“I had a lot of arguments with the custodial staff, because the schools published the time schedule of 6 am to 6 pm, but it never occurred to them that anybody would use it. I got there at 6 am with students every day and I didn’t leave until 6 pm. We integrated in Denver — the Denver Public Schools went through an integration problem. And the kids from the ghetto areas hadn’t had very good schools and, when they got transferred to George Washington, it was very sad, because they weren’t anywhere near where we were — even our regular algebra department and geometry department.

“And I discovered there was an athletic school bus that went home around a quarter of six, where the athletes did their athletic stuff and then got on the bus. And the buses weren’t full. So I wrote a room-to-room pass that allowed a student — whatever his name was — to go home at a quarter of six on the athletic bus. I ran this for about a week and I kept students after school to help them.

“I got called to the assistant principal’s office. ‘Hoffman, what are you doing now?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You’re sending non-athletes home on the athlete’s bus.’ I said, ‘Isn’t that brilliant? This bus takes them home. They don’t have money or a parent who can pick them up and I’m tutoring them free of charge in the areas of mathematics where they are deficient, so they can make it.’ ‘Well, that’s not allowed.’

“So I picked up the phone. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m calling The Denver Post, then I’m going to call Channel 9.’ I knew the names of the reporters who always loved to hear what I was doing and tell them I have headline for them: ‘Denver Public Schools refuses to take home on a bus with room students who are trying to learn rather than play athletics.’ Oh, God, he turned red, green. and blue, and called in the Principal and said, ‘You can’t do this.’ And I said, ‘You really can’t keep these kids off the bus. They are trying to learn. They are willing to give their time up to learn.’ So I won that battle.

“The battles I won was the 6 am time; have you ever programmed computers, kids? Well if you haven’t, I will tell you that programming a computer is a long, arduous job. It requires a lot of work and can be two, three, five pages long and I can’t help somebody in five minutes. So I made times — I left for work at 4 am — I made times from 5 am on to meet students. The ones who came at five I treated to breakfast at the neighboring restaurant. But otherwise, I’d be at George Washington at 6 and made appointments from 5 to 6,  6 to 7, and 7 to 8, to help kids with their programs. So I came in early to help the bright students and I stayed late to help the disenfranchised students.

“And of course, the custodian got so mad he went to the Principal and I said, ‘I’m here at six, when you’re supposed to open the building.’ I said to the Principal, ‘How am I breaking the law, by coming when they are supposed to be opening the building?’ He said, ‘I guess not.’ I didn’t tell him that, when I went there on Saturday, I allowed kids to come and use the computers to learn, because I figured, if they wanted to learn on Saturday mornings, that was up to them. And I got a key and did a dishonest thing. I made a copy of the person’s key who ran the elevator. so I could use it Saturdays. That was probably dishonest.

“How do you think I got so many students to do so well? They got five hours of time nobody else had. I was busy doing my thing. The kids all knew I had the key. They didn’t know it was dishonest. They figured I had it, because I was a teacher. They took it away from all the teachers. They opened the building on the first floor and anybody could use the first floor, but the second and third floor they didn’t want to open up to anybody. So I had to open up the third floor for my kids. If they didn’t like that, they could have put me on the first floor. I was a rebel. I didn’t believe in laws that didn’t help learning. “

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