It’s Period H at last. This huge high school campus pulses with adolescent energy as over 3000 kids trek from building to building, tramping over the dirty snowpack in their winter jackets and hoodies. Friends bump into each other and lock in afternoon plans.
“Meet me in front of the library, ok?”
“Let’s head for McDonald’s for a hot fudge sundae; I’ll treat”.
“What? You have to go home and babysit your little sister? You’ve got to be kidding! I’ll text you.”
The bell rings and the campus empties as they all stream to class and settle in for the last forty five minutes of the day. I brace myself for the onslaught in Room 70, which exudes its usual smell, a combination of wet sneakers, book dust, and faint bathroom odors from the boys’ restroom on the other side of the wall. Water from the ice on the roof of this 40 year old “temporary” building is falling through the light fixtures in the hall. It pings incessantly into the huge buckets placed under the worst leaks. This is a good sign; winter is finally losing its grip on New Hampshire.
And here they come again. If you were to peer in through the window of Room 70, this is what you would see. Tyler, the Clown, tossing out uncannily accurate imitations of his English teacher, his pants hanging precariously far below his waist. (“Now, people, quiet down. Quiet down, people!”). Justin, the dreamy-eyed Musician, tapping staccato beats on any hard object within his reach. Vicky, the Warrior, spouting bitter tirades against her math teacher (“She can’t teach a thing; everyone says so. The only reason I’m passing is because of you. She’s such a jerk”). Austin, the Dreamer, groping for his cell phone or Ipod whenever we aren’t looking, meandering in his fantasy world of skateboards and goodness-knows-what-else. Courtney, the Furious, knowing that she’s really a Princess and will one day rule the world. JR, the Distracted, hoping to sleep away this last part of the day. Tom, the Lost, looking for a way out of this hellish existence they call school. Kim, the Fearful, slipping into her desk by the wall, hoping to disappear into the woodwork. Mike, the Artist, drawing his endless vehicles, catching Kim’s eye with his sweet smile. John, the Reformed, trying to pull it all together, trying to focus after a disastrous semester. Mark, the Clueless, switching from mischievous to industrious as I hover, rolling his eyes and groaning as he hauls out a huge and daunting textbook with the uninspiring title, The Story of Western Civilization. (“I hate this! Why do we have to learn this stuff?”) Cindy, my Sunshine on this gray winter day, bouncing into the room to warm us with her dazzling smile. Taylor, the Beautiful, agonizing over her imminent failure in Driver’s Education, the only class that matters to her. Hunter, the Anchor, pulling out yet another Geometry worksheet, quietly asking for the help he knows he needs.
This thing that they call a Resource Room somehow takes on a life of its own and functions every day, more or less. My teammates and I instinctively spread ourselves out where we are most needed. Gradually the kids settle down. Books and assignments emerge from backpacks. Within minutes, almost everyone is working. The room hums, alive with the sounds of learning. The miracle happens again.
Long ago a man named Roger Miller sang, “You can’t roller skate in a buffalo herd, but you can be happy if you’ve a mind to.” But I am skating, and I am happy indeed.
How did I get here?
MY FIRST JOB
CLIMBING ABOARD
I was fresh out of college when I took my first teaching job as a special educator in a little country town in New Hampshire. There was a glut of teachers on the market in those years, and I literally pounded the pavement, searching high and low for a position, finally taking this job in desperation. My salary was less than $13,000 a year, and I would cry when I opened my first paycheck. “I went to college for this?” I moaned. But it was the only thing I could find. So I took it.
I thought I knew it all. After all, I had four growing children of my own and five years’ experience in a small private kindergarten. I thought of myself as fairly mature and competent at this point in my life. Little did I know that I was about to climb onto the roller coaster ride of my life. Somewhere inside my head, I heard the click of the safety bar as I signed my contract and locked myself in for the duration. I was committed and there was no turning back.
The kind woman who became my boss and mentor pulled me aside. She caught my gaze and held it, her voice laden with sincerity. “Your caseload is diverse and challenging, but the students are all basically good kids.” I would discover in the days to come that these words were a gross exaggeration of the truth. Some people would even contend that they bordered on deception. But her next words would prove to be invaluable. “Give them structure; let them see success”. To this day I am making use of those seven little words.
And so it was that I swooped and dove through two years in this hodgepodge of a classroom. I was indeed working with a diverse population, from bright, noncompliant ADHD kids, to children with true learning disabilities, to one unforgettable boy who was mentally ill. I began to understand all too clearly the meaning of the words “dumping ground”. I had to stay on top of the pile; I was the one responsible for making it all work.
