Tales from a Teacher-Mama

It’s my job.

They don’t want to work–of course they’d rather play, mess around on the computer, even look at books. There’s daydreaming and self-stimming, whining and arguing. They challenge me at every turn.

But it’s my job. My job to help them learn. My job to show them how their choices lead to consequences, good or bad. My job to get through their defenses so they feel safe and confident enough to take in language, reading, writing, math, science, social studies, and health. My job to help them figure out how to navigate their way in this world.

What a job! It comes with paperwork and deadlines. Budget cuts and extra duties. Lesson plans and parent newsletters. Calls to parents and sometimes calls to children’s services. Copies to make and grades to calculate. State tests and in-service workshops. My time is stretched as thin as my paycheck is.

But I chose this job. I choose it every day. It is my profession. It is my calling. It is my passion.

I choose this job because it is fulfilling. I know that I am living my destiny, and by so doing I am shaping the destiny of children and their families. It is a long, winding journey with no destination, only the requirement to keep moving, progressing, growing.

The rewards are great–not large or tangible, but significant. A child’s smile at getting a right answer. A giggle after tears. A parent’s thanks. An acknowledgment from a former student on graduation day. A note of praise and encouragement from the principal. A pat on the back from a colleague. A moment of reflection on how far a child has come. On how far I have come.

I am a teacher. It is my job. I choose it because I can’t imagine doing anything else.

On Friday (March 27) I turned 35. As London Tipton would say, “Yay me!” (The girls have definitely been watching too much “Suite Life of Zack and Cody” lately…)

Since it was a Friday, of course I had to work. This really wasn’t so bad as co-workers showered me with birthday good wishes. However, the disruption of routine was not so great for my students. Micah* had a crying/shouting/flailing meltdown and went to the in-school suspension room to calm down while the rest of the class went to bake cupcakes. By the time we finished that activity, another Finn* was on the verge of a trip to ISS himself–also screaming and crying. An aide took him for a walk after lunch while the rest of us frosted cupcakes; the walk ended in another tantrum with Finn pounding his fist against a window. Meanwhile, before we could get the party started, Micah accidentally-on-purpose knocked Carly* over, then proceeded to throw a real fit about being put in time-out. I ended up pushing my crisis call button to have him escorted back to the ISS room so I could blow out my candle and pass out the cupcakes.

This is not to say that it was a bad day. It was crazy…but I’ve come to know that that comes with the territory! But between tantrums, I got a special balloon arrangement from a co-worker friend that definitely brightened my day. I was wished happy birthday by students and staff up and down the halls. The kindergarten and first grade classes made me cute construction paper birthday cards. One of the middle school classes videotaped a short skit in honor of my birthday for the school-wide morning announcements. My brand-new student teacher had a gift for me–a beautiful necklace and earrings made by one of the aides in my classroom. After cupcakes with my class, I was treated to another chorus (of sorts) of “Happy Birthday” by the middle school class that had made the video announcement. When students were finally ushered onto buses at the end of the day, my great friends in the elementary and middle school departments had cake and ice cream waiting for me, along with cards and gifts. Overall, I could not have felt more special and loved.

*of course, student names have been changed

So I’m taking classes that will allow me to add an endorsement to my teaching license in blindness/visual impairment. I was fortunate enough to get into a program funded by a grant so all of my 24 credit hours are paid for–without a penny out of my pocket. I don’t feel passionately about working with students who are blind or visually impaired the way I do about teaching deaf kids, but that’s okay. I do feel pretty passionately about deaf kids with additional disabilities, and that includes vision issues, so I am excited about taking these classes and learning new things.

Most of our classes are held by telephone conference twice each week, but today we had our first in-person meeting at the university. My professor himself is blind, so in addition to his extensive credentials, he has an authentic perspective on the subject matter he’s teaching us. It was cool to meet him and my classmates so now I have faces to connect to the voices on the phone.

