Death School Stories

This one is going to be hard to write.
In the course of teaching school, students die.  Most of them don't die during the school year, but some do.  It's heart wrenching.

In all of my years of teaching, only one--ONE--student passed away of natural causes during the school year.  Already wrote about Shelby who passed of leukemia after a long fight.

Several died as a result of vehicle accidents.  One such accident took two of our kids at once, and put a third in serious condition.  These were good kids.  Honors classes.  Band members.  Good families.  Not daredevils.  On this particular day, two boys were taking a friend out for food on his birthday.  It had rained.  The country roads were slick with fallen leaves.  Just over a hill--or so I understand it--a car was pulling out of a driveway on a blacktop road in front of the boys' car.  Brakes were applied; the car skidded and hit a tree right next to the roadway.  The car caught on fire.  The end.

Except--a man who lived on the road near the accident was trying his best to get the boys out of the car.  The driver seemed to be DOA; one other passenger was pulled out with major leg injuries.  The third boy was trapped as the car burned.  The man couldn't get him out..and the first responders couldn't get there in time to save him, but not before his screams for help were heard.  We lost two students that awful October day.  Both were in my Honors English class of Sophomores.  The next day, there were two empty desks in my honors class.  There were also counselors in the Media Center to help kids cope.  On my prep period, I went to the Media Center to seek solace for myself.  Found a fireman who had been at the accident site.  I told him that I would feel a whole lot better if I knew that the boys didn't suffer.  He assured me that the end was quick....but there was still that poor man trying to extricate the boys.  I'm sure he still has PTSD over that.  I went to the boys' funeral.  Not my happiest moment as a teacher.  And then I had to go face the class, noting that my big boys were coming down the hall with tears streaming down their faces.  It crushed me.

I should probably note, although it hurts me to do it, that the young man who drove the car on that fateful day confided in me mere days before the accident that he had just earned his car keys back from his grandparents with whom he lived.  A newly-licensed driver, he got in trouble with the law for vandalizing mailboxes on a joy-ride, or some such nonsense.  Grandpa grounded him from the car for a month.  My only comment to him was something like, "That's exactly the kind of behavior that will keep you out of National Honor Society.  Do you know that?"  He looked surprised and admitted that he didn't...but then he earned the car keys back..and the rest is sad history.   

Another nasty accident happened that killed another of my former students.  He was a big boy--a gentle giant.  He was the passenger in a car that crashed, and he was the only one who died.  He had already graduated.  Had his whole life ahead of him.  Broke my heart.

There were other vehicle accidents, of course.  Kids in cars, but I was retired when many of them happened.  All I could do was ache for their families.
The hits don't quit coming, though.  When I had seniors, I had a young lady named Ashton.  She was active in golf--a totally delightful young lady.  Pretty.  Smart.  Charming.  To celebrate her 18th birthday over the summer, her grandmother took her and and one of her younger sisters to a golf outing in Florida with Grandma's pilot-boyfriend at the stick of his small plane.  On the way back, they left in thunderstorm conditions.  The pilot took the plane up over 10,000 feet to avoid the storm, and the plane broke apart.  All of their bodies were found on the ground somewhere in Georgia, and I was horrified.  When school started, some of the ceiling tiles in my classroom had been painted by Ashton (something we allowed in those days but no more, for fire reasons).  I asked the admin to remove the tiles and send them to Ashton's parents.  I really just didn't want to see them every day.

And then there were drug deaths.  These didn't happen during school time, but they happened, nonetheless.  I can't even keep up.  Dozens that I know about.  Probably many more that I don't know about.  Some were anticipated by families and friends, but some were total shocks.

The worst jars to my sensibilities were the suicides.
So many young people just giving up on life.   I'm pretty sure that some gender issues were in there, but so were brush-ups with the law.  Only one of these happened during school time, although I'm fairly certain that school issues sealed some resolves to do away with themselves.  We'll never know.  I attended some funerals.  It was just too sad to attend many.
One such suicide situation had nothing to do with a student or former student, except that I had a young lady whose boyfriend shot himself in the head right in front of her during an argument.  She was absent for a while.  Had PTSD and trying desperately to maintain her sanity in spite of what she had seen and experienced.  I really, really felt for her.  No one should ever have to endure that...

It isn't natural for parents or teachers to bury their kids, but sometimes your heart has to break.  Just another day in education paradise.

