Mr. Kermit
The teacher of the unteachables has lived much of his career under a cloud of scandal. A cheating scandal from way back has not only hung over Mr. Kermit’s teaching career, but also undermined it. The negative attention has served to sap the idealistic ambition with which he embarked upon teaching and has transformed him into just another burnt-out robot showing up for the paycheck and pension.
Jake Terranova
Jake Terranova was a 12-year-old student of Kermit’s in 1992 when the cheating scandal exploded and ruined the teacher’s career. The fact that it is well-known and widely recognized that Kermit was just as much a victim of Jake’s as anyone else hardly seems to have mattered as far as the rest of the teacher’s career proceeded.
Dr. Thaddeus
Thaddeus is the Superintendent of schools in the district who wears three-thousand-dollar tailored suits and does not care that a prepubescent punk is the villain of the cheating scandal and not Mr. Kermit. Kermit must pay and pay he will. Thaddeus is referred to earlier in the text by one of the students as a dictatorial legend in his own mind. His monomaniacal pursuit of destroying what is left of Kermit’s career carries all the gravity of Ahab’s pursuit of the white whale in that cavernously empty mind.
The Kids in Room 117
Room 117 is home to what is officially designated the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class. It is more familiarly known as the classroom of the unteachables. This year that includes Parker whose dyslexia has targeted him as unteachable. The artistic Raheem who has a habit of falling asleep during class, the cause of which is not exactly pursued with diligence. Elaine, who, lest she become the target of teasing for her weight, finds it best to just keep quiet and to herself and therefore hides the fact that she may well be the brightest kid in school. That weird kid Mateo who is so lost in movies and TV shows that he can’t help but compare everybody in real life to some character in reel life (Mr. Kermit's analogue is Squidward). Barnstorm, who has become the most useless thing in any American school: the injured athlete who can’t play. Aldo, the fiery carrot-top badly in need of anger management. And Kiana, the overachiever who is only stuck in Room 117 because, well, that’s American school bureaucracy at work.
