(Let me call him) Eric

“Disturbed” kid. So everybody said. Female teachers said they were afraid to be alone in the room with him. “Everyone” thought he was devious, cheated (tried to catch him); was often strung out on drugs, had a destructive urge, a quick mind and a poor self image, academically disadvantaged and frustrated because he couldn’t produce written work at the level of his thinking, and couldn’t stabilize his thinking as he wished. Final semester of his senior year, withdrawn from school, drinking, depressed, ran the car into a concrete wall, attempted suicide put him into a mental hospital and out of my class. And there I was, new to teaching high school, couldn’t understand why I was the only one who went to see him, had to carry messages from all the other teachers (most of whom hoped there would be a way to help him graduate) and counselors, called a conference with his teachers to plan strategy for him to complete enough assignments to earn the units he needed (now why should I have to do that?? Outranked by everyone else…). I visited him and arranged tutoring sessions where I worked with him for hours (and I had promised myself that when I got to teaching high school I wouldn’t walk on water right away), set up a conference with his psychiatric therapist, his parents, himself (now why should I have to do that??) and talked turkey to them all, prefacing the remarks with the clear statement that I really didn’t know what I was talking about because it’s not my field, and no I’m not courageous, but it seemed to me that Eric hadn’t intended seriously to attempt suicide (quite right, he agreed and had been saying for some time) but that he was trying to attract attention and had certainly succeeded (how simple the easy cases are), that he needed the love and support of his family (which they were shaken into manifesting most visibly and securely) but not the pressure of the upwardly mobile black scion who must be better than everyone at all costs and go to Harvard, pressure he couldn’t handle because it was insensitively unrealistic; and Eric himself was taking advantage of the whole situation, interposing excuses between himself and the honest effort that would produce real learning and work of real substance, and he still owed me assignments and if he wanted to graduate yes I would work with him but he had to put out real effort and in a hurry too, no more cop outs, and of course I didn’t know what I was talking about, I amazed myself and Eric graduated and is attending Pomona college and forging a better perspective toward his family which he had never wanted to see again. Happy endings are nice. Saw him a few months ago, seems to be doing well, happy, but I don’t really know for sure. But am still annoyed that during his entire situation no one took responsibility and clearly it wasn’t my place to do so but had to but shouldn’t have had to. Seem to be venting frustrations here in this paragraph. Don’t want to believe that the mechanisms of society don’t work better than that. People tell me I can’t worry about everyone else, can’t bear so much of the burden, I’m not whining, but who can disagree with Helen Caldecott when she says we can do nothing less. She’s right.

Robert (a cheerful note)

Another sad case, a kid I knew in philosophy club, coached in writing, but who was never a student of mine. He was fat, ugly, had terrible acne, was nearly deaf but didn’t have a hearing aide, was being thrown out by his parents who were moving to Baja California to retire and told him to get a job and an apartment somewhere but not to ask them for anything (he was 15 at the time). He dropped out of school, was suicidal, was institutionalized in a mental hospital. He took the graduation equivalency exam, got a hearing aide, lost some weight, started exercising, has a tan, lives in Malibu and goes to Santa Monica City College where he enjoys his philosophy classes very much. He came back to visit, reminiscing over the times I coached him on essays and speeches; we both regret that he was never actually a student of mine, but if I move on to college, I may encounter him again. He likes serious literature (loaned me a book of Gogol’s stories which I have yet to read and return), is cheerful, knows he has resurrected himself, and looks forward to the future. I don’t take credit for any of that, but am glad to see it. A nice way to end a series of anecdotes (which could go on and on. yes, and on…)

There needs to be a peroration. I don’t forget the cynicism the classroom teachers expressed (and concerns through the unions too) when mainstreaming first appeared in the ‘70s. We saw right away that it was a means of saving millions of dollars, “dumping” handicapped students into already overcrowded classrooms, placing them with teachers who were not trained or prepared to deal with them and removing the professional support services in many cases so that only token help was provided, often of an advising or supervisorial nature, frequently counter-productive. In such cases, unfair to the teachers, unfair to the students, and unprofessional to allow some special ed teachers to operate with a reduced or non-existent case load (which made them a happy lobbying force for that renovated system).

Dr. T— very nearly convinced me that the intent of the mainstreaming legislation initially was to maintain all the special help, special classes as appropriate, but enriched educational experiences for handicapped students. This would cost actually more than (or at least not less than) the older system of special class containment. But this ideal situation nowhere exists, and almost certainly never will. So yes, the classroom teacher is being exploited in the name of rhetorical phrases. The reality is unconscionable.

And clearly the requirements of the laws have channeled money away from the educational program for the “mainstream.” That means in many (perhaps most) cases the quality of education for the handicapped child is inferior, the quality for everyone else is inferior, and society itself continues to slide down the interface of the void.

Conclusions aren’t going the way I’d like them to. I’ve seen too much, politicking at the expense of quality, to know how to balance my cheerful altruistic nature with a strong dose of reality. I’m working too hard trying to do my job wishing other people would do theirs with some comparable degree of commitment. I detect in my tone the frantic edge of incipient burnout. So maybe this is where Dr. T— steps in, provides a word or two of encouraging direction. And so writes the conclusion to this paper. Not just a clever ploy on my part, not sidestepping any issues, maybe partly a clumsy way of saying thanks for a class I didn’t think I could enjoy or benefit from, and “Help,” and “Keep in touch,” “Don’t weaken,” and “Meet you at the barricades.”

		P.S.  A few recent lines:

			so many doors rooms
			the air passes through
			carrying my voice