Just Another Kid: Each was a child no one could reach – until one amazing teacher embraced them all. Torey Hayden

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СКАЧАТЬ Sexuality and sexual matters were very much a part of both children’s disturbances, and I couldn’t allow Leslie to be exploited in this way. But it made the logistics of changing her difficult to cope with.

      In the classroom, Leslie did nothing. If I told her to sit, she sat. But if I didn’t, she would remain stranded wherever I had left her. She did nothing without being physically oriented to it and told to do it, but once started, she would continue a task until physically stopped. For example, if I gave her crayons and paper and asked her to draw, she would begin making marks on the paper and continue until the entire page was covered and still continue coloring over this.

      She was the most withdrawn child I had encountered. I had the impression some days of not only mental absence, but almost of physical absence as well, as if she weren’t really there at all, as if I were in the company of a hologram.

      On the other hand, admittedly, Leslie was no trouble in other ways. If left to her own devices, she got up to no mischief. She got up to nothing whatsoever, other than a little self-stimulation. She didn’t speak. She gave no indication of being able to, although her file stated that she had spoken, when younger. She made no noises whatsoever except when she cried, which wasn’t often.

      In my opinion, Leslie needed very intensive work, the kind of one-to-one stimulation that was next to impossible within the constraints of my classroom. I had to leave her far too often quietly “disappeared.” I compensated by using every spare opportunity to make physical contact, to hold her, to touch her, to cuddle her and keep her close. Even then, Leslie seemed to be not much more than a body with no child in it, but holding her was the only way I could reassure myself that she really existed.

      Poor Mariana was in lousy company. Regardless of her own problems, compared to Dirkie and Leslie, she was a world ahead. Glumly accepting that she was going to have no best friend in this class, she took her folder of work each morning and sat alone at the far end of the table. She was just as hopeless at academics as everyone had said and could have used a whole lot more of my time, but her difficulties were neither serious enough nor dramatic enough to compete with those of the other two. I was grateful for Mariana’s presence, however, from a purely selfish point of view. She was someone with whom I could have an occasional sane conversation. And I tried to reserve her some special, uninterrupted time, but with Leslie and Dirkie, that was a challenge. They couldn’t be ignored, and Mariana was capable of understanding that sometimes I did have to ignore her. So she soldiered on without complaint.

      I knew what I needed—an aide. Desperately. During most of my years as a teacher in special education, I’d worked with children at the severe end of the emotional-disturbance spectrum and had had some kind of assistance in the classroom. Even with my smallest classes, there had been an extra pair of hands. It made all the difference in the world. Someone to change Leslie or watch the others while I did, someone to oversee while I gave a child individual instruction, someone to provide feedback, to laugh with, to chew over the day’s events, to compare bruises on the shins with—that was what I needed.

      I discussed the matter with Carolyn. We had joined the local health club and started going down to the spa most evenings after work for a swim and a sauna, or a soak in the whirlpool. I quizzed her during those relaxed evenings. She had one full-time trained aide and two volunteers, who appeared regularly. Being so new to the community, I didn’t have the resources necessary to locate volunteers. Where had she found hers? Did she know of anyone else who might be interested? Did she have any alternate ideas?

      I also went to talk to Frank Cotton, the Director of Special Education. I got to know Frank much better than I had any previous director, which was the one advantage of having a classroom in the administration building. I saw him daily. He was one of the gang, taking his coffee breaks in the teachers’ lounge with us, eating lunch with us at Enrico’s, and this quickly put us on a genuine first-name basis, the way it is with friends.

      “I’m beginning to think it’s me,” I said. We were in his office, a long, narrow room converted from a storage closet, chosen because it abutted the main office, a former classroom. “I’ve got only three kids, for crying out loud, but it’s just not coming together as a class.” I explained my feelings of constantly shuttling between Dirkie and Leslie and getting nothing else accomplished.

      Frank leaned back in his chair. He smiled gently. “You’re feeling out of practice.”

      I nodded and grinned. “Yes, I guess it is a bit of that. But I keep thinking, we’re going to make a cohesive group out of this lot yet. I was always so good at that in the old days. I could make a group out of any sort of rabble. But it’s not happening this time.”

      “It’s early yet,” Frank said.

      “It still should be giving some sign of happening.”

      Frank continued to lean back. He fingered his lip. “Not enough kids.”

      “Quite enough kids, thank you.”

      “No, I mean it. Not enough to make a group of. You’ve always had bigger classes before, haven’t you?”

      I nodded. “But not much. I had only four when I was teaching at the state hospital, and we made a hell of a group there.” I smiled in what I hoped was a very disarming way. “What I need, Frank, is an aide.”

      “Wish I could afford one for you.”

      I knew I couldn’t have one, even before I’d said it, but it felt good to put it in words, to say it to someone in charge. “Any volunteers that you know of?”

      He shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of. You should ask Carolyn. She seems to keep a secret supply.”

      “I’ve tried Carolyn already. No luck.”

      We continued to talk. Frank slowly diverted the conversation away from my aide business and on to other things. When a natural pause came into the conversation, he leaned forward. I sensed a change of topic. Clasping his hands together, Frank pressed them pensively against his lips a moment and stared at the orderly stacks of papers on his desk. His eyes rose to meet mine.

      “That earlier conversation …” He paused, looked away, looked back. “It’s going to make what I have to say now a little harder.”

      I wondered suddenly if I had done something wrong.

      Frank smiled. “It’s nothing major. It’s just that … well, how can I say it? You’re getting two more children next week.”

      “Two?”

      “Yes. Sisters. Five and eight. They’re from Northern Ireland.”

      “Oh.”

      “Their family’s been embroiled in the trouble going on over there, and now the girls have come to live with relatives to get them out of all that, to give them a new start, that sort of thing. They’ve been up at Washington Elementary since school started, but it isn’t working out. They’re not integrating.”

      “I see.”

      “The younger one isn’t talking at all, so I thought of you immediately. With your experience in elective mutism, your room seemed the ideal place for them.”

      I think I was too stunned to talk. Here I’d come in to complain about being unable to cope with the children I had, and I was ending up with two more.

      If Frank sensed my benumbed state, he was ignoring it. “Like СКАЧАТЬ