(I’ll call her Trudy): and then others

I had forgotten that she was “visually handicapped”, had special classes, was mainstreamed into mine before there was such a notion, and they gave me large print books for her and she worked out an arrangement so I’d let her go to the library or her special teacher so she wouldn’t have to be seen using those baby-looking books in my fifth grade class. And she was weaned back to us much of the time, and we respected her wishes whenever she wanted or needed to leave for a while, and she began writing poetry and wonderful stories, with great care controlling her coordination to reduce the size of her handwriting, and producing charming pictures to accompany them. Her mother was PTA room mother for the class and at Halloween made a wonderful custom gingerbread house with icing and jellybean cobblestones and I’d never seen anything like it (still a kid, yeah, young father, sheltered life, where had I been all my life?), and her mother told me how painfully shy and withdrawn her daughter had been and how much it meant to her when I put a note on the report card to the effect that: “Trudy is becoming quite “frisky” and talkative in class lately, no problem but I’m keeping my eye on her, just thought you’d like to know.”

Fifteen years ago. That’s a long time. My first year teaching in Pasadena. A few other “visually handicapped/partially sighted” students since, because I had the books in my room, but Trudy was the first. Shows you how unself-aware I was (and am), I’d forgotten that about her. I just thought she was a neat girl, and a lively, talented student.

And I remember ______, the deaf & hard of hearing teacher, periodically (annually) giving a class presentation about his students, introducing them so we would all be comfortable on the playground; how impressed I was by the statement that “Deafness is a worse handicap than blindness, because the blind can learn language, quickly, reflexively, but the deaf must construct a painfully difficult conceptual framework and communication is always unstable…” And the gesture (which I recently used while watching the Presidential debates), holding the hand before the face, blocking out the vision of someone or something offensive, saying “You don’t exist.”

And (call him) Vinnie, etc.

Short for Vincent. Dyslexic, severely educationally handicapped, my daughter’s good friend and a sweet-natured kid whose mother was afraid to send him to junior high because she was certain he would be raped, so moved out of town to set up a pizza place on the pier at Redondo with Vinnie waiting on customers, and then moved away I don’t know where. And Rodney, dyslexic, severely educationally handicapped, could not read, frustrated, a lively mind, the bane of some of his teachers and the agony of others.

And Jeffrey, the wild boy, who threw a chair through the wall of the classroom the day I had a substitute (the principal had him repair the hole, very sensible), who remained in class until he reached my limit and then straight to the office for a while to calm down and then back to class. He disrupted the rehearsals for the Christmas play (my play, my druidic Christmas fable full of mistletoe and human sacrifice and the message of brotherhood unbelievably Christian for such an early date A.D.), broke the microphone for which I wanted never to forgive him, and the day on the playground he smashed another kid in the skull with a baseball bat and had to be subdued by an ex-marine while I tried to help hustle him to the office and at the same time loosen the grip that seemed to be choking him to death, a black boy whose face drained white that terrible moment with his tongue hanging and his eyes rolling upward and I tried to restrain both of them. A fierce family. His sister slapped her teacher in the face (and was actually suspended for an hour)…Heard stories about Jeffrey for years as he worked his way through successively higher schools; and his big friend Glen, hit by a bus and everyone was concerned about the bus.

And (why is my memory so hazy?) an epileptic girl who was mostly in my class, and had seizures but generally knew well enough in advance to make it across the hall to the nurse’s office, but twice fell in the room and we moved the desks back so she wouldn’t hit her head, and put the leather strap between her teeth so she wouldn’t bite her tongue off, and sent for the student stretcher crew (at elementary school yet), just routine, and several times from the playground, so routine that I’d nearly forgotten it, or perhaps blocked it out because I was terrified that I really didn’t know what I was doing and couldn’t cope if there should be a problem or complication and wanted to rely on the presence of some other older more experienced teacher so that mentally I must have been disclaiming responsibility, and anyway the nurse was very helpful. Always make friends with the nurse.

How easy it is to babble on, remembering the boy with leg braces but having forgotten there was anything “special” about him, just that he couldn’t get around quickly, only occasionally “ran” the bases on the playground, didn’t want to stay in for recess or lunch…

The move to high school brought problems of greater magnitude; but first, because I’d forgotten or skipped over or mentally discounted (told you I’m unself-aware), for three years I was a kind of special ed teacher, funded by SB 90 to work with remedial students in reading and language development, mostly the bottom quartile, and NES/LES students learning English. Candide in the classroom again. I didn’t know what I was doing, had some ideas, tried to develop others, was smothered by red tape, dominated by a project teacher with a literal mind and unsupported by a principal who had abdicated the year before but didn’t retire for three more very ambivalent years. I set up a program to work with students in groups for specified lengths of time (two weeks, generally) because the regular classroom teachers wanted smaller classes or nothing and this was the only way (you may supplement but not supplant) to achieve some semblance of that. Also worked in classrooms (in the corner with a group, always felt uncomfortably disruptive to the regular teacher whose autonomy I always tried to respect but was not allowed to). Many wonderful curriculum ideas (and workshops/inservices at school, other schools, conferences, etc., the usual for a “Language Arts Resource Teacher”). Produced student written/illustrated books that were printed by the local library which circulated copies and gave them also to the authors and their families. Life skills curriculum (written up in the TV guide because we used it as a curriculum supplement in reading/language/math), lots of stuff. Developed the school/library cooperative project and donated countless (that’s right, count ‘em: countless) hours, but there was the literal minded project director who said “You can’t do that, even if it’s on your own time in the evenings or on the weekends, because someone in the community may see you working on materials that will be used by students other than the identified population you are permitted to “serve”, and you’re only permitted to be an SB 90 employee…” No support from the principal, a clash of wills clearly, I continued to use my time as I wished but was miserable being shunted from corner to corner of identified classrooms, told to play administrative games, told for example “With the NES/LES children learning English, don’t be too successful or they’ll move out of the program and we’ll lose our funding…” Three miserable years making up my mind what I wanted to do with my life, and how had I gotten myself into such a situation? Wasn’t supposed to be that way.

And I remember supplementing my own experiences with a review of the QUEST Conference just recently, detailing the indictment of the bilingual program from the mouths of its proponents, the way those kids are thrown upon an unprepared teacher (usually with a waiver) who then relegates the burden of instruction to a bilingual aide hired off the street or boat, a second best education which puts them further and further behind so that by the time they muddle through high school, they have no hope of college and a compromised chance of graduating at all. And the proponents said with great pride, “Why, we give our students a full 20 minutes of English instruction per day!” I sent copies of my bitter review to Sen. Gary Hart, Supt. Honig, Governor (then) Brown, David Savage of the L. A. Times, our own school board in Pasadena, etc. I’m still not courageous, but was (and am) upset.

So…high school, a couple examples, because this is too long already.

Here is a YouTube video of me reading this segment: