By Alamar Alyamani

Mr. Wright is a popular teacher at Maury.

Even if you didn’t have him any year you still know him.

Mr.Wright started majoring in English at VCU although he wanted to be a novelist and poet. Due to financial and family issues he dropped out. He started doing tree removal and manual labor which made him realize he needed to get a degree.  He went back to college at 24 years old and was doing freelance writing gigs and writing resumes for people. It wasn’t consistent so he decided to be a German teacher at Bethel High school. After a bit he started working as a seventh grade English teacher at Blair. The staff at Blair helped him and got him into education. 

Mr. Wright wanted to teach older kids, so he applied for the job at Maury High School and finally got it. With the help of Deborah Marston, Mr. Wright made it through teaching AP Lang.

The Commodore Chronicle’s Alamar Alyamani had a conversation with the 9th grade honors English and AP Lang teacher Mr. Wright. The following has been edited for clarity.

AW: What is Slant?

AA: Slant is a literary magazine. It’s actually quite old. Maury’s literary magazine has been around for decades. We have issues from the ‘50s and the ‘60s, but it had a different name. We basically have students create artwork,create literature, whether that’s poetry, short story, short fiction, drama, whether the artwork is graphic design or painting, sculpture, photography, and then students lay it out, edit it, decide what they want to keep, what they want to scratch, change, and alter. They design the layouts, and we print them.

AW: Could submitters be anonymous?

AA: Yes, many submissions are anonymous. We have a whole generation of children who are embarrassed of everything which makes running Slant each year harder.

AW: Why did you take over the club?

AA: I didn’t do this my first year. The magazine was run by Lay Wade. She was a veteran teacher who’d been here for decades, but she knew she was going to retire. She was a great teacher and she was a big advocate of mine. She approached me and said, “You seem to have a very literary bench. You really love the literature aspect of this and the poetry of teaching. You want to take over the magazine?” Lay Wade gave me a box of the old Slant submissions. She said “make this” and just kind of threw me in the deep end. And I had no idea what I was doing. None of her students who had worked with her in the past were still here because I started right after COVID. So COVID kind of was a reset. And so I talked to Miss Knight. She had run Slant for a couple years, and I asked her for some suggestions. She helped me out. I got in touch with Lay, and she helped me out, but I kind of just got thrown in the deep end of the pool. I had to learn to swim.

AA: Was the first year hard?

AW: I would not have made it the first year without the help of all the students who volunteered and joined the club and did what they could. The first year was the easiest for a couple weird reasons. One, it was the first year after COVID and all those kids who had been stuck at home, totally depressed and isolated and miserable, we were just joking around about this earlier, but depression will produce great art. Those kids who were stuck at home had been writing a lot. Quite a few kids have been writing and drawing, because they were stuck at home with nothing to do, and they were writing about their misery and isolation like they were in a prison cell stuck in front of the zoom camera. Now everyone is so busy that no one has time to submit writings or artworks.

AA: Who else has helped you?

AW: I really didn’t know what I was doing those first years. But Miss Knight helped me a little, Miss Wade helped me a little but more than anything, Vanessa and Ava really stepped up. Vanessa approached me and said I want to run the literary magazine and she got really into it. Ava was a creative, Bohemian artsy sort of girl who was younger and said she want to help out too. Those two together made such a great leadership duo. There was a young man who offered to help them, and he would do the digital stuff and manage the organization, and that was JD, who’s now our editor in chief.  He also was a great, great help that first year, and I could not have done it without those three. So eventually we lost Vanessa. Last year, we lost Ava, and now we’ve got JD still manning the helm. But the three of them really helped, and  I think the three of them and me and Eden a little bit have been navigating this tricky course together.

AA: Do you regret it?

AW: I don’t know if I’ll keep doing Slant. It’s a tremendous commitment of time. It’s getting harder and harder. I might have to hand it off to somebody else soon, especially like, if Kippy and I have a kid. I’m not going to have the time to do this. But it’s been a big headache every year. That being said, I’ve been very proud of the product that students have put out, but it’s taken a lot out of me.


AA: What does this club need?

AW: We don’t have a graphic designer or a kid who knows how to do the graphic design or has done it effectively. And so every year I’ve had to ask my wife to do it, because she’s a professional graphic designer, and it’s been a big source of stress for her because as a professional, she’s very much a perfectionist, and she’s devoted a lot of time to helping out.