tell you that, too. They'll repeat the timeless school-boy-trapped-in-a-prison complaints that school stinks, that they hate being locked up all day. Or that teachers give out too much homework and the cafeteria food tastes like Styro-foam.
But they also will tell you there are too many fights and troublemakers. Or that teachers grade you on your behavior, not on your abilities. And one perceptive eighth-grader, an admitted troublemaker and underachiever, has learned at least one lesson.
"People start to judge you. They know what kind of person you are. If they like you, they'll treat you like you're one of their friends. If they don't, they'll make your life a living hellhole."
Yet, whatever their in-school experiences, out of school the Class of 2000 is beginning to engage in the serious social activities of teendom. They are acquiring boyfriends and girlfriends. They are venturing on their own at night to rock concerts and Pirates games. They are riding around with older kids in cars and discovering alcohol and mariju-. . .
Ding, dong, ding, dong
Ding, dong, ding, dong
At exactly 8 a.m., an electronic version of the chimes of Westminster resounds over the school's PA system like a giant doorbell. The kids react instantly, emptying the lobby in seconds and disappearing down hallways.
Loud chimes and phone-like tones such as this "outside bell" will go off 26 times throughout the seven-hour school day. That includes nine 42-minute class periods, nine four-minute class-changing periods and three 30-minute lunchtimes.
It’s complicated, and the pace is hectic. To a visitor unfamiliar with the world of schooling, the idea of making human beings move around a building all day in response to musical tones seems like a mad scientist's cruel lab experiment. But to the students it's an everyday reality, as unquestioned as sunrise.
As a few late arrivals trickle in the front door, Matt Dilmore, who had been shooting baskets in the gym with a hundred students or so, makes his way to first period.
For the fourth straight day, he and 21 other eighth-graders are going to spend their first two periods taking the California Achievement Tests, a comprehensive standardized test that can't be studied for, goes on their permanent record and wears them out.
Everyone knows the drill. As the period begins at 8:05, the classroom is silent. Lou Petrone, a social studies veteran of 28 years at Northgate, begins going over the sample questions for Test 8, Study Skills.
At 8:10 — eyes down, pencils up — they start. Eventually they will work their way in 30-minute chunks through Test 9 (Science) and Test 10 (Social Studies). Finishing a section early, Matt whips out his pre-algebra textbook and does a few problems on ordered pairs that he knows will be due the next week "just to get them out of the way."
Two rows away, 6-foot-3, 230-pound Chris Biswick is also finished. He pulls out the sports page of the Post-Gazette, something he admits he doesn't otherwise do too often. A lovable, gentle giant among his peers, he says the CAT test is "both easy and hard." He doesn't like taking tests, but feels no pressure. "I just put down answers," he says.
At 9:17, Matt finishes the last part of the test and gets permission from Mr. Petrone to go to the audio-visual room, where he keeps his locker and where he usually goes instead of study hall.
The AV room's library of videos makes its own statement about the age Matt and his classmates are growing up in. The inventory ranges from "Singing in the Rain" to health videos on AIDS and teen pregnancy. The room's electronic gadgetry controls everything from the school's satellite dish to the PA system and the chimes.
By any measure, Matt is an impressive young man. Just 14, he already has achieved adult-level people skills. Bright, articulate, wiseguy-funny and blessed early with near-professional cartooning talent, he's already figured out how to work the school system to his own advantage.
The reason for Matt's savvy is probably part genetic, part experience and part political: His father is the mayor of Avalon and his grandfather is a school board member. Matt is used to being around adults and it shows, particularly in the overly familiar way he interacts in class with some teachers, whom he treats as equals whether they appreciate it or not.
Likewise, it's a good bet that not all of his classmates' parents appreciate Matt's special relationship with the school system. But to an outside observer there's no denying that he seems like a great kid any parent would be proud to own and operate.