But the day was not exactly smooth and easy! First of all, I overslept a bit: I woke up at 6:55 and was supposed to be meeting two friends at 7:15 to make the 2-1/2 hour drive to the university together. Oops! So I hurried to get ready, and we were able to hit the highway about 7:45. Not bad in Boone Standard Time! We actually arrived before 10:00 when class was to start and found the building where our class was to be held. But…the doors were locked. We searched for an open door and found our other classmates, minus one, who were also locked out of the building. The one person who had managed to get into the building finally came to let the rest of us in, and we made our way to the classroom around 10:15 at least…but there was no professor. A few minutes later, Dr. M’s grad assistant led him in. Surprisingly, he did not apologize for his own tardiness (we later found out that he had been locked out of the building too) but quickly ran through introductions and dived into our first lessons in Braille writing.

After Dr. M’s explanation and demonstration of loading paper into the Perkins Brailler, we each got a turn. The Brailler is basically a Braille typewriter, a machine with just nine keys: six keys that punch the dots, a space bar, a back space key, and a line-space up key. This is deceptively simple. After learning to load the paper in the Brailler, we delved into learning about the configurations of six dots that form the 26 letters of the alphabet, ordinal numbers (0-9), capitalization, and punctuation. The six-dot configurations are formed within what’s called a cell. And that’s juuuuust the beginning.

 There are TONS of rules to Braille. And they change. For example, the dot configurations that represent the letters A-J also represent the numerals 0-9 IF preceded by the number sign–another dot configuration. The rules for use of the number sign depend on whether the numbers are in a set, are separated by a space, continue onto a new line following a comma or a hyphen… Well, I’m not looking at my notes, so I can’t quite remember all the if-thens. I won’t even get into the rules for punctuation. Whew.

But letters and numbers and the rules governing them are nothing compared to contractions. Grade 1 Braille is reading/writing letter-for-letter; the next step is Grade 2, which uses a system of abbreviations called contractions. Since Braille in general is very bulky, the contractions help conserve space in Braille writing. But they also make learning Braille much more complicated! Each letter of the alphabet, standing alone, represents a whole word. For example, “b” means “but” and “h” means “have.” A, I, and O are exceptions since “a” and “I” are already words on their own, and “o” is essentially the same as “oh.” That means 23 letter-word representations to memorize.

There are also whole-word and partial-word contractions. For instance, the words and, the, for, with, and of each have a single symbol to represent them. According to another set of rules, these whole-word contractions can be used alone and within longer words, so that the name “Andy” can be formed in just two cells using the dot configuration for “and” plus ”y”. There are also contractions for letter combinations such as “ch” or “st”–and I think these are partial-word contractions (not looking at my notes…I’ve got some studying to do!).

By 3:30, our heads were swimming with those six little dots. We left with 10 sheets of paper for our Braillers so that we can get busy with our homework exercises. In just over four hours, I learned more today than I have in the past three months, I think! But this is just the tip of the iceberg–only our first class of Braille I. We have the whole rest of this course to cover, and then there will be Braille II. I’m taking a deep breath and focusing on how cool it will be when I can add reading and writing Braille to my resume.

Recently a young man who I once taught in middle school was arrested for murder. He was indicted on eight counts of aggravated murder, four counts of kidnapping, two counts each of aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery, and single counts of gross sexual imposition of a child under 13, receiving stolen property, grand theft of a motor vehicle and being a felon in possession of a weapon. The prosecutor is seeking the death penalty.

Even though I only had the young man in my class for a short time, hearing of his crimes has weighed on me. I don’t recall feeling frightened of him; in fact, when I picture him in my mind, I see him with a sweet but goofy grin on his face. One of my teacher friends referred to him as “charming,” and I’d have to agree that he could be. He was mischievous, but that grin of his could make you forget midsentence what misdeed you were correcting him for.

