Epilogue

Jarod walked into class and handed me an envelope. “I printed this up with you in mind,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“That is a genuine party invitation, just for you.”

I laughed easily. “Thanks, Jarod, but you were right all those months ago. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself at one of your parties. I’d be out of place. I appreciate the invite though.”

“Sorry, Kelvin, but you’re coming to this one. I insist. You can bring your girlfriend too if you like.”

“You haven’t met Amanda, but trust me, she would be even more out of place,” I said. “Besides, we don’t share the love of parties that you and your girlfriend do. We prefer spending time together just the two of us.”

“Girlfriend?” Jarod said. “I have no girlfriend.”

Christy’s eyes narrowed on him, then quick as a bolt she grabbed the invitation out of my hand, tore it open, and read. “You’re engaged!” Christy pulled Jarod into a bear hug.

“I’ve got invites for everyone,” Jarod said, once Christy released him. “Including you, Mr. Griffin. I couldn’t have done it without this class.”

“Why couldn’t you?” I asked.

“I guess it’s more accurate to say I wouldn’t have. I was so stressed about how I would provide for myself that I couldn’t handle the idea of providing for a family. Anyway, we’re going to have a small party to celebrate next Saturday night, and then get married at the end of the summer.”

“Wow,” Christy said, “that’s fast.”

“Perhaps, but now that I feel more ownership over my life, I see no reason to wait.”

“Congratulations, Jarod,” Mr. Griffin said. “In further news, today is May 1, meaning that Christy’s deadline to get a college scholarship passed yesterday. Any update for us?”

“I just got my fourth scholarship offer.”

“Another small school wanting to develop its program?” Mr. Griffin asked.

“Not this time. Coach Dana took me back to State College to meet with Coach Jan, who’s apparently kept a pretty close eye on us this year.”

“So she made you an offer?”

“A full ride.” Christy grinned ear-to-ear. “Tuition, room, board, and even a stipend for books.”

“Any idea what tipped the scales in your favor?” Mr. Griffin asked.

“Well, Coach Dana’s been going to bat for me like crazy with her old team. But I think the thing that sealed it was the high school championship, specifically my speech after we won. Coach Jan said that when I gave the trophy away to Coach Silver’s daughter, she saw I had the heart and selflessness she looks for in her athletes.”

“So why’d she wait so long to extend the offer?” Mr. Griffin asked.

“She wanted to be sure I could make a full recovery. It’s a good thing I didn’t give up on my training after the championship because she swam me hard yesterday. Once she was satisfied that I was on track, she extended the offer, and I took it, right on the spot.”

Darnell opened the door, dragging a cooler behind him. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, “but I couldn’t fit this in my locker, so I had to run out to the parking lot.”

“What’s this, Darnell?” Mr. Griffin asked.

“Christy told me the news last night, so I brought in a little meal to celebrate. That’s OK, isn’t it Mr. Griffin?”

“Of course. Celebrating our victories is a vital tool for building momentum. Is that okra?”

“Yep, okra, sweet potatoes, collard greens, and black-eyed peas.”

“That’s some switch from Christmas,” Christy said.

“Yep, and I owe it all to you.”

“What did I do?” Christy asked.

“When you cooked us a healthy meal, I figured you must know something about nutrition, but later when I’d ask you questions, you never knew the answers.”

“I just cooked the way my mom and my grandmother do.”

“Exactly. Your ancestors long ago figured out a healthy balance of foods, and you just did what they did. That’s called a food culture, and your family brought it with you to America. My ancestors came here as slaves—they had no food culture. Or so I thought.”

“So what, they built one here?” Christy asked.

“Believe it or not, they brought seeds with them from Africa.”

“So you’re saying the way black people eat in America has a history that goes back to Africa?” Christy asked.

“No, the way we used to eat. Some still do, like my great aunt. She gave me the okra recipe. But most eat horribly, like my folks do. The more I learn, the more concerned I’m getting for my family—almost all of us are obese.” Darnell may have included himself in that description, but it was becoming more and more of a stretch to call him obese. He hadn’t shared his actual weight in months, but between his smoothies and working out, he could have passed for a linebacker.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Mr. Griffin asked.

“Actually, I’ve decided to take next year off and travel to Africa. There’s a chef in Kenya I’m going to study under.”

“Wow, so you’re not coming with me to State?” Christy asked.

“Not immediately at least. Admissions is allowing me to defer for the year, and that keeps my options open, but I don’t know yet if I’ll go to college. Let’s see how the year unfolds.”

“Well, at least you’ve got a guaranteed place at State,” Jarod said, “so you can coast right through the end of school.”

“Is that what you’re planning on doing, Jarod?” Mr. Griffin asked.