Not surprisingly, Mart's made the honor roll for each of the school's three nine-week grading periods. Yet he'll be the first to tell you "there's more to life than being a bookworm." His life is rich with opportunity in and out of school. His dad takes him frequently to Dapper Dan dinners and Steelers games and has promised to drive him to Cleveland if the reunited Sex Pistols tour stops there.
Mart's schedule today would test the endurance of a Fortune 500 CEO. Up at 6:30. Breakfast of Berry Berry Kicks, toast and orange juice. At school by 7:15. Shoot hoops in the gym till 8. Attend seven hours of classes. Basketball practice at Lincoln Ele-mentary's gym from 3 to 4. Baseball batting practice from 5 to 6. Dinner. Then off to the Pirates game with ...
Ding, dong, ding, dong
It's 9:42 — four minutes to get to third period, which in Matt's case means back to Mr. Petrone's homeroom for World Geography, where he and 25 students will be taking their weekly test.
Mr. Petrone, who survived the open classrooms experiment at Northgate decades ago, is all business. His class has been studying North Africa all week. Now it's time to see what they've learned. Thirty-four questions, matching and multiple choice: What's Egypt's most industrialized city? What modern country was ancient Carthage in?
Mr. Petrone says this class is a mixed bunch, which means it includes gifted students and learning disabled students, yet it is one of his better classes. How are their grades?
So far in this nine-week period, 227 total points have been up for grabs. Ten kids out of 26 have scored under 70 percent, or about 158. The lowest score is 106. Matt has 196. But seven kids are over 200, including Chenoa Stock, a straight-A student from Bellevue whose parents are Presbyterian ministers. She is second-highest with 221.
Chenoa is another dream student. A good musician who plays piano and clarinet, she wants to be a teacher some day. Last year, she had no interest in or time for boys, but this year's been different. She and her best friend, Keri Jones of Avalon, each had and lost their first semi-serious boyfriends this year.
Both of their boy relationships were low-key and did nothing to erode their friendship. They didn't go to parties or dances with their beaus, but they did take in some movies as a foursome in downtown Bellevue. Chenoa broke up with her boyfriend — a 10th-grader at Northgate — after 2 1/2 months.
Meanwhile, Keri had logistical problems. Her boyfriend, an eighth-grader, lived in (the nearby community of) Avonworth. Without a car, seeing him was...
Ding, dong, ding, dong
At 10:28, Mr. Petrone's period chimes to an end. Matt, Chenoa and the rest of the students spring from their seats and fly out the door. The next stop for them is Earl Marker's science class, where diagrams and formulas for things like phenol and toluene await them on the blackboard.
Despite the fact that Mr. Marker is asking questions about organic compounds, class participation is high. Matt not only often answers questions, he emits a series of clever quips, one or two of which are at the expense of Mr. Marker, a lively, easygoing teacher whose student-engaging style includes jokes and gentle sarcasm.
Mr. Marker, who's been at Northgate since 1977, is completely believable when he says, "Aren't eighth-graders great!?"
He's thrilled with his current crop. They take anything he throws at them. They study hard, prepare well for tests and are smarter than ever, but he says there's a downside.
"In terms of general knowledge, they're much brighter, no question about it. They're much more worldly and their concept of good and bad has changed considerably for the worse. If you can get away with it, it's OK. If you lie and get away with it, it's fine. You didn't have that 30 years ago. But in terms of pure intelligence, I wouldn't want to go back."
Ding, dong, ding, dong
It's off to fifth period — lunch. A raucous sit-down affair, it is served en masse to seventh- and eighth-graders from 11:18 to 11:48 in the bottom-floor cafeteria. Cost: $1.10. Random review from an eighth-grader — The burgers are always nasty.
The noise level is about what you'd expect from 300 young teens letting off steam in one big room: insanely loud. But Julie Trapold, a visiting freshman from Avonworth High School, doesn't notice. Julie, who is going to Chenoa Stock's classes with her as part of an exchange program, says the noise is no less at her school. She says Avonworth is smaller (600 students vs. Northgate's 715) and not as nice as Northgate, and it has longer class periods.
