School Stories, Part II

At the end of 1971, my then-husband had graduated from graduate school and accepted a counseling position with the Crete-Monee School District 201-U in the very, very south suburbs of Chicago.  We took a 2-bedroom apartment in Matteson, IL, in that area, which was a whopping $180/month, and almost out of our budget.  Years before, I had applied with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to be a teacher on a reservation somewhere.  Had heard nothing.  Then, suddenly, I got a letter that told me to report to a location by a particular date...and the day I got the letter was the day I was supposed to be there!  Having heard nothing for years, I had given up on that venture.  I had moved on.

Although my husband had a school job, I didn't.  In order to continue to provide income, I took a job with an international Great Lakes shipping company out of Chicago, which meant riding the IC commuter train, both coming and going, for an hour each way.  The location was on East Wacker Drive, which --if you are familiar at all with Chicago--shouldn't even exist.  East Wacker Drive, if you keep on driving, is Lake Michigan.  My end of day destination was the end of the line.

Although I enjoyed being in downtown Chicago during lunch breaks, my experiences in the office in which I worked weren't so enjoyable.  I was tasked with posting checks to ledgers in two different accounts.  The gal running the department had been there for a million years so knew everything there was to know by way of experience.  I, however, didn't.  One day, I dared to ask how I should be able to tell which account to post the checks in.  I didn't get an answer I could understand, so I asked again in a different way.  She went off on me as if I were some kind of ignorant dolt.  (Another gal in the office later told me that she understood my question and thought the other gal was being unreasonable.)  It clued me in that I couldn't work well in that office.  I found out that there was a teacher's aide position available in the home school district, so I applied and was hired.  I said bye-bye to Chicago and the long commute.

Understand that working as a teacher's aide does NOT count for teacher's retirement.  I was hired to aide in a 6th grade pod in an "open concept" school, even though I was a certified teacher.  (1971)  The school was a brand-new experiment in education.  There were no walls.  Each grade level had its own "pod".  In a regular school, there might have been three 6th grade classes, each in its own room.  In this school, however, all of the kids were thrown into a pod with several "master teachers" and several teachers' aides, of which I was to be one.

Fortunately, one of the master teachers was really good at what she did.  I learned a lot from her.  I think we BOTH learned that open concept schools don't really work, and I don't think there are many of them around now.  Here are some of my memories of that experience:

1.  I was charged with teaching the science lessons.  At the time, the district had invested in BSCS science (Biological Science Curriculum Study).  It was hands-on and required a LOT of equipment in order to make each experiment work.  On paper, it was wonderful.  In practice, on a classroom level, it was iffy.  It assumes that kids care to learn, etc.  One of the first days of my classes, I had everything set up before the kids showed up.  I had pre-measured the water required into beakers and set them up on the tables.  Before all of the students had even gathered, one kid picked up a beaker and drank the water.  I came unglued!  He had NO IDEA what was in that beaker.  It could have been any clear liquid that could have killed him.  I think that was the first time that I understood that things were going to be tough.

2.  One day, a group that I had was particularly unruly.  Someone threw a shoe at someone else and missed.  It hit ME on the head.  I wasn't hurt, but my dignity was.  I was frustrated to tears, so I alerted another teacher on the team to watch the group so I could go cry.  All of my years of teaching, thereafter, were measured by "never let them see you cry".  And I didn't.

3.  The director of the Learning Center in that school was a dude named Lyell.  He was a big guy.  One day, he told me that I would make pretty babies.  I told him that the comment could be interpreted as sexual harassment.  He told me that he could get away with that stuff because he was fat and no one ever took him seriously.  Just think about that for a moment...

4.  We had a student that year whose name was Shelby.  Shelby had leukemia.  She wasn't in class much due to treatment appointments and wore a wig because of chemo.  The wig came off one day and totally traumatised her.  Toward the end of the school year, Shelby died.  When the news hit our students, a whole bunch of in-fighting started about who treated her better than others.  These young human beings were trying to find ways to make themselves feel better while blaming others.  It was a nasty lesson for me as a teacher.