   

       

Student Waits for Mom School Story...and More

When I was teaching high school, I was asked to help chaperone a junior high dance.  All went well.  When the kids were well-supervised in the process of parent-pickup, I went home.  But I missed all the drama.  (Thank God!)

Apparently, there was one student left whose mother hadn't shown up and wasn't responding to calls from him.  And then the word came down that his mother and younger sister had been killed in a vehicle accident fairly close to the school, and his stepfather-to-be seriously injured, on their way to pick him up from the dance.

Oh, my heart!  I simply couldn't imagine the agony that young man and his younger brother went through.  I didn't know them at the time but had them both in class later.  Their mother's sister and husband gave up everything in (I think) Texas to come and finish raising the boys in order to relieve the grandparents of their sad responsibility.  I am friends with this young man on FB.  His brother is in prison for drug reasons.  (?)  His life has been a struggle, but he has skills in HVAC.  He has managed, and I'm proud of him.

PS:  The future step-dad in his life--also one of my former students--committed suicide years after he recovered from the accident.  Something about some statutory sex crime that he was facing.  Don't have details and don't care.  It was just another tragedy for my students to deal with.  Ugh.

Yet Another School Story (Are You Tired of These Yet?)

Not too long after the Columbine School shootings in Colorado, which was in 1999, all schools were on alert to watch for threatening behaviors in students.

Sometime shortly thereafter, I had a Spec. Ed. class of high school kids in the last period of the day.
One afternoon, one of my students got called down to the office toward the end of the period.  I don't know what the issue was, but he came back angry, and as the whole class was gathering by the door a minute or two to await the dismissal bell, he announced that he should just blow up the whole school.

I knew the kid.  He was a lead in one of the plays that I'd directed.  I was pretty sure that he didn't mean what he said--was just upset about whatever had happened at the school office--but I was stuck.  Had he not announced his threat in front of other students, I could have overlooked it, but since he did, I could only imagine the headlines:

STUDENT BLOWS UP MONROVIA HIGH SCHOOL.  DOZENS DEAD.  TEACHER HEARD THE THREAT BUT DID NOTHING.  NEWS AT 10.

I had no choice, really.  I didn't particularly want to be that teacher who failed to take things seriously.  Thus, I went to the admin and reported the threat.  The kid never returned to my class.  Apparently, he lived outside of the district boundaries but was paying no tuition.  It was a convenient excuse to expel him.  He wasn't supposed to be one of "ours".  I did my duty but felt really bad about it.  *Sigh*

The Power of Gas School Story

In previous posts, I've mentioned class combinations that were teacher nightmares.  I might already have written about the one I am mentioning here.  It's funny, sort of...but really not.  At least not for me.

One day, I was teaching a lesson and struggling to keep this particular class's attention, when one young buck (I'll call him Chris) deliberately leaned sideways in his seat and passed a most audible gas toot, then sat there and grinned.  Of course, the class erupted in laughter and "Ewwww!"  To me, it was total disrespect.  I gave the kid a detention.

Instantly, another student who was known to be head-strong (I'll call him Brian), confronted me in front of the whole class:  Farting is a natural function.  It isn't right for you to give Chris a detention.  What are we supposed to do when we have gas?...  blah, blah...you get the picture.  I tried to distract Brian, but it only kept escalating to the point that I finally gave Brian a detention, too.  WAY too much class time was spent on this rebellion.  Basically, all teaching was over, and I felt bad for the other kids--who were quiet and respectful-- who were there to learn.

Our school had a rule that a detention not served created more, then other consequences.  It seems that Chris didn't serve his, then his parents showed up, and I think the admin caved, not applying its own set of consequences.  (I had no knowledge or control over that.  I also couldn't control the word-of-mouth grapevine that told Brian that Chris wasn't serving his detention(s).) 

As for Brian, it got more complicated.  He wasn't even part of the first infraction but had inserted himself into it.  But the "deal" was that Brian was an Office Aide at the time.  Getting a detention would throw that into the crapper.  He was now in trouble with the office.  A couple of days later, I was told that I was needed at an after-school conference between the Asst. Principal and Brian's mother.

I can't remember the exact time the school day ended in those days, but I'm guessing our conference started at about 2:45 PM.  Brian's mother was demanding to know what consequences the OTHER kid got.  I told her that I couldn't tell her that, for privacy reasons.  (My excuse was that she wouldn't like it if I were talking about her son's situation with others.)  She was angry, so I was trying desperately to stay calm.  The Asst. Principal said/did nothing.  We went around and around.  At 3:30, the Asst. Principal chose to depart, leaving me alone with this parent.  We had to change locations just to continue the conference (and I was ticked off).     

As the mother and I were seeking another place to talk, I asked her if she was aware that Brian considered himself to be the man of the house and was shouldering huge responsibilities.  He had confided in me that his father had abandoned them all, and he had stepped up.  Suddenly, her attitude changed.  She was no longer Mama Bear in defense of her cub.  She was in the presence of someone who actually liked her kid and wanted to help.  We talked a while longer.  The mom who came in like a lion went out as a lamb.

A day or two later, Brian came to my classroom to pick up the attendance list, which happened daily in those days before attendance software.  I caught him at the classroom door.  I told him that, had he not confronted me in front of the whole class, I coulda/woulda/shoulda handled the whole thing differently.  He told me that he was kind of a hot-head who shouldn't have shot off his mouth.  We ended with a pax that has lasted until this day, many years later.  He is one of my Facebook friends--still a hot-head.  Some things never change. 

Retribution School Stories

Teaching high school, I had one of those classes.  Mostly boys who had been together since Kdg and didn't give a big rip about English.  This was a group of Juniors.

One of the loudest boys had a foul mouth.  It wasn't profane--just hells and damns and shits.  His name was Chris. I tried to maintain a clean classroom, but if I wrote that kid up for his vocabulary, he and I would be doing battle every day.  I admonished him regularly to clean up his mouth, and to be honest, he really tried to contain his curse words, but his world wasn't the same as mine--and we both knew it.  I really liked Chris.  He wasn't swearing out of disrespect.  I believe that he couldn't express himself at all without those words.  I just couldn't get him to use acceptable vocab.  We found a middle ground.  The other students seemed to be okay with it.  Only once did someone else challenge me about accepting curse words from Chris but not from others.  Guilty as charged!  I was just considering the sources.  Before the year was over, Chris became a father.  God help that child!

I gave that same class a group assignment.  Big mistake!  Five of the guys formed a group and were huddled together to do what I assumed was part of the assignment, but something didn't feel right.  When I approached them, they got secretive.  I soon discovered that they weren't working on the assignment.  One had dared another who was up for the dare.  He had crushed a Sweet Tart into powder, then snuffed it up his nose, like cocaine, with a rolled up dollar bill.  Oh, God...what next?

The kid's nose was sniffly, eyes were red and runny,, and face was red with irritation.  The other boys were laughing at him.  The period ended and they all left, but I had to mop up.  First, I contacted the nurse to ask if snuffing sugar into one's sinuses would hurt him.  (She thought no.)  Then I contacted the parent.  The mother had attended a committee with me over many months, but this was the first time I'd had to contact her about her kid.  The phone conversation went something like this:  "Sorry to have to call you about this.  Your son snuffed a bunch of sugar into his nose during class today on a dare.  The school nurse assures me that he is not in any danger, but if he seems a bit "off" tonight, that is why.  I'm not saying there is anything you can or should do about it.  Just thought you should know."  She thanked me for calling, and that was the end of it.

The next year, before school even started, that particular parent discovered that I would NOT be her son's English teacher for that year.  She approached me in the hall in tears.  She had hoped that I would be her son's teacher that year.  I was shocked.  I figured I would be the last person she'd want to teach her kid!   

Still More School Stories--About Seniors

Once upon a time, when I was teaching Sophomore English (with public speaking as a semester requirement), my teaching assignment was changed to teaching Seniors.  Except nobody told me.  Some Senior students had received their schedules for the next year and were telling me how delighted they were to have me as their teacher.  Uh....huh?

After a couple of those conversations, I took myself down to Guidance and started asking questions.  The counselors there had deer-in-the-headlights looks.  They knew about my reassignment but DIDN'T know that I hadn't been told, so wouldn't confess.  They were protecting the admin.  I boldly said, "I think it's a little sad that the  Principal knows, the Department Chair knows, you guys know, and the students know, but I haven't been told."
Shortly thereafter, the Principal called me down to tell me.  I wasn't happy.  A fear years later when my teaching assignment changed again, I was told immediately.  So much for communications.

