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Starting in 1983, I taught writing for six years at South Boston High, the school that became famous in the 1970s over court-ordered desegregation of the Boston Public Schools. My students had the lowest literacy rates in Massachusetts, and the most dynamic voices I'd ever heard. I published their autobiographical stories and photographs in an annual magazine called Mosaic, which the City's public schools used as texts for Reading & Writing and ESL classes.
One day, when Zobeida Garcia told me that she was failing biology, I told her to meet me after school at a quarter-to-three. We could do her homework together.
But Zobeida didn't show up.
The next day, I asked her, "What happened? You said you'd come to my office at a quarter-to-three."
"I don't know that time," she smiled sweetly. "I only know digital."
This was 1986.
How on Earth, I wondered, would this girl survive?
The cluelessness, it turns out, was on me.
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