At the time he was in my class, he was transitioning from a mental health facility into our school. I’ve since forgotten what little I knew of his background, other than that he was in foster care and had serious academic delays. Later, when he was in high school, I witnessed the severity of his rage as he had to be restrained by our crisis team for an outburst of temper. Still, I had no idea how damaged this young man was.

Various newspaper articles have filled in some blanks for me: his mother died of a drug-related heart attack when he was a toddler; in all likelihood, she had used drugs while pregnant with her son. He lived with his abusive father in homeless shelters until going into foster care. He was diagnosed with a hearing loss as well as ADHD at age 6 or 7. Also at age 7, he began smoking marijuana; a year later, he began drinking alcohol. By the time he was 10, he had been identified as mildy mentally retarded. At age 11 he first attempted suicide. As a juvenile, he had various run-ins with the law. He stole–property, cars. After he stole a pizza-delivery driver’s car, his last foster family kicked him out at age 16. He set fire to a neighbor’s house after burglarizing it. He was in and out of youth correction facilities throughout his teenage years and into his early twenties. It appears that none of the interventions tried with him worked. He was a broken boy.

Still, I was shocked to see him arrested for the murder of a young mother and the kidnapping of her 4-year-old son. Shocked…but not altogether surprised. It’s hard to believe that the young man on the news for such heinous crimes is one I once taught in my classroom.

My head buzzes with unanswerable questions. Was there something more I could have done when he was in my class? Should I have made more of an effort to reach out to him? As a school did we do all we could for him? While no one can say for certain, I feel that there was probably no more I could have done. I’m also fairly confident that our school did its best for this troubled young man. But there are tougher questions: What happened? What was he thinking? I wonder if there might have been anything done to prevent this incident. Earlier intervention? Perhaps he has been misdiagnosed or has a condition as yet undiagnosed.

“What ifs” aside, this horrendous situation has driven home one point in particular for me: criminals are human. What this young man–and many others like him–did is monstrous, but he himself is not a monster. His disturbing past left its mark,  unfortunately not only on him but also on his victims. By no means do I feel that his disabilities or personal problems should excuse him from consequences for his actions; I absolutely believe that the family he victimized deserves justice. But justice is not vengeance. In this case, appropriate consequences may include mental health treatment in addition to incarceration. I do not envy the jurors who will have to hear this case and render a verdict. Sadly, I wonder if this young man, being hot-tempered and having been accused of child molestation, will even survive to trial. All I can offer are my prayers: that this young man will understand what he’s done and truly repent,  that the family of his victims will find healing and peace, and that somehow we will find ways to break the cycle of abused and broken children growing into abusive and destructive adults.

Part Two: Myron’s visit to the Ohio School for the Deaf    

The spring of 2006 finally brought Myron back to Ohio.  On the afternoon of May 16, I picked Myron up at the airport and brought him to his hotel. The next two days would be busy ones.

Day One of Myron’s visit was filled with presentations to OSD’s students. There were three groups: elementary, middle school, and high school. Myron entertained all of the students equally with magic tricks, slides of old photos, and stories of his childhood with his deaf parents. The students also laughed when Myron showed them his name sign and explained its origin: his initials “MU” sounding like “moo” inspired his mother to give him the sign for “cow.” Throughout the rest of his visit, students who passed Myron greeted him with his name sign, the sign for “cow,” with some of them uttering, “Mooooo.” Although Myron took advantage of the sign language interpreter for most of his presentation, he did open by signing for himself. Students as well as deaf staff really seemed to appreciate and enjoy the level of direct communication with an author who could sign–not to mention Myron’s open, friendly manner.

Possibly the most engaging part of Myron’s presentation was his demonstration of making a newspaper printer’s hat. He built suspense as he stopped at various points to show his progress. As he worked, he recounted how he, as a boy, had watched and waited eagerly for his father’s hands to fold the newspaper this way and that until they finally placed on Myron’s head a perfectly-creased printer’s hat.