Teaching seniors was a challenge.  Some were on the mark for their futures, but others were just skating through for a diploma.  Effort during senior year was totally iffy.  We had a school policy that students who failed one of the two semester terms, then failed the final exam, were guaranteed an F for the semester.  I taught a required class to graduate.  Teachers of seniors were admonished to work them right up to the last minute to avoid pranks, but were also told that there should be "no surprises" come the end of the year.

Let me translate that.  The admin wanted to know weeks in advance which Seniors were at risk of not meeting credit requirements so the parents could be informed, but since the exam scores wouldn't happen until a mere couple of days before graduation, it couldn't be done.  More than once, I hedged on grades.  (Couldn't do that later after software was installed to keep track of grades.)  Within my realm of considerations with kids on the bubble were:
1.  Was my class the only one that the Senior was failing?  Would an "F" in English be the deciding factor between passing and failing Senior year?
2.  Who would benefit by retaining an at-risk Senior?  Will the student stay in school and attempt to achieve needed credits?  Is the student conscientious, wanting to learn?  Is the kid a good citizen (i.e. not a behavior problem)?  If the answer to any of those was no, I flat-out decided that no one--neither student nor school--would be the better for holding the kid back.
3.  This factor, to me, was the most important:  Some students have issues that simply don't work well with book-learnin'.  They are charming.  They have skills, most of which have nothing to do with playing the school game or their potential success in life.  One year, I had a Senior that had such a serious case of OCD that the noise in his head wasn't going to allow him to succeed in a traditional English classroom.  I accepted that English literature simply wasn't going to be important to him.  He was already re-taking Junior English at the same time that he was in my Senior English class.
At the beginning of every school year, I promised every student that, if they were working to fulfill assignments and trying hard, I would never fail them.  I was true to my word. 

There were other issues.  At the time, we had a state competency test called ISTEP.  It was administered at many levels below sophomore year.  Anyone who failed it as a sophomore had three more opportunities to pass it at the junior and senior levels.  (It was a different test every year.)  Teachers had no clue who these students were until told.  The threat was that kids who couldn't/didn't pass it at the upper levels would be denied a diploma. That was a joke, but read on.

Since I was the teacher of English 12 (required for graduation), the Principal provided me with a handwritten list of seniors who had not yet passed the ISTEP test.  It was my job to tutor these students for weeks in an effort to prepare them to take the test one last time.  Understand that we were not given school time to do this.  If my schedule and the students' schedules--each one different-- matched up, we could do remediation lessons during school.  Otherwise, we would have to meet up outside of school hours to get that done.  Seniors are notoriously busy with jobs, sports, and social lives.  Very few can/will come in early or stay late.  The extra tutoring was a tricky situation, and there were about ten kids on my list, which made it trickier.

One day, the Principal was sitting in for a teacher who'd had to leave early.  As I passed by that room during my prep period, he hailed me.  In an angry tone, right in front of the students in that class, he said, "Megan M. tells me you aren't providing her with ISTEP tutoring!"  I'm sure I looked befuddled.  Megan M. wasn't even on the list he had given me, and I told him so.  It was quite obvious that he didn't believe me and thought I was slacking.  "She has to be!  You are her teacher!"  I told him I would check on it.  I marched upstairs to my classroom and grabbed the list he gave me, in his own handwriting.  Nope.  No Megan M. on it.  I then marched back downstairs, with the list in hand, and showed it to him.  Now it was his turn to act befuddled.  He was flustered, trying to second guess to whom he had assigned Megan M's remediation, then explained what he "must have done".  He didn't laugh at his mistake, nor did he apologize to me for his accusatory tone when displaying his displeasure about how I had failed.  I never quite forgave him for that.

Fast forward after my retirement.  I ran into Megan M. on Facebook and jokingly told her how I had gotten in trouble for the Principal's mistake over her ISTEP situation.  She filled my visual "ears" with the truth.  Apparently, her parents had gone to the Principal demanding to know what the school was doing about ISTEP tutoring, since they had been informed that remediation would be provided but their daughter had received none.  He was on the hot seat.  Assuming that he had assigned their daughter to me, I was the problem by which HE had gotten into trouble with parents--except he hadn't.  Ah...the explanation that I needed in order to fill in the blanks, even if years after the fact!  I caught the flack for something he had failed to do.  And so it is...     

Another School Story about Valuable Contraband

I was teaching an elementary class--6th grade, I think.  It was a challenging group.  One young fellow was an enormous problem for me.  He was heavy into sports cards but not school.  He was being raised by a grandmother who was trying her best (but failing) to get through to him.

