Although Monday was my fifth day at Animo, in many ways, it was my first. Spring Break had ended and taken with it the peace of a literary vacuum. For the first time, I witnessed the teeming energy of a school come alive, kids spilling out of doorways and jostling in the halls, the atomic explosion of body particles at three o’clock. Teachers, students, and a legion of tutors filled both rooms, and the volume of excitement reach new heights with the arrival of Mr. Phil Jackson.

Mr. Jackson ducked under doorways and spent the afternoon speaking with the students and looking over the shoulders of kids desperately scribbling and whacking keys to reach the finish line. Everyone knows the end is in sight. You can hear it when someone shouts out “Fifteenth draft!” as rebuttal to a friend’s claim to twelve. You can see it when frantic hands wave folders in the air and readers sail across the room. You can feel it when the words on the page are stronger than you remember, and the young, eager face on your left is dying to know why you are smiling.

Perhaps the sublime satisfaction springs from the appreciation that every student’s road to the end is a unique challenge. Even to the passing eye, the diversity of creative product is staggering—pieces range from essays and short stories to poems and screenplays (furthermore, I have heard rumors of a stage play involving squabbling birds, though it has yet to pass my way). And let’s not forget the kids, themselves, who make up an eclectic group of personalities across the board. There is Christina, for example, resolved to debate every suggestion, demanding that the tutor present a persuasive argument to earn his or her title of “helper.” Then there is Elizabeth, calmly nodding her head, smiling, navigating the path of revision according to the gust of prevailing winds. Both have found consistent success, educating me to the reality that a tutor’s ability to adapt largely determines the rate of positive progress.

The scale of achievement and “buena onda” in this project is astounding—I feel privileged to be a part of it—but it is the intimacy of two chairs and a table that I will remember most clearly, when the noise of a classroom dies down in the span of a moment. When Zoro turns to the boy next to her, orders him to fetch a soft drink from downstairs, and turns back to our discussion with a smile to suggest that, yes, boys really are that simple. That’s when Mr. Jackson walks in and announces that he will attend our Lakers game. “I’ll come up to the nosebleed seats and say hi,” he says, laughing. A cheer goes up through the room and Zoro throws her hands in the air. “Animo” means spirit, vigor, and I can’t think of a more appropriate name for this vibrant school.

Tom Robertson is a teacher, writer, and former investment banker; he holds a B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from Claremont McKenna College, and plans to attend law school in the fall.