Perhaps it is only a coincidence, but on this afternoon, when the media is watching him, Matt Dilmore decides, with great fanfare, to try to break his own eighth-grade record of eating 10 ice cream cups at one sitting. And he does thanks in part to several boys who deliver ice cream cups and cups of water to help wash it down.
Being an eighth-grader has one important advantage over seventh-graders during lunch after you eat you can go outside. Most eighth-graders stay in, however, electing to eat and yell at their tables until the sound of the lunch tone, which — though inaudible to an untrained adult ear under the din — quickly clears the cafeteria.
Ding, dong, ding, dong
At 11:52, as Mr. Ron Robertson's sixth-period shop class officially begins, everyone's already donned their work smocks. Yelling over the sound of sanders and saws being used by other students in the beautifully equipped workroom, Mr. Robertson gives everyone a quick drum-sander demonstration.
Then he tells everyone to start work on their nine-week project — a partially built wooden step stool. Matt Dilmore finds a scraper and starts working to remove a thick line of excess glue on his stool top. Tom McDowell, wearing enormously baggy jeans that hang precariously from his rear-end, tries to get Mr. Robertson's attention, but can't. Tom settles for some measuring advice from Chris Biswick.
Meanwhile, Chenoa and Julie of Avonworth are getting an individualized band-saw lesson from Mr. Robertson, who emphasizes safety and technique in that order.
As Chris is showing Chenoa how to use the drum sander, Mr. Robertson calls everyone around a work table and delivers a mini-lecture/lesson he says he's already explained two or three times: How to make sure the grain of the wood is going in the right direction.
To get one antsy, distracted boy to listen more closely, Mr. Robertson taps him lightly on the top of his head with a combination square. The boy, not injured but visibly humiliated, acts like he has been beheaded. When he gets a little lippy, Mr. Robertson banishes him to a far corner of the shop.
As the period ends, everyone is still hard at work. Mr. Robertson is at the surface planer. Chenoa is at the drum sander. Matt is still scraping glue. Julie of Avonworth is watching Tom use a ruler and combination square to draw a . . .
Ding, dong, ding, dong
It's 12:34. Tools and smocks are put away until Monday's shop class, and everyone heads for Period 7.
For Matt and Chenoa, that means an English composition lab, where a junior high school yearbook is being created as a way to provide seventh and eighth graders with something of their own.
For Chris Biswick, who spent the entire shop period planing a piece of wood, seventh period means special education class with Mr. Hurley. Rich Hurley, who has Chris four periods a day, used to be called a “special education teacher.” Now he's called a “learning support teacher.”
No more than eight learning disabled students are ever in Mr. Hurley's mini-class room at one time. English and reading are the toughest challenges for his students, who have to be tested to get into the program.
Mr. Hurley works at his students' ability levels, not their grade levels. Chris and the others often bring their tests from their regular classes to Mr. Hurley's room, where he helps them by making sure they understand all the questions and providing some helpful hints.
Ordinarily, seventh period would be an English class for Chris and the others. But today it's an open class, or study hall, which for several of the kids means watching a visiting reporter ask them and their teacher questions.
Mr. Hurley, who's also Northgate's offensive line coach, can't wait till next year to get his hands on Chris, who played on the junior high team last fall.
Chris, who hopes to play football someday at Penn State or Ohio State, is the friendly, good-natured son of a steel worker. His best friend in and out of school is Andy Blazek, who has lived across the street from him all his life. When Chris decided he no longer liked his curly hair, it was Andy who shaved it off for him.
Chris and Andy spend a lot of time together. Andy's family has taken Chris on family vacations. On Saturdays, the pair will often buy a $3 all-day PAT bus pass and go exploring at all the malls, Ross Park to Century III. Sometimes they ride their bikes to Westview.
