A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

FADE IN: INT. SOUTH MIAMI HIGH - MUSIC DEPARTMENT WING CORRIDOR - AFTERNOON We see JIM standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall opposite the closed door of South Miami Senior High's choral practice room. He looks a bit on edge and is trying to catch his breath after his sprint down the stairs from the second floor. As he stands there, the door swings open with a loud metallic squeak and two girls (MARIA and TERESA) step out of the chorus room. ANGLE ON MARIA AND TERESA We SEE two girls in their late teens, dressed in casual attire (jeans, blouses, comfortable shoes, etc. which are appropriate for a high school's dress code of the early 1980s.) MARIA is the clear "alpha" of the two, not just because she's taller and a tad more attractive than TERESA, but she's also the more outgoing and has presence. She smiles at JIM. BACK TO SCENE JIM looks at the two girls and smiles back politely in recognition, though he clearly simply wants to

High school doesn’t always prepare students for college. One of the concepts that most, but not all, of the teachers I had in high school tried to sell us was that if we worked hard, if we behaved and earned good grades, we would be prepared to deal with the challenges we’d face after commencement. I’m sure that this was – and still might be – true for students in advanced placement or “college bound” classes, but for those of us who attended regular courses in the core curriculum and then went to college – either at the two-year community college or four-year institutions, it was the educational equivalent of the snake oil and other fake remedies sold by “medicine peddlers” in the late 19th Century to cure almost any ailment known to man – but didn’t. (One thing that our high school teachers did not tell us was that more than half of us "regular class" students would have to take remedial courses in math or English at the community college level, but that's anothe

When I graduated from South Miami High in June of 1983, I felt so connected to my alma mater, my teachers and my friends that it was inconceivable that I had had any moments in which I had not felt any stirrings of "Cobra Spirit" from my first day as a sophomore almost three years earlier. After all, by the time we of the Class of 1983 gathered at Miami-Dade Community College's Gibson Center to accept our diplomas I had served on both the yearbook and school newspaper staffs, sang in two choir ensembles, helped kick off Cobra Media Productions' TV club, and even attempted to perform in one of the drama classes. I proudly wore my South Miami High baseball cap regularly, along with various T-shirts which touted some of the above-mentioned groups or activity clubs. And yet, part of me still remembers that my initial feelings about the school were not, um, exactly positive. You see, from third grade on, I had been assigned to schools which were in Southwest Miami S

Is there life after high school? Moving on is simple. It’s what we leave behind that’s hard.” - Author Unknown What is it about the whole high school experience that has such a powerful hold on our imagination, our emotional compass? Two years, five months and several odd days after visiting my alma mater with one of my Class of 1983 classmates, Maggie Wunderlich, I’m still somewhat bemused by how many memories can get stirred up by the simple act of opening a door and crossing one’s old high school’s threshold. I had last visited South Miami Senior High in the spring of 1989; Conchy Bretos, then the person in charge of Miami-Dade Community College’s Recruitment and Retainment Department, knew that I had attended that school from August 1980 to June 1983. I was a somewhat respected college-level student journalist at the time, so Ms Bretos thought I’d be suitable to explain to a ninth-grade English class what Miami-Dade was like in comparison to high school and what the College