My first teaching assignment in the Northern California high school where I teach was in special education. I was not the main teacher. A young woman who had studied special education was in charge. But as I understand it, California law requires two or three teachers in every special education class. I speculated after a few days that I had been assigned there because nobody else was willing to accept the job. With the exception of one Hispanic young man, all the kids were African-American. And let me tell you that after a few weeks I came to love those kids, as totally screwed up as they were.
Of the six teaching periods plus lunch hour that every school day brings, one of the teaching hours is normally assigned as a "conference period."
During this period, the main teacher, a teaching assistant, and I would gather in the classroom and simply talk about what was happening that day.
The teaching assistant was a late middle-aged Black woman who had been in her capacity with special ed kids many years. She was absolutely wonderful. She could come off as a disciplinarian, as in, "Jason ! Sit down ! Sit down this instant or I will call your mother!" But more often she would come across as a loving mother figure. She was no second-class participant. She had known most of the 16 kids in the class for several years, knew the families of many of them, and had a wonderful way of dealing with them.
So the three of us would gather together and talk. "What will happen to these kids ? I asked one day. "Where will they be ten years from now ?"
Where, for instance, would Solomon be ? Solomon had a severe case of attention deficit disorder. Give him a page of simple math problems to do, just adding and subtracting, and he could last 3 - 5 minutes. Then he would stop work, his head would go back, and his eyes would close. He would simply shut off. I learned to say, "It's okay, Solomon. Just chill out. I'll be back in 15 minutes."
And where would Nathan be. Nathan was almost the size of an NFL football player. He had dreds. He was a good-looking, but also formidable-looking fellow. In class he functioned quite well. He could read 15 pages, then tell you a summary of what had happened in the book. Nathan's problem was that he would last in school for three or four days, then disappear. What was happening, as I learned, was that he was having some kind of recurring psychotic episode. During these periods, his family kept him home and took care of him. But when his parents died, who would there be who could put up with such a person ?
Then there was Big Gregory. He had dark skin, rather wiry hair pulled back, and usually bore a smile on his face. I found him able to do his work, and really quite intelligent. He was interested in scientific matters, so I brought him articles copied from The Scientific American, which he read, enjoyed and which we discssed. He had a problem, though, with impulse control. The year before, another student had said a cross word to him and Gregory had stabbed the fellow in the thigh with a pencil.
Then there was Max. Max was a little, gangly kid who moved in jerks. When I say "little," I mean that he appeared to be about three years younger than most high school frehmen. He squinted a lot. He was intelligent, however, and he almost always settled right down into doing his classwork. At times, however, he had an attack of attention deficit disorder and could do nothing for a period or two. We just left him alone and mentioned that when and if he felt better he should let us know.
Max's problems stemmed from the fact that he had been a "crack baby." After his strung-out, addicted mother had given birth to him, she also subjected him to three or four years of malnutrition. That's why he was so small.
I should also mention William. William was another of those kids the size of an NFL football player. When I first saw him, he had ipod earphones on, and and was swaying back and forth to the music he was listening to. What I didn't know at the time was that even when he wasn't wearing earphones, which was about half the time, he was still hearing music, still swaying back and forth, and still sitting or standing with his eyes closed.
I must also tell you about Bobbie. Bobbie looked like a street tough -- corn rows, very dark-skinned, occasionally hostile looking. He was the only kid in the class who had formally been diagnoised as retarded, or whatever the current politically correct term is. There were a great many things he could not do, including math. He could not memorize his home phone number. However, he knew that if he pushed "1" on his cell phone his mother would answer. For him, his cell phone was literally a lifeline.
I learned a lot about this hostile-looking kid. He had a heart of gold. If another kid in the class had come to school without money for lunch, as soon as Bobbie learned about this he would offer the kid half of his own. He did not steal, he did not cause serious problems, and he usually did exactly what he was told.
And so during our conference periods we would sit around and discuss these kids. What was happening to them today. Was Carl acting up because his grandmother was in the hospital ? Jack was misbehaving and causing problems because his brother had just been killed in a drive-by shooting. Phil was upset because his father had gone to Los Angeles for two weeks.
And so we came to the question I mentioned near the beginning of this account. Where would these kids be ten years from now ?
Half, we decided, would manage somehow. They would have low-level jobs or be cared for by their families. The other half would be either dead, in jail, or in a mental institution.
Our goal: If we could make just one or two of them more functional so they wouldn't end up dead or institutionalized, the year would be a success.