A few weeks ago, after dinner at Hooter's, they went with a friend of Chris' dad to a Ramone's concert at Station Square. The mosh pit was crazy and beer was flying everywhere. They were home safe and sound at 10:30, but one of Andy's teachers told him it was no place for eighth-graders.
"It's true , to an extent," he admits, "but we still need to have our own fun."
Chris and Andy each have gotten in trouble at school this year. One icy night Chris had to call his father for a ride, so he sneaked into the teachers' lounge. Principal Caldwell caught him and gave him two days of in-school suspension, which Chris says is worse than being kicked out of school because you have to spend two days by yourself in a room where you can't talk, can't sleep and can't eat except for lunch.
Andy's brush with the school law was more serious. During class, a friend of his was going through Andy's book bag and pulled out a Swiss Army fishing knife. Ordinarily, school rules say that anyone caught with a knife is to be expelled for a year. But Andy was only tossed out for five days.
Ding, dong, ding, dong
1:20. Time to head for eighth-period gym with Mr. Latta. Northgate's gym is big and beautiful. Gym classes are held twice a week and include everything from swimming instruction to floor hockey, flag football to volleyball.
By the time 21 girls and nine boys in red gym snorts and white T-shirts emerge from their locker rooms, line up for attendance and run/trot/walk two ragged laps, more than 10 minutes of class time are already gone.
Next come jumping jacks. The participation rate is low. Tom McDowell is still wearing his ridiculously baggy and low-hanging jeans, untied basketball shoes and a No. 42 University of North Carolina jersey. Tom and several others merely clap their hands together a couple of times.
After a minute or two of stretching exercises, Mr. Latta re-creates the game situation from an unfinished Wiffle ball game the class was playing last time it met. As the game begins and Sylvia Marino and Kim Glowczewski await their turns at bat, the two see an opportunity to expose to an outsider what they say is their "really sexist school."
The boys have all kinds of sports, they complain passionately. But seventh- and eighth-grade girls only have basketball and cheerleading. Girls want their own softball teams. They love their school. They love their teachers. But the boys get all the breaks. There's a double standard on dress code. Girls can't wear short shirts that leave their stomachs bare because it distracts the boys — but look at Tom's pants hanging down. And chain wallets — the core of the alternative music style —are forbidden.
The game proceeds. Tom, whose natural athleticism is unhampered by his street clothes, pitches the softball-sized plastic ball and Mr. Latta catches. Boys and girls alternate at bat. A boy powers a long fly-ball out off the ceiling. Somebody hits a triple.
The game proceeds. Brian Kunst hits an error-aided "home run." Matt Dilmore gets on on a fielder's choice. Tom hits a double and then is thrown out at home on a questionable call.
In deep right field, a group of five girls are chatting with each other, oblivious to the action. Mr. Latta tells them to get in the game. Later he tells a girl sitting on the outfield floor to stand up. After maybe three full innings, gym ends, as all periods must, with a . . .
Ding, dong, ding, dong
Ninth and final period. Time for Chenoa Stock, Tom McDowell, Andy Blazek and Kim Glowczewski to take Pennsylvania History class in Mr. Marcellus' home room. Ed Marcellus, 30, is just about every eighth-grader's favorite. The social studies teacher conducts six. classes a day, and every class is an energized and impressive performance.
Enthusiastic, upbeat, he keeps his students interested and on their toes. This Friday afternoon, after his class watches the final minutes of "Jeremiah Johnson," which he used to show them what real mountain men were like, he shows the video of "Last of the Mohicans."
The Daniel Day-Lewis movie is set in the 1750s, the era he's covering in the Pennsylvania History text. But like everything else that goes on in Marcellus' class, watching a video is no passive exercise.
Standing in the back of the darkened room, he broadcasts a steady stream of background information and questions. "The movie starts in the third year of the French and Indian War ... out of Pennsylvania, in New York, near Canada . . . nineteen years before the Revolutionary War ... It was fought over an important piece of land. What was it? Tom?"
