That’s what they were called at City-as-School, and probably still are. Some of them taught classes, but basically they advised the students and directed us to all the work/study internships, college classes, in-house courses, all kinds of things you could take. For me it was such a relief after two years of strait-laced Stuyvesant HS.
Jean was so angry and self-destructive, an advisor who knew him well told me shortly after he died, but also so sweet and so creative. His moods whipsawed almost by the minute. He inflated/then deflated–the classic superstar dichotomy, I guess.
He pissed me off about something and I didn’t talk to him for nine years. A girl we both knew from CAS was staying with me in 1986 and insisted we call him. He invited us over to his house that night. It was like those years hadn’t lapsed at all–the first thing he said was something about Tallulah! Yes, even in high school I wanted to write about her.
I mentioned here that CAS was across the street from Brooklyn Heights because those blocks are not part of the Heights landmark district–therefore my surprise when I was in downtown Bklyn five years ago and saw that part of the old campus, housed in a building that belonged to the Armenian church across Schermerhorn St., had been torn down–to make way, natch, for an apartment building.
“Natch”–isn’t that a Jean/Al Diaz word from their SAMO days?
Fortunately in these days of robo-education and STEMing to the test, CAS still exists. Now it’s in a former high school building on Carmine Street in the Village. But the intimacy of the old plant can’t be perpetuated.