I found myself coming up with individual lesson plans for most of these students, as well as managing two classroom aides and doing the major part of the teaching. I spent hours upon hours internalizing their Individual Education Plans, for every one of them had one of these lengthy documents, based on his or her disability. I worked hard to develop appropriate lesson plans and struggled to come up with discipline strategies. My administrators helped when they could, but they had their own workloads. The other special education teacher was even less experienced than I was. Once the day began, neither of us had time to catch a breath, let alone collaborate. I was on my own.
All of this was intermingled with building relationships with the classroom teachers, several of whom were trying their best to ignore me. I could feel them stiffen when I walked into a room. They seemed to be hoping that I would somehow dry up and blow away in a puff of failure. I was a threat, an intruder into their domain. I was totally unprepared for this unpleasant surprise. Other classroom teachers were more willing to work with me, but I was learning that a special education teacher will always face a level of marginalization. It gets lonely.
Meanwhile I had to supervise my two classroom aides, cover lunchroom and playground duties, and attend meetings. I was being stretched to the maximum. This was much, much more difficult than I had anticipated.
I TAKE A STAND
One day in early October, as the days grew shorter and the leaves began to glow with color, it all came to a head. It was the time in the morning schedule when they were all there at once, this gaggle of kids aged ten to fifteen or so, both aides, and myself, the fearless leader. I remember that I was laboring under the illusion that I had things somewhat under control. One of the aides was managing the mentally ill boy, who was in himself a challenge for one person. His birdlike chirps formed an otherworldly edge of sound that I had learned to ignore. The other aide and I were working with everyone else, moving frenetically from group to group, attempting to keep everyone focused on his or her work. An image of three garbage cans full of snakes and two lids flitted through my mind, but all in all, things could have been worse. “This isn’t so bad,” I said to myself.
Just then Barry, one of the more high maintenance boys, decided to liven things up. It was far too calm for his liking. He grabbed a glitter pen belonging to one of the girls and snapped it. Glitter flew everywhere, a sparkling snowfall of color. How could one pen contain so much glitter?
Something woke up inside of me. “This is my moment of truth,” I declared to myself. “I shall take a stand”.
“Barry, go get the vacuum cleaner and clean that up,” I commanded, with all the authority I could muster. Did we even have a vacuum cleaner? I wasn’t sure.
No one was more shocked than I when Barry did as he was told. In a flash, he returned with the vacuum. He then proceeded to vacuum the floor, the other students, the aides and me. When the bell mercifully rang, he was sucking the last flecks of glitter from my hair. After everyone had gone, I put my head in my hands and sobbed.
But I never plummeted that low again. I began to make progress with them, one by one. What was it my mother used to say? Oh, yes. “Arrange the pieces that come to you”.
FRACTIONS AND FLOWERED SKIRTS
Pete just didn’t “get” math. This easygoing eighth grader, with the brownest of eyes and a shock of brown hair to match, was completely frustrated by numbers. One sunny winter afternoon, the two of us were sitting quietly at a table, slogging through the mysteries of fractions. Pete so wanted to get it right, to make me happy, and it just wasn’t clicking for him. But I kept at it, reteaching, diagramming, dusting off old manipulatives, pulling out all the tricks of the trade. Then I had a brilliant idea. “Pete, what’s your favorite pizza?” I asked. Pete perked up. “Pepperoni,” he responded. So I began to draw some pizzas, complete with pepperoni pieces. Pete’s eyes lit up and fastened on my drawing.
“There,” I thought to myself in triumph, as I finished off a nearly perfect sketch of two pizzas, one sectioned into fourths and the other into eighths. I was climbing, almost at the top of my pedantic roller coaster. “This will work for sure!” I thought.
Just minutes into my crystal clear explanation, Pete looked up from my exquisite little drawing and shifted his gaze to my flowered skirt, suddenly transfixed. I waited expectantly. “That used to be a curtain, right?” he queried.
Down I went.
REDHEADS AND LILAC BUSHES
Steven was a seventh grader with flaming red hair and a will of iron. Oh, how he hated to write, especially when it came to spelling sentences. And I could understand why. As bright as he was, his fine motor issues made writing a painful challenge. One afternoon he set his face like a flint and refused to do the spelling lesson. I knew that this was a battle I must win.
So I called his mom, who knew her son well and was 100 % behind me.
“Can you pick Steven up from school if I keep him late? I’ve got to get this assignment out of him.”
She was so grateful; I think she would have kissed my feet. She agreed to pick him up once the ordeal was over. I gathered some paperwork and waited.