"Downtown?"
"Close: The Point. Think, think, think. If you control the mouth of the Ohio, you can go down the Ohio to the Mississippi to New Orleans This is a great soundtrack for you kids in the band. . . . He's carrying a Pennsylvania rifle. Daniel Day-Lewis is 6-2, 6-4. Look how big the gun is. We'll talk about that in the next chapter...."
Mr. Marcellus never shuts up. When the girls groan at the death of the hunted elk, he tells them they can cover their eyes and then starts talking about the bore of the rifle and how the Indians respected nature and how we'll build a Swedish log home in class and how the fur traders started the idea of scalping and...
Tom McDowell asks to be excused and is given permission, but Marcellus doesn't miss a beat. He's seen the movie six, eight times, and it shows. The students watch quietly. As he's telling them that General Braddock and his troops were ambushed near Kennywood just like the British redcoats in the movie, the...
Ding, dong, ding, dong
Faster than Mr. Marcellus can stop the tape with his remote, half of his class is out the door, headed for their lockers and halfway home. It's already been a long, hard school day for Matt, Chenoa, Keri, Chris, Andy and Tom and the rest of the Class of 2000, but it's far from over. Friday night fun and games and freedom lie ahead. And there'll be no more bells ringing in their ears till Monday.
Epilogue
Four weeks later, the everyday routine of school-day 170-something at Northgate was shattered by news of a horrible tragedy. The day before Memorial Day Chris Biswick's father, Eugene, had killed himself with a shotgun at the Avalon Athletic Field. Chris' best friend Andy Blazek said Chris was "hanging in there and taking it pretty well" and everyone at school felt terribly sorry for Chris, his mother and brother, Jason. Chris' father was 48.
Remembering the Class of 2000
In the year 2000 the Post-Gazette writers who had followed the lives of the Class of 2000 were asked to sum up our experiences. I spent time with the kids — who are now nearly age 40 — when they were in the seventh and eighth grades. I wrote this, which is basically an op-ed complaining about the prison-like conditions that kids are subjected to in public schools:
On any given day, most parents and educators would have been pleased to death by what they saw at Northgate Junior/Senior High School. But not me.
As the father of three home-schooled kids, including my daughter, Billie, an honorary member of the Class of 2000, I was not pleased much by what I saw at Northgate.
It had nothing to do with the quality of the school building, its facilities, administrators or teachers, which were all fine. And the seventh and eighth graders I met — Chenoa Stock, Chris Biswick, Matt Dilmore and the others — were absolutely great kids.
(Remember Dilmore's name. At age 14, he already had future governor of Pennsylvania or successor to David Letterman written all over him. 2021 update: Actually, Dilmore grew up, went to Ohio U. and became a video-maker/film-maker/director specializing in TV commercials for the likes of KFC and a resident of LA/Hollywood.)
By the time I visited Northgate, however, I had come to reject most everything about our "compulsory, 19th-century factory model" of schooling.
According to most people's standards and expectations, the Class of 2000 had one of the best educations taxpayers' money could buy. But what I saw during a full day spent with some of them in the spring of 1996 did nothing to make me doubt my decision never to send our kids to school public, private or parochial.
I saw kids and adults reacting like lab animals to a doorbell-sound that gonged 26 times in seven hours and chopped the day into nine 42-minute class periods.
I saw pairs of teen-age lovebirds making out in the crowded, adult-free front lobby before school.
I saw smart kids knocking off the next day's homework in the last 10 minutes of class.
From my perspective, which is admittedly a little cynical and not exactly within the mainstream, Northgate looked and felt more like a minimum security prison for young people.
That full day of "learning" left me headachy and physically and mentally exhausted.
But to the students, those seven grueling hours were just another unmemorable school day — one of 3,560 or so school days the Class of 2000 would rack up during their 12-year educational career.