“Of course. Now that I’ve ruled out college, all I need are passing grades to graduate. I see no need to do more than the minimum amount of work necessary to get those.”

“I’d certainly hoped that after all the work we’ve done together that you’ll do more than just the minimum,” Mr. Griffin said. “After all, you were the one who asked to be pushed harder.”

“Whoa, I wasn’t referring to this class. I’m still going 100% on all my cards. And it’s not like I’m being lazy. All that time I’m saving by not studying is going right into The Lawn Ranger. I was just referring to final exams.”

“Does that include your trigonometry final, Jarod?” Mr. Griffin asked.

“Trig final?” Darnell said. “You can’t seriously expect us to take a trig final, can you Mr. Griffin?”

“Why not? This is a trig class after all. Darnell, you yourself made sure I put teaching you all trigonometry on my Outcome Card for this class.”

“But we haven’t learned any math this year,” Darnell protested.

“And finals are less than six weeks away,” Christy added. “What trig could you possibly test us on?”

“Actually, Mrs. Northrup and I agreed to give the same final exam to the entire grade.”

“You mean you expect us to know everything her class has been busting to learn this entire year?” Christy said.

“No.”

I sighed in relief, but it was short-lived.

“I expect you to know more. I probably shouldn’t be so competitive, but the truth is, I want our class to trounce hers on the final.”

“But we’ve done next to nothing,” Christy said.

“Nothing?” Mr. Griffin said. “You think that all we’ve learned here has been insignificant?”

“Hardly insignificant,” Jarod said, “but it hasn’t been trig either.”

“True, but if you’ve taken the lessons we’ve learned this year to heart, it shouldn’t matter.”

“Shouldn’t matter?” Christy said. “The final is in trigonometry, not notecards.”

Mr. Griffin grabbed a stack of blank notecards and handed them out. “The curriculum here is built on the assumption that students will learn only as much as they have to. It assumes that you’re unmotivated, disinterested, and not fully engaged.”

“Sounds pretty accurate,” Jarod said.

“On the contrary, you’ve been activating your minds and learning what you’re capable of. Mastering this year’s math material should be easy for you.”

“But how are we supposed to do that?” Christy asked. “We only have six weeks to learn a year’s worth of material.”

“Good question. Let’s work out the answer together. I’ll get you started on step one.”

Mr. Griffin went to the board and wrote:

Mr. Griffin’s hand froze over the board.

“Don’t stop now, Mr. Griffin,” Darnell said. “Tell us what the steps are.”

“I don’t know the steps, Darnell.”

“Then what are we supposed to do?”

“Use all you’ve learned this year to figure them out,” Mr. Griffin said. “Who can tell me a step we can take?”

I spoke first. “I suppose we can test ourselves to see what we already know. That could be a start.”

“Yes,” He wrote my strategy on the board. “Who else has an idea?”

“I’ve been watching tons of videos online about nutrition and cooking,” Darnell said. “With all the online tools available, we don’t have to be dependent on Mr. Griffin to teach us everything. We can do a lot of the learning at home at night, and come to Mr. Griffin when we get stuck.”

“And we could form a study group after school to help each other out,” Christy said.

“I can call my friend Cody,” Jarod said. “He took Mrs. Northrup’s trig class last year. That guy never throws anything away, so I bet he’s still got his final exam lying around somewhere. The questions won’t be the same, but I’m guessing she uses the same style of exam each year. Studying that will give us an idea of what we need to prepare.”

Mr. Griffin still stood at the board, writing all of this down. “What else can we do?”

Like any notecard process, some of our ideas worked and others didn’t.

Jarod’s friend Cody turned out to be a bust, which was just as well, as I didn’t love the idea of cutting corners and only studying what was likely to be on the test. We had to revise our plans multiple times, but within four weeks, none of us still harbored doubts about trouncing Mrs. Northrup’s class on the exam. As Mr. Griffin said, the curriculum was created with the expectation of a slow pace of learning, but when it came down to it, there weren’t all that many concepts to master in trigonometry.

Jarod surprised me by advancing faster through the material than either Christy or Darnell. Between his business taking off, his engagement, and his progress in math, he was absolutely flying. So it stumped me to see him walk into class in late May with a strut and a snarl, like the Jarod of old. Mr. Griffin wasn’t in class yet.

“You looked like you swallowed a cigarette,” Christy said. “What’s up?”

“Nothin’.” Jarod shrugged and slipped into his seat.

“I know what nothin’ looks like, and it isn’t that,” said Darnell.

“I just overheard Mrs. Northrup talking to Mr. Jones about finding a new trig teacher for next year.”

“You mean—?”

“Yeah, Mr. Griffin is skipping out.” Jarod slouched in his seat.

“You can’t know that, Jarod,” Christy said. “Maybe they just don’t want him anymore.”