Sure enough, Steven dragged into my room after school, fuming, his freckled face nearly the same color as his hair. His bright blue eyes were blazing with anger. He looked like he could burst into flames at any moment. He thumped defiantly down into a chair and glared at the floor, refusing to meet my gaze. So I put the book, paper and pen in front of him and waited. Nothing happened. I believe we sat there for close to thirty minutes, neither of us speaking, as I slogged through the never ending paperwork and pretended to ignore him.
Finally Steven burst into tears. “Why are you doing this to me?” he sobbed.
“Because I care about you,” I answered. I swallowed the lump in my throat and waited.
Silence. Steven picked up the pen and finished the assignment. From that day on, he gave me everything he had. He worked with me and made wonderful progress. Years later, on a Saturday afternoon, a tall young redheaded man rang my doorbell. It took me a minute to remember, but sure enough it was Steven, handing me a Persian lilac bush for my garden. It still blooms for me.
BAD BOYS AT THE SWAMP
It was so hard to reach some of the older boys on my caseload. They squirmed with embarrassment when they were forced to come to the “retard room”, and wanted nothing to do with me. I knew it wasn’t personal, but still, I longed to develop a relationship with them. So when spring brought us a reasonably mild day, I decided to take three of them to a neighboring swamp to catch some tadpoles. It would be cool to watch them morph into frogs, right in the classroom. Hands-on biology! Surely this would work.
I trooped across the road and over to the little country pond with my three renegades. The sun felt deliciously warm and the fresh air teased us with scents of spring. The boys were really getting into it. So far, so good, I thought. Soon we managed to collect a few hapless tadpoles in our buckets, but on the way home, Mike decided it would be fun to sit down in the middle of the road. I stared in horror as he plopped himself down on the asphalt and sat there laughing at me. Fortunately there wasn’t much traffic in this quiet little town. My mind took a desperate leap back into my college prep courses to remember who had covered “Boy sitting in middle of road” and came up empty. My methods courses had been sadly lacking in classroom management, and no one had imagined this one, let alone dealt with it.
“Mike, please get up now!” I begged pathetically, knowing he had me over a barrel. He knew it too, and just kept on grinning. He refused to budge.
Too late, I realized what a big mistake I had made in coming without another adult. In desperation I finally tried the “ignore the behavior” strategy and started back to the school with the other two. Imaginary headlines ran through my head; “Local teacher indicted in vehicular death of student”. But sure enough, he followed when the shock value was gone.
The boys and I made our way back to the school, found a large tank in the science room and emptied our buckets into it, along with their unlucky contents. “Maybe this was a good idea after all,” I began to hope, feeling that perhaps I was on the cutting edge of scientific pedagogy. That was when I noticed the small trickle of swamp water that was leaking onto the floor from the bottom of the tank. It quickly became clear that there was a reason why the tank was empty. The trickle swelled to a stream as the moments passed. I stood transfixed. How could such a tiny amount of water spread so rapidly over those hideous black and white linoleum squares? Finally I shook myself into action, rushed to find a mop from a nearby closet and started in. Oh, how it smelled! I couldn’t possibly keep up with the flow.
It was at that moment that the young science teacher walked in, saw my dilemma, and pitched in with another mop. I can’t remember whether or not we saved the tadpoles, but I never forgot his kindness to me.
However, it was awhile before I tried any more hands-on science projects.
JANITORS AND COOKS
Joe the janitor spent the good weather days on the lawnmower and the long wintry days smoking in the boiler room with Sally, the cook. One day my principal suggested that I ask Jerry to replace my ancient chalkboard with something better from the attic. Jerry met my request with a sullen glare, and I knew I’d made a mistake. Trouble was brewing. The next day, I came into my room to the most battered and bruised blackboard I had ever seen. Horrified, I pleaded with my principal to intervene. “Please, Steve, you’ve got to do something. You’re the one who suggested I ask for the switch. I’ve got to get my old blackboard back.”
“It’s your problem,” Steve responded with an indifferent shrug. “Deal with it.”
His words left me incredulous. Was he possibly afraid of Jerry? I walked out of his office in frustration, taking it upon myself to face the janitor on his own ground. In fear and trembling, I crept down to the boiler room, knelt in front of Jerry, and implored him to switch the boards back. “Please,” I begged, through clouds of cigarette smoke. Then I saw his face soften in amusement. It was working! He was clearly enjoying my humiliation, but I didn’t care any more.
I think it was my prostration that put him into action. By the next morning, my “old” blackboard was back in place on my classroom wall. Lesson learned? Do it yourself, or don’t do it at all.
