1987. President Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

It was also the same year Mr. Martim Silva, an English teacher at California High School, started his first day of class poking fun at his culture and heritage.  

True to teachers’ style of the time, he wore tan-colored slacks, ironed with tight creases, a button-down sky-blue shirt open far enough to see the Saint Christopher medal hanging down into his exposed chest hair. His hair looked like he copied a page from the Bob Ross playbook, his jet black hair permed to a high spring. Goatees weren’t typical for male teachers, not high school teachers in the 1980s. But he wore it nicely, accenting his smile and pearl-white teeth. Of course, it goes without saying that his footwear was the atypical brown leather boat shoes. Fun socks weren’t a thing, so they were the standard brown or black dress socks, coming up over the ankle, almost to the knee.

 “Settle down, class,” he said, walking in and shutting the door behind him. The classroom had ten tables, two teenagers sitting at each table, making twenty students in his advanced English class. Boyfriend and girlfriend sat together at the same table. Mr. Silva refused to assign seats or make a seating chart. “Where you are sitting is exactly where you will stay throughout the semester. Some of you may experience seat reassignment. This will happen if you refuse to follow directions. If you listen to me. Complete your assignments on time. And listen to me during our class time? Then and only then, will all be right in your world. Fail to do so?” He wrote detention in large block letters on the chalkboard. “I don’t like giving them. You won’t enjoy serving them. Why don’t we agree, all of us right here, that we won’t be disrespectful and I won’t give any detentions, hmm?” Even his voice screamed Bob Ross.

A student sitting as close as they could to the front raised her hand. “Mr. Silva?”

“Oh. Yeah. You can call me Martim. Or Mr. Silva. Either way is fine by me. I like my first name better than my last. It makes me sound old!” His smile was charming, disarming.

“Um. Okay. Martim?”

“Yes, Ms.,” he grabbed his roster, mentally noting where the girl sat, “Heather Lamberti, right?”

Stunned that a teacher she had never had a class with knew her name, Heather sat there, unable to speak, mouth open.

“What’s your question, Heather? No. Wait. I have a better idea,” he said, turning around and tossing the roster on his desk. “Let me guess what you want to know.” He closed his eyes, rubbing his temples and making an ‘ohm’ sound. “Will we have homework or just have to answer essay questions in class. Right?”

Heather’s face turned a crimson shade of red. “I. Um. Well. That is. . .” she stammered. “Yes, Mr. Silva. Homework.”

He smiled, knocking on her table. “Yes. Yes. And yes.” He turned his back to her and the rest of the class. “And no.” Over half the class stared at the chalkboard and him, wondering what he was saying. “You will have homework some days. On other days, you will have in-class assignments, some of which will be group projects. There will be three tests, but I will give you plenty of advanced warning when they are coming and give you all the answers verbatim.” He turned to the chalkboard, grabbed a piece of chalk, and wrote the word ‘verbatim.’ “Anyone besides Heather care to tell me what that word means?”

Jason Livermore sat in the back of the class wearing a Levi jean jacket with multiple patches from various hard rock bands. Patches from Def Leppard, Motley Crue, AC/DC, and Metalica were visible. No one thought Jason was as brilliant as he was, sitting in the back of the class and always doing the bare minimum. If someone bothered to measure his I.Q., he could’ve scored over 120 in high school. Jason raised his hand, brushing his long hair out of his face. “Word-for-word, that’s what verbatim means.”

“Correct, Mr. Livermore!” No one in the class saw him pull out the Tootsie Pop, but everyone saw him toss it lightly at Jason. Without blinking, Jason caught it. “Good catch, Mr. Livermore! Now. You will need to bring your best English writing skills to this class. If you aren’t that good at writing, this class will improve your skills. But,” he pointed at Heather, “if you are like Ms. Lamberti, you will end up writing college-level papers before the end of the semester.”

Walking back to the chalkboard, he started drawing a straight line, then a circle, then another line, another circle, and so on until Mr. Silva filled the whole board from left to right. “Can anyone tell me what this is?” He pointed to his new drawing while erasing the word detention. “Anyone at all?” Seeing blank expressions, he shook his head. “Well, boys and girls, this is a Portuguese Divider. Please note it because you will use it to divide your writing in your composition books. Oh, yeah,” he smacked his palm to his forehead. “You are gonna need at least one, possibly three for you,” he winked at Heather. “Anyone know why they call it a Portuguese Divider?” No one answered, not even Heather. “Heather? Do you have a guess?” Her face, still red, responded to his question by shaking her head, no. “Because everyone in Portugal travels by BOAT!” He pointed to each circle. “See? These are Portuguese boats, and the lines? They divide the boats. Isn’t that great?” He smiled at the class.

“Okay. So, our first assignment is to describe the last thing you did before the end of spring break. Anything goes, boys and girls. You are free to write about whatever you wish, BUT you must use complete sentences, spell everything correctly and legibly, and it must fill one full page of college-ruled paper.” Groans came from the back of the classroom. “And anyone who doesn’t want to be in my class, see me after class. I’ll see what I can do, okay?”

A buzzer sounded, indicating the end of class. “Alright then. Mr. Livermore? Ms. Lamberti? Thank you for your participation, and I’ll see you all again tomorrow.”