Myron later commented that seeing the students interacting with each other gave him insight into what it might have been like for his parents attending deaf residential schools decades ago.
Myron spent the morning of Day Two visiting classes in the Alice Cogswell Center, OSD’s preschool. With the older students in ACC, Myron read his book “The Printer” to the class. The children were fascinated, and having the author himself read the story in their native American Sign Language was surely a treat. Afterwards, Myron made newspaper hats for each of the children. With the younger students, Myron performed his magic tricks, which the children loved! Myron was enchanted by the tiny, signing hands.

Myron spent the rest of Day Two with my co-teacher Mary Ellen Cox, student teacher Shana Baker, and our middle school language arts classes. The morning group of sixth and seventh graders learned to fold printer’s hats of their own. They loved their special time to interact with the Printer’s Son, as did their teachers!

  The afternoon class of seventh and eighth graders also enjoyed learning to make printer’s hats. They were treated to a reading of “The Printer” in sign language by Myron as well. The memories of their visit with the Printer’s Son surely will last a lifetime.

After making hats and finishing the story, two students took Myron aside for a videotaped interview. They asked about Myron’s childhood in Brooklyn and his second career as a writer. One student in particular found inspiration in meeting and interviewing Myron, who has become a mentor to the young, aspiring author.

Although the elementary students did not get class visits with Myron, they did enjoy making their own printer’s hats. Having met Myron in person made the story of “The Printer” come alive for them.

  At the end of Day Two, Myron spent time chatting with students and staff in OSD’s library. He also autographed copies of his books for many people. Myron’s stories based on his experiences growing up with deaf parents touch OSD’s deaf students and staff in a way not many books can. Having the author himself visit and share the story behind the stories enriches the reading and re-reading of Myron’s books.

One ACC student  watched as Myron made him his very own newspaper printer’s hat after autographing his copy of The Printer.  The young man’s deaf parents would read to him again and again while he would look at the pages of the story and sign, “Fire! Fire!” Middle school students also brought books for Myron to sign. They will treasure their copies of stories by their friend “Moo.”

Myron met many staff members during his book signing in the library. Some were deaf themselves; others were CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults) like Myron. They shared their personal stories, which were similar and different at the same time.

Myron also met OSD’s printer, printing teacher Ray. Ray took Myron on a brief tour of OSD’s print shop, showing him both the modern and the antiquated machinery there. The two regaled the “old days” of black ink and linotype machines. Ray presented Myron with a gift of a composing stick with metal type pieces spelling out “Myron Uhlberg.”

Myron spent a few spare moments perusing the historical items on display in OSD’s administration building lobby. He particularly loved the plaster sculpture of the manual alphabet. There were also antique TTYs, outdated hearing aids, black-and-white photos of former students, and long-retired sports uniforms. The nostalgic displays again stirred Myron’s memories of his beloved parents.

During his stay, Myron also had a chance to become a part of OSD’s documented history: the school’s annual “family” photo was taken on the afternoon of May 17. The framed photos from each year hang on the walls of the school cafeteria. It seems official that Myron is a part of the OSD family now!

On Myron’s last evening in Columbus, Ohio, Mary Ellen and Ron Cox hosted a small dinner party to honor the visiting author. Several staff members from OSD–hearing and deaf–came to the Cox home, some with their spouses and children. Mary Ellen had promised and delivered the best Italian meatballs Myron had ever tasted. Amidst the plentiful food and drink, stories abounded. Myron chatted with individuals, alternating listening intently with talking or signing enthusiastically. Soon folks gathered around the table with Myron appropriately serving as the center of attention. Laughter erupted as he told the story of a parent-teacher conference at which he, as a young and mischievous boy, interpreted–or rather, “misinterpreted” until his father ordered him to “tell it straight.” Tears welled up for many as Myron recounted the disrespect and discrimination his deaf parents faced in the community, such as sales clerks who  ignorantly referred to his father as “the dummy.”

That evening and throughout his entire visit, Myron touched the hearts of all he met. He connected with the youngest to the oldest by the power of stories, whether shared in English or American Sign Language. His time at the Ohio School to the Deaf was precious and long to be remembered fondly.