Sissy the cook was another story. She did a great job in the kitchen, with limited resources. Everyone, including me, enjoyed her lighthearted humor. But at a faculty party, I carried it one step too far. “This food is great. It sure looks better than the food in the cafeteria. I never touch that stuff.”
I had hoped that my little joke would gain me acceptance with the other teachers, but I couldn’t have been more mistaken. In no time at all, it got back to her. To say that she was upset would be a gross understatement. What could I do? I spent several days convincing her that I was sorry by bringing her little bouquets of flowers in apology. Finally it worked; little by little, I was learning.
LEVI
Levi was a bucket of worms. Troubled and neglected, he struggled with mental illness. He had been in residential placement the previous year, but the school board decided to try placing him back home and educating him in my program. What a disaster. He appeared laconic and passive, but ignored any and all adult direction. He laughed at the math worksheets I provided and threw them away. Learning his multiplication facts was clearly not on his agenda. Whatever did not amuse him, and that included any academic task, he ignored.
He was unpredictable, and would take off at a moment’s notice, lumbering through the halls making his bird noises or running into the woods. He had a maniacal laugh that could set the whole school’s teeth on edge. He was a full time job in himself. Thank goodness for my wonderful aide Barbara, worth her weight in gold. She took him on so that I could deal with the rest of my caseload.
It was probably well into the school year when my husband and I took off on a Friday night for a weekend getaway to Maine. Traveling down the highway in the darkness, we happened to tune the radio to a talk show that was dealing with the topic of child abuse. As I listened, something broke inside of me. I began to weep for Louis, who was so young and had been so mistreated. I could not stop sobbing for a long time. I felt that I would surely turn inside out with grief for him. I was beginning to pay the price for the vocation I had chosen.
At Levi’s annual meeting that spring, his mother and stepfather charged into the room with guns loaded. Everyone tensed up as they wasted no time in berating the school for our supposed lack of effort on Levi’s behalf. “What is wrong with you people?” they accused. “What have you done to our son? Why isn’t he making any progress?”
I sat there in misery, feeling my anger and frustration building. They knew the kind of effort I had put forth for their son. Why were they doing this to me? I did not realize what was going on. As I felt the tension in the room bubble and rise, I reacted most unprofessionally and burst into tears. This was a behavior I would never repeat, but it was my first year in a very difficult job, and I was stretched to the limit. After the meeting, I found myself hiding in the closet under the stage in the gym. I felt so defeated, almost at the bottom again. I seemed to be learning everything the hard way.
I learned the truth later in a conversation with Levi’s parents. They were not disappointed with me. They were simply angling for another year of residential placement. No one wanted to deal with Levi’s, including his mother and father.
PRIMARY LESSONS
Oh, the things they don’t teach you in education courses. There is much that can only be learned through experience in the classroom. But if I could advise first year teachers, these are the lessons I would pass on.
When disciplining, take a stand and quietly hold your ground. There’s no need to raise your voice. In fact, the softer your voice, the quieter the students will become. It worries them. Use the words “You need to…”followed by the desired behavior. And don’t be afraid to repeat your request five times if necessary. You are the adult and you will win in the end.
Don’t assume that students are learning until you do a reality check. They want to please you and can often fool you to make you happy. Ask key questions, and ask them often. Let them show you that they have learned something. Your job is to teach, and their job is to learn, but nothing is taught until something is learned. You are the one responsible for making sure you are doing your job.
Let the kids know you care when you have to be hard on them. “This hurts me more than it hurts you” is a useful line, whether it is true or not. Indifference and apathy are your mortal enemies.
Don’t put yourself in vulnerable positions without backup and support. Others will help if you ask. Don’t be stupid. You can’t do everything alone, no matter how good you are. Find the people you can trust and build those relationships, then ask for help when you need it. And leave those tadpoles in the swamp where they belong!
Do not alienate the janitor or the cook or the administrative assistants. They are often a longstanding and integral part of the school, as well as a practical necessity. What if you need toilet paper or Kleenex? This can be an issue. And gossip travels very fast if you offend one of the support staff. Be careful with them; they are absolutely key to your success. They will love you for honoring them.
Don’t blame yourself for every “failure”. You are dealing with difficult and complicated people. Not everything is your fault. Not everything can be fixed, at least by you.
Don’t cry at meetings or hide under the stage! It is quite counterproductive.
So ended my time at this little country school. I gave those kids two years of my life, and learned much more from them than they learned from me. Then I left to take another job much closer to home, at our local high school.