It was Thursday morning. At 4:30 am. Lenny Daniel Shaw left his Santa Monica apartment. He lowered into his beige 1992 Nissan Sentra and drove through the empty streets of his neighborhood, and then up a dark Pacific Coast Highway leading to his job. On his way, he thought to himself “God it’s fucking early.”

Shaw, 52, was a former Malibu High School substitute teacher who earned $161 a day; but not every day. Sadly, being a Starbucks Coffee Company barista earning $8.25 per-hour netting him more consistent money

Sooner or later, he walked through the glass and green metal framed doors and punched in. He waited for the shift lead to open his register before asking the first customer the perfunctory “How can I help you.” He then persevered through an interminable morning despite the dreariness-infusing monotony.

Away from Starbucks, Shaw is known as a teen mentor throughout the city of Malibu . After an eight-year run as a substitute teacher, while America ’s economy turned dystopian, Shaw’s salary became unreliable. Derailed, he was forced into the harrowing decision of a career change. Shaw, with mounting bills, reacted urgently. He walked into a Malibu Starbucks to apply for a job. “When I went in I was panicking…I didn’t know how to pay my rent.” Shaw thought he would enjoy working at Starbucks;“I love Malibu so much,” he says.

Shaw is an eccentric, defying banality. He bears a scruffy bead. His part-brown, part salt-and-pepper hair is almost neck length. He is marked with a boyishly fervent vigorousness.

Shaw speaks with starkness: “Healthy neighborhoods have good schools, poor neighborhoods have shitty schools.” He considers education “profoundly important.” He also discusses the antiquation of the school system. He is a dissenter: “There is a lot of wasted education …I think the public education system is a relic of the 20th century.”

Shaw is intrigued by adolescence. “I think teenagers are incredible…you can see the ‘adult’ coming out.” He believes 16 should be the legal adult age, rather than 18.

Shaw sees America's public school system as archaic and dysfunctional. The ex-substitute teacher scorns the methods of education as superficial. He describes them as, “encapsulated bits of information,” basically only teaching students how to pass tests. Shaw advocates that students be taught how to use logic; “… [students] are not leaning how to integrate facts; only how to extrapolate facts.” Shaw tutors students in political science and has experienced students focusing on knowing the material rather than understanding it.

Shaw was a substitute teacher at Santa Monica High school. He read the school’s yearbooks from 1925 to 1930 and compared the style of the peer salutations to the novelist, Charles Dickens. Shaw reflects on today’s trendy use of slang and asks, “Why…we glorify dumb in this country?” Shaw asks why a blue-collar worker must be pigeonholed into an uneducated, inarticulate and unintelligent stereotype. “What ever happened to the idea of being smart for its own sake?”

Shaw also feels the ignorance towards the teacher-student relationship in American public schools. He exaggerates when he bluntly contrasts himself to the rest of Malibu High School ’s faculty. He thinks that most of his co-workers there are just like Nurse Mildred Ratched, a rigid, bureaucratic psychiatric nurse from the 1975 film, “One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.”

Shaw further characterizes his co-workers as “politically liberal, but socially and culturally uptight.” He further says that this identity confusion is only found in public schools.

Shaw also claims that the teachers fail to connect with the students. He insists that the teachers are out-of-touch and “don’t get teenagers…adolescents are misunderstood…if we just listen to teenagers, we can learn a lot.”

He believes teachers are counter-productive when they’re over controlling. He recommends a non-emotional reaction to attention seeking students who misbehave. For instance, a student once referred to a teacher by his first name. The teacher replied: “Get out of the room!” Shaw snickers at the thought of this reaction. He claims that students would only gain respect from their peers for causing the teacher to become unusually emotional. By using these methods, Shaw said, teachers “never learn.”

Shaw, conversely, is also against coddling teenagers. He thinks that in order for an adolescent to mature he must be treated like an adult. He has observed adults that talk condescendingly to teenagers which are a part of the culture that wants to “grow up.” Shaw exaggeratively mocks the cliché; “How are you doing in school-Oh! You’ve grown, what grade are you in?” Shaw continues, criticizing the name of the Malibu Boys And Girls Club. He points out the typical teenager wants to be considered a “teenager,” not a “boy” or a “girl.”

He is also against “in loco parentis,” which, as defined by Legal Dictionary, is “Latin for 'in place of a parent;' a person or institution that assumes parental rights and duties for a minor.” Shaw believes that, for example, a school is liable for every action a student performs as close as one minute before the final school-ending bell. “A kid is let out of class one minute before [the bell rings], falls down and hurts himself…the parent sues the school.”

He also resents the public school lunch program. “Don’t even get me started! And they scream about drugs being a threat to the kids: what about the crap they are serving them? That does a lot more harm than smoking any joint is gonna do,” he said unapologetically. Shaw adds that the students are not given sufficient time to eat. He implies that student’s health are at risk due to their hurried eating.

Working alongside his former students he comes face-to-face with more issues. One is the over-demanding environment American student’s are exposed to; balancing a part-time job with education. “They’re grumpy. They haven’t had enough sleep. It’s that simple. We are so overworked in this society and it doesn’t make us a more efficient whatsoever!” he preaches with conviction.

Furthermore, Shaw criticizes America’s pragmatism. He compares America to England . He first touches on England’s universal health care system and laissez-faire culture. He characterizes American lifestyle as “hurry up-café latte-get up at 5:30 in the morning-God-Where’s my coffee.” He said that America's constant high-paced, money-driven lifestyle cannot be beneficial to our society. He theorizes it’s not a path to the “American Dream.” “Over-tired, under-nourished and grumpy” is how he describes Americans.

Despite being forced to work at Starbucks Shaw is optimistic. “As long as you’re alive and breathing there is no problem that can’t be solved.” And what does he wish for his students: That they “be safe, happy…healthy and get the most out of life…they are my children, I love them with all my heart,” he said.