Making a connection

Dave Sanders

Mike Amari’s career as a middle school English teacher hasn’t been long, but has already had some great high points.

“Trying to keep 7th-graders interested in ‘Of Mice and Men’ can be difficult when what they’re really interested in is the girl walking by with a hall pass outside the classroom door,” says English teacher Mike Amari.

Call it the Zen of teaching adolescents — trying to win their minds while their heads are all over the place — “It’s something you learn to work with, and something I’m still working with,” Amari says.

“No matter how hard you try to tell them the important thing is education, they’re starting to date, are interested in boys or girls, that’s where they’re at, and it isn’t going to go away,” says this third-year teacher at Brooklyn’s IS 78.

Amari remembers being exactly the same way as a student at Brooklyn’s IS 240.

There is hope, however, according to Amari, who did just fine at Brooklyn’s PS 197 before adolescence hit, and did just fine at James Madison HS.

Hope lies in telling kids that nobody really likes junior high school and has 100-percent-good memories of it.

Hope lies in sharing himself with his students at the beginning of the year, telling them he’s into boxing and archery, is big on technology and video games, and that he likes a lot of the same movies and super heroes they probably like.

“They’ll always ask questions at the beginning of the year about my interests and I’m transparent,” Amari said. “That motivates them to listen to me, to pay attention, and then later to listen to what I have to say on other topics.”

He finds that this encourages more open dialog and kids don’t retreat into the classic adolescent stance of stony withdrawal.

And hope lies in technology. Amari feels strongly that using smartboards and computers captures students’ interest and gives relevance to the classroom.

“You walk into a lot of schools and see either nonexistent technology or hopelessly outdated technology,” he says. “I’m lucky in that I have forward-thinking people around me who are open to new ideas about keeping this a tech-savvy school.”

Not to discount the power of good old, low-tech books.

Reading is one of the most exciting aspects of Amari’s classroom.

He starts with basic young adult literature at level, such as “The Giver” by Lois Lowry.

Then he’ll step it up and say it’s time to read their first adult novel, assigning either Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” or “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes.

“They’re much more interested when they find out it’s not a kid’s book,” he says.

“The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton, about street gangs in the 1950s, works wonders for 8th-graders, and a class of mostly boys went crazy for William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.”

Amari always ends the year with John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”

As much as he loves teaching, Amari never set out to be a teacher.

After graduating from Brooklyn College with a degree in creative writing, he got a job as a graphic artist — another talent of Amari’s — in the private sector.

“It was a good job, a great career. But I hated it. I was sleepwalking through my days,” he says.

Amari woke up, however, when he started tutoring his co-workers’ children, prepping them for the SATs or other high-stakes tests or just helping them with their papers.

“I realized I was enjoying it a whole lot more than my job and started looking for an affordable way to get my master’s,” he says.

Amari became a Teaching Fellow in 2007, got married, became a father and began his career, which has already had some great high points.

“I once had a student who had issues at home and school, and was left back once or twice,” Amari says. “We became close. He’d come to school even earlier than the teachers because he had nowhere else to go. We’d meet and talk.”

This year the boy came back to visit the school with good news. He was living upstate with relatives, going to a high school affiliated with the United States Military Academy at West Point, and aims to go to the academy.

“This was a kid who hadn’t even seen himself graduating from junior high school,” says Amari. “Now he’s doing well and he came back here to thank me. That was the biggest moment for me this year.”