Exit Tickets by Kenneth Chanko offers a raw,
multi-perspective portrait of a tumultuous year at P.S. 961, a District 75
special education school on Manhattan's Upper East Side during 2007-2008. The story
of Martin “Mr. J” Jordanowski, a first-year white teacher from Indiana who
joins NYC's Teaching Fellows program following his sister Cassie's overdose
death. His well-intentioned but boundary-crossing relationship with Kandra, a
vulnerable 15-year-old student processing maternal loss and family instability,
spirals when she writes a disturbing essay imagining inappropriate encounters
between them. This triggers an administrative investigation, resulting in Mr. J
being removed from his classroom. Meanwhile, interconnected storylines unfold:
veteran teacher Shirley Holmes navigates her strained relationship with her
daughter, Coretta, paraprofessional Big Henry seeks reconciliation with his
son, Elijah; and students Shay and Russell struggle with trauma and identity.
By year's end, will Mr. J return despite being cleared, and will the other
characters find their foothold in a world where the ground keeps shifting?
Kenneth Chanko masterfully renders his characters with
psychological underpinnings, exploring their flawed humanity, their brokenness,
and how the environment shapes them. One of those stories with characters that
are not only authentic but that reflect a world that is just too familiar and
real. The author writes with unusual cleverness about systemic failures in
urban special education, the blurred lines between mentorship and exploitation,
intergenerational trauma, and the redemptive power of writing. The setting is
finely drawn, and the imagery of details such as the school's windowless
“bunker-like” classrooms, fluorescent-lit cafeterias where paraprofessional Big
Henry maintains order, and the school's wealthy Upper East Side location, along
with its students bused from Bronx projects and Lower East Side shelters, is
stunningly captured. Like The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, Exit
Tickets celebrates writing as a form of salvation for marginalized youth
while, like Hold Still by Nina LaCour, it explores the ripple effects of grief.
Chanko avoids easy resolutions, delivering instead a compassionate,
unsentimental portrait of educators and students traversing a broken world. You’ll
enjoy the colorful characters, the crisp writing that delivers clear POV’s, and
the relentless drama. I felt as if I was drawn into the world of the movie Take
the Lead as I followed the characters of this page-turning tale.
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