“Come on, Christy. He’s the best teacher we’ve ever had in this dump, and you know it.”

I had to pipe in. “But he didn’t exactly teach us math.” Even over the last four weeks, we’d done most of our learning independently online and only turned to Mr. Griffin when we got stuck.

“Who cares?” Jarod said.

“Clearly the principal and the head of the math department,” I said.

“Why are you so mad, Jarod?” Darnell asked. “We’re almost graduating. I thought you were racing to get out of here.”

“Yeah, I am. But how could he just leave? I mean, look at us.” Jarod waved his arm across the room. “We’re all so different now. Don’t you want others to tap into that?”

“I do,” Christy said. “I was telling all the Juniors on the team to sign up for trig next year.”

“But still, how big can trig get?” Darnell asked. “He can’t teach the whole school.”

Just then, Mr. Griffin walked in.

“Speak of the devil,” Jarod mumbled.

“The devil, eh?” Mr. Griffin said. “Have I fallen out of favor so soon?”

“He just heard you might not be teaching here next year,” I said.

“I’m afraid not. That’s why I’m late.” Mr. Griffin dropped his satchel on his desk. “Mr. Higgs decided to make his retirement official. The principle was trying to convince me to take his place.”

“You have to stay,” Jarod said.

“No, Jarod. If I’ve taught you anything this year, I hope it’s that you don’t have to fill anyone else’s vision of who you should be.”

“But you said yourself that you wanted to give back by teaching these techniques to others.”

“Exactly. Working with the four of you this year has proved that I can successfully pass these lessons on to others and have transformational impacts in their lives.”

Jarod kicked the leg of his desk. “So why stop doing it now?”

“Stop? Who said anything about stopping? Now that I’ve proved to myself that it can work, I intend to ramp it up.”

“Ramp it up how?” Darnell asked.

“Remember when I taught you about incremental and exponential growth? Teaching in a classroom is great, but the constraint is that I can teach so few of you at a time.”

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“Take it online. That way I can teach anyone the skills you’ve learned this year, plus other techniques I haven’t shared with you yet.”

“What are you going to call it?” Christy asked.

“You know, Christy, I haven’t thought of a name yet. Any suggestions?”

“I know exactly.” Jarod pointed to the board. “You should use that quote from that leaf lady…”

Mr. Griffin grinned. “You mean Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian President?”

“Yeah, her. I remember she said something about dreaming big.”

Christy said, “I wrote that quote on the wall of the locker room. She said, ‘The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them.’”

“Exactly.” Jarod slapped his desk. “The size of your dreams. I dig it. Can you get TheSizeofYourDreams.com?”

Darnell pulled out his phone. “I’ll check to see if that’s available.”

“That’s a great name,” Christy piped in, “but there are like a zillion websites out there. How’s anyone going to find this one?”

“There are about 1.9 billion websites, actually,” I said. “You’ve got a good point.”

“What can we do to help, Mr. Griffin?” Christy asked.

“You tell me, Christy. From all that you’ve learned this year, what do you think can be most powerful in launching this website?”

Christy licked her lips. “I know when my coach search took off. It was when I embraced the power of my story.”

“So what are you saying?” Darnell asked. “That we should all put up videos telling our stories?”

“How about a book?” I asked.

“I’m not writing a book,” Jarod said.

“Me neither,” Christy added. “Essays are hard enough.”

“You should do it, Kelvin.” Darnell nudged my arm. “I’ve seen your short stories. You can write.”

“Me?”

“You don’t have to do anything, Kelvin,” Mr. Griffin said. “But you have helped everyone here see the power in their own stories. It’s your strength.”

Christy batted her eyelashes and flashed me a million-dollar smile I couldn’t refuse.

“Well….” I’d always wanted to be a published author, but I thought that was a dream for well in the future. Nonetheless, I did have the whole summer with nothing to do. “On condition all of you make voice recordings of your stories, your thoughts, and your challenges over the past year and send them to me…” I bit my lip. “I’ll do it.”

“Excellent,” Mr. Griffin said. “There’s no better way to learn than to teach.”

“What would we call it?” I asked.

“The Size of Your Dreams,” Jarod said, “Just like the website.”

Darnell called out, “TheSizeofYourDreams.com is available.”

“Let’s make it happen,” Mr. Griffin said. “I’ll create tools and courses teaching people how they can use these techniques to make massive improvements in their own lives, and I’ll use your stories to illustrate the lessons.”

Mr. Griffin walked over to his desk and opened up his laptop. Jarod called out, “What are you doing, Mr. Griffin?”

“I’m registering TheSizeofYourDreams.com.”

“Now? Can’t it wait until after school?”

“It can wait, but I can’t. I have a rule that I never make a decision without taking a practical step to move it forward. After all, the most important step to creating change is getting started.”