Jigsaw Pieces

(Trigger warning story contains references to Sexual violence, Mental health, Substance abuse, and physical violence.)

If Marcus could build a Mount Rushmore of the educators who had shaped his mind, they would be James Randi, Carl Sagan, Martin Gardner, Frederick Douglass - and Stephen Hayes. The last name probably no one knows. 

Marcus was a high school drop out whose early life never seemed to move beyond the first two levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. His school days involved strategic ploys to meet the physical needs of food. He was born into a poverty-stricken family in Centers, Louisiana, to a teenage mother.

His family belonged to the World Wide Church of God. The faithful believed the world would end before 1972. After that prediction failed, the founder, Herbert Armstrong, made the claim that Christ would return before his death, which took place in 1986. His family had made no preparations for the future, and lived life as if the world would soon end.

Life branded Marcus as bereft. Child Protective Services were a frequent visitor to his home. Marcus’ mom would have him hide when they knocked on the door. She had convinced him that they were the bad people who were going to take him away.

She was a teen mom who had been molested throughout her childhood by her grandfather, and to escape took refuge in drugs. She seemed to find one loser boyfriends after another, all who seemed to enjoy beating on her, and Marcus. 

After awhile, Marcus’s mom, started hitting him too. 

In a cruel twist of fate, the sexual abuse started soon after. She began to trade her son for drugs, sentencing him to suffer the same horrific hell she had endured.

At school, Marcus’s tattered clothes and withdrawn demeanor made him an easier target for bullying. He shut the world out, it made no sense, the person who fed him also took food from him, the person he went to for love and safety was his greatest source of anxiety and fear. 

How could he express to his teachers concepts his brain couldn’t comprehend? Trauma-induced a cocktail of changes to his brain. Emotional dysregulation, difficulty with attention and focus, low self-esteem, impaired social skills, and unspeakable nightmares, so that even sleep refused to provide respite from his reality. 

The cosmos dealt his hand, and the school labeled him as an individual with an Unspecified Intellectual Disability. 

Marcus was written off, relegated to the dust bins of history. 

Most teachers view him as kindly enough, but dull-witted. He was placed in special education classes, never pushed, never tested. 

Marcus had an inquisitive mind but was quickly discouraged and mocked by the adults in his life, called a moron on more than one occasion, and reminded that he was a bastard, so unlovable and unworthy that he never had a dad.

When he showed interest in dinosaurs, he was told that they never existed, that the earth was 6,000 years old. When he showed interest in the civil rights history of America, he was told that Martin Luther King was nothing but a trouble maker. 

When he scored exceptionally high on the science portion of the Louisiana State Standardized Testing, he was an idiot savant at best, or simply lucky. He spent the next several years just showing up for school, and simply not doing anything. Which was accept by his teachers and mother alike. After all, he was incapable of learning, a nothing who would always be nothing. 

It was 9th grade, Stephen Hayes’s history class. Mr. Hayes oozed charisma and enthusiasm. His passion for teaching elevated his class. Mr. Hayes told his students about growing up poor in the south, about being so broke that he had to go around town begging for money so he could pay to graduate. He was the lotus flower that emerged pure from the murky waters of a hard life. 

Marcus finally found someone who cared, his only personal Prometheus bringing light into his dark world. A teacher who asked something of him and proved that you could break free of the generation curses that plagued your family.

His assessment test schools jumped up to 12th grade levels. He developed an insatiable hunger for knowledge and started to devour books, and to believe.

Mr. Haye poured his heart into teaching, and in turn into Marcus. The jokes, the stories, he hung on every word. He would talk with Mr. Hayes after his classes, receiving tutoring, and healing. He had never known a teacher like him. 

Marcus learned that he could in fact learn, a novel concept to be sure. 

Mr. Hayes assigned his students to study and write a biography of a significant figure in American history. He added another layer to it, for those so inclined could submit their papers for his writing competition.

Mr. Hayes not only encouraged Marcus to enter the contest but to do his paper on Frederick Douglass.

Douglass's life hit him like a whirlwind, a man born into slavery and freed himself. A man who taught himself to read and write, and became an orator, writer, and Statesman.

Marcus was moved deeply, seeing more proof of the indomitable spirit of man. 

Marcus entered and won the contest. Mr. Hayes helped Marcus look dig down inside and unlock his potential.

Life outside of school however stayed hard. Marcus ran away from home, and lived in the streets, he would go on to get his G.E.D. and to be the first person in his immediate family to graduate from college. 

Years later he found Stephen Hayes on Facebook and learned that he had gone back to his first love of playing classical piano.

Marcus wrote to his mentor:

“Mr. Hayes, I wanted to show you an E-mail I just got, it’s announcing the completion of my degree. I also wanted to say thank you. You changed my life sir. Before you, I was just a special ed student that the teachers wrote off. I never tried, because no one ever thought I could do much of anything in class. Will that was until I had you as a teacher, just the simple respect you showed me and challenging me to do better pushed me to go achieve so much more. I have now been published as a writer a number of times, and as of today I am now a college graduate, the first in my family.”

The reply he received touched his soul:

“Hi Marcus! It is so good to hear from you. Thank you for the kind words, but you have always had it in you to do great things. You make me so proud! Congratulations on all your achievements.”

This teacher change his life, like all those others on his Mount Rushmore, of educators. Now you know Stephen Hayes, the most important person on Marcus’s list.