Ahh, December, with all the holiday festivities, twinkling lights, smiling Santas, tasty cookies and goodwill to all! Tonight, Sarah seemed utterly bewildered that her daddy had yelled at her; “How can he yell in December?” she asked.

Her innocent child’s observation might lead you to believe that it’s because we’re “grown-ups” that we give in to stress during the holiday season, even yelling in December. But as a teacher, I’ll tell you that not only adults feel the pressure of the most wonderful time of the year. This is also the most dreadful time of the year.

Case in point: I had a rough day at school yesterday. The morning started out okay, with only minor resistance to get to work on daily tasks. But as the day wore on, it wore hard on one particular boy. I’ll call him Finn*. Finn has some difficulties with anger management, and on top of that he has a significant language delay for a boy of 10. So as his frustration builds, his resources for coping appropriately diminish. Finally a day like yesterday comes, and he loses it. When his 1:1 aide tried redirecting him, little Finn spouted off like a volcano. “I’ll slit your throat! My dad will beat you up and pound you into the ground!” I removed him from the rest of the class, which was going to do some yoga with our OT, and so he turned his anger on me. He screeched at me, waving me away and signing what I understood to mean, “I wish I could punch you out!” He retreated into our empty, darkened classroom, slamming the door behind him. I called for back-up from our crisis team, then stood outside my room to wait, keeping an eye on him to make sure he was safe. He destroyed a pen then crouched in hiding behind the oversize chair in our reading area. It was about ten minutes before I asked if he was calm enough to talk and he said yes. He was still seething a bit, but when my reinforcements arrived he admitted to what he’d said and apologized.

While the principal led Finn away to spend the rest of the afternoon in the in-school suspension room, I returned to my other students in the OT room. I met Micah at the door who was on his way to the nurse after vomiting. I left my remaining two students with the OT (bless her) for a bit longer while I walked Micah to the health clinic. When I completed my circuit back to the OT room, Dominic and Carly were still barefoot following yoga but now wandering the room, turning somersaults on the mat and playing with toy trains despite the OT’s repeated requests to put their shoes back on and get ready to leave. (I have to admit, the OT room is full of cool stuff to play with, and my kids have lots of sensory needs so I understand their hesitance to leave.)

Finally I got those two out of OT and dropped them off at art class so I could return to my again empty, darkened classroom and try to breathe. By then I was tired enough that the last hour of the day passed in a haze.

And I got up this morning to do it all again. Today all five of my students were present (Angel having been absent yesterday), and we were baking a cake almost first thing in the morning. Skip to 10:30 a.m. and I was already exhausted. After lunch we had a practice with a middle school class for the skit we will perform next week at our annual holiday show. My class is playing the elves, and they have loved wearing their little elf hats and pointy elf ears almost every moment for the past three days. But wouldn’t you know it, when practice time came, Angel, Micah and Carly suddenly wanted no part of them and would not join the rest of the little elves! I think I started twitching. I was too tired to argue with them. Somehow I managed to get the three of them into the practice: I had to cajole Angel with the thought of her mom watching her in the skit next week, put Micah in a brief time-out, and ask one of the middle school students to get Carly involved.

The small triumph of the day was no death threats from Finn. I wanted to collapse at the end of the day, but I had to straighten up the room and clear out a desk for the new student who will be joining my class tomorrow! That’s right, I get a new boy on a Friday, six days before Christmas vacation–and on Micah’s birthday so we’ll be having a party too! Why was I not in bed two hours ago?!

Oh yeah–because I’m blogging about this, the most wonderful time of the year. The two weeks before winter break…full of sugar highs and mega-meltdowns, overwhelming stimuli and disconcerting changes in routine. Yep, it’s great. I will be joyful if I make it to next Friday without fa-la-la-la-la-ing all the way to the nuthouse.

*Of course I changed the students’ names!