THE PORTABLES
When I took the Special Ed job at Pinkerton, classroom space was at a premium. So Room 69 would be my home for the next five years. Room 69, the outcast portable on this beautiful campus, was a wonder in itself. It stood alone, slumped in despair, a blemish on a patch of lawn smack dab in the center of things. Now it is true that Room 69 was not the only portable on campus. It faced two rows of 40 year old “temporary” portables, but at least they could lean together, lending each other some dignity. Not Room 69. It was unique in so many ways. Most recently, the Horticulture Program had been stuffed into it. In years past it had served other functions, even housing the Band Program at one time, but no one really wanted it.
Why was this? For one thing, it had no thermostat. The heat was either on or off. This made for some interesting transitions in the dead of the New Hampshire winter. Before Christmas break, my teaching partner and I would make sure that the heat was turned off. We couldn’t be wasting all that energy over the holidays. However, this meant that we would be coming back to a sub zero room on January 2. This was, after all, New England.
As I Iived just a few minutes up the street, I would creep down to the school late on New Year’s night and turn the heat on. When we came into work the next day, the room would be sweltering at 90 degrees or so, but at least we didn’t freeze. We would turn the heat off and throw open all the windows to let the icy January air flood in, until some sort of equilibrium was reached. This situation continued for several years until we got computers. It was then that a thermostat was installed. Those computers got royal treatment!
Adding to the adventure of Room 69 was the wildlife. Some of the critters lived underneath its shaky foundation, and on afternoons when the students were quietly working, animal sniffings and scratchings could be clearly heard. Other critters were bold enough to take up residence inside drawers and cupboards. They must have had great parties at night when we had all gone home. We would often find traces of their revelings, and we learned not to leave any snacks in our desks, for they would surely ferret them out. At one point we lifted a dusty old notebook off a high filing cabinet and out spilled a stash of acorns.
Flying critters were another issue. Bees and bugs came and went at will in the warm weather, freaking out those who were allergic or just plain scared of them. An open window was a screenless window, and it gets hot in June, even in New England. Air conditioning? You’ve got to be kidding!
An uninvited guest who visited almost every spring with the thaw was the skunk. Well, it might not have been the same skunk every year; I was never completely sure. One year he (or she -I was never sure of that either) sprayed so heavily that our eyes were smarting when we walked in. We gathered our basics and relocated to the library for the next week, until the stench abated.
After enduring Room 69 for five years, I finally told my boss that it was somebody else’s turn. For the next few years I was moved here and there around the campus, but finally landed in Room 70, part of the row of aforementioned portables. It had similar animal issues, but at least I was in a building with other teachers. Some of them would become my closest friends.
To add to the sketchy ambience of Room 70, the thermostat was set by some higher power to never, ever exceed 65 degrees. When I complained, the custodian came in with his thermometer, barely noticing my blue extremities and large, bulky coat (I had yet to reveal my long underwear) and informed me that it was a good, solid 65 degrees and that the cold air blowing from the vent was providing much needed ventilation. I should be grateful for that. Suck it up, he implied. If I thought that it was cold in my room, I should try standing out in the quad for awhile. What was his message? Should I be grateful that I didn’t have to teach out of doors? I finally gave up and just stayed continually in motion.
After three hours in Room 70 I would gratefully escape to the teacher’s room for my planning period and a few calisthenics to thaw my hands and feet. Then one morning, before classes began, I noticed heavy smoke emanating from the heater. It was literally on fire. As I called the office and we vacated the room, my hopes were raised for a new heating system, But it was not to be. Somehow they patched that heater up and we were back in Room 70 by lunchtime.
Those 40 year old “temporary” portables came tumbling down at last in clouds of dust and debris the summer before my last year of teaching. I watched the bulldozers knock down walls and create a tangled rubble of desks, ancient blackboards, window frames and bent cabinets. I wonder how many rodents died in that rubble. The portables are only a memory now and have been replaced by stately new buildings.
WHAT REALLY MATTERED
However, as I began to work with my students, I realized that the condition of my classroom really didn’t matter that much to me. The relationships I was building with these kids were what mattered. Pinkerton is a huge place. I discovered that our connections with our students could hold them together and get them through to a diploma. I could not forget the pain of adolescence – the loneliness, the awkwardness, the isolation. For the students on my caseload, these feelings were compounded with the stigma of being assigned to the “retard room”. I could make things better for them.
That was the luxury of this job – being able to connect personally and build a relationship that would make a difference. Every day I needed to remember to shepherd my students – to say hello as though I were truly glad to see them, call them by name, check their emotional temperature, look in their eyes and steady them. Often no one else in their lives was doing that for them. Som of them were oh, so fragile and could be easily bruised. And so my twenty five year long adventure with these wonderful kids began.