The competition with the sports cards along with the distractions became so severe that I asked the Principal to intervene.  She came along with a contract for my kids to sign.  The contract basically said that no sports cards were to come to school, but if they did, they would be confiscated, to be redeemed later by parents.   Pretty normal, yes?  But it didn't slow down that one student.  I was still dealing with the whole sports card thing in class.

One day, the one particular trading card he was showing off got confiscated by the Principal.  She put it in her desk, or so she said.  At the end of the year, he was seeking to get it back, but it was nowhere to be found.  He threw an absolute fit!  I think he believed that the card was going to bring him mega-bucks, but it was never to be found again, and because the Principal had a contract signed by him about not to bring that crap to school, he didn't have a leg to stand on.

That kid went on to a life of crime.  The last time I heard anything at all about him, he and a girlfriend were running a prostitution scheme in Florida.  He killed a "john" who was getting rough with the girlfriend.  He went to prison for murder.  Yikes!

Even More School Stories

Every teacher has assignments based on circumstances. Doesn't matter what your job description says. If things happen on your watch, you have to deal with it. Recess duty is one of those responsibilities at the elementary level. I once had a student in fourth grade--cutest kid on the planet with the biggest brown eyes--who had lost his mother and a sister in a vehicle accident just a few months before. I was "just" his teacher. I trusted that his family was taking care of his physical and emotional needs. Silly me! The only family he had left was a brother and a stepfather, a grandmother (who soon died), and an aunt. He never knew what bus to take because he didn't know where "home" was, and the school quickly determined that absolutely no one had legal custody of him. He was what? Nine?? On the playground one day, he came to complain to me that he and another child had gotten into some mild altercation when the other kid said, "At least I have a mother!" Understandably, I came unglued, but I couldn't fix it. The words had already hit, and nothing I could do would ever change that. I gave that child all the support I could, including homebound instruction when he got in trouble with the law later, but it was never enough. I don't know where he is now. Wish I did.

 There was also a playground story that is a little less tense. When I was teaching 6th grade in that district, the other 6th grade teachers had declared that girls couldn't play with boys at recess. It was all about the fact that hormones were changing and that playground competition had the potential to turn into what my father always called "grab-fanny". In my class at the time were two very basketball-talented young ladies who had no other students to play with but the boys, yet they were forbidden, due to the above-stated rules. One of those gals was the current Superintendent's daughter. The other is now a friend on FB. I did what I could to try to influence the other 6th grade teachers to change the "rules", but they were not approving. I guess those young ladies survived, but I was irate!

More School Stories

Sometimes, just having a school-related job makes you a target. My husband was principal in higher-education schools, which always upped the possibility of shenanigans. (Elementary kids can't drive.) One weekend night in Pontiac, IL--long after dark--someone knocked on the kitchen window, which totally freaked me out. My husband launched from the house to try to catch the culprit--and he did. He tackled the kid. Was on top of him, pounding his adolescent brain into the ground, with the kid begging for him to quit. "Mr. McNary! It's me, Jason! Stop!" He did stop, but word must have gotten around because nothing like that ever happened again. 

Switch venues to Cloverdale, IN, quite a few years later. It was Halloween, 1988. We were living in a rented house along the main drag on the way to the school. For reasons known only to God, my husband was out sitting on the front steps of the house in the dark when a loud, souped-up vehicle came by and bounced a pumpkin off our mailbox. The pumpkin made a mess and maybe a dent in the mailbox. It was intentionally aimed at him. How do I know? A few days before, someone painted "McNary is a dick" with an arrow pointing to our house on the asphalt roadway leading to our house! Nothing was said, but two days later, a couple of teenagers were out raking leaves in our yard, doing penance for having been caught vandalizing the Principal's mailbox. How did they get caught? My husband did parking lot duty at the end of each school day and recognized the sound of the souped-up vehicle. Busted!! Thereafter, one of the adult clowns in the maintenance department would always say, "Heeeeere's Richard" whenever my husband (named Joe) approached. 

Another time in that same school district, we were sound asleep at 2:00 AM, when the phone rang. My husband answered it. I heard, "Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. Where?" Then he hung up. By this time, I was awake and asked, "What was that all about?" His response was "School bomb threat", then he rolled over and went back to sleep. In retrospect, I had to laugh. If the bomb threat was expected to interrupt my husband's sleep, the caller obviously didn't know my husband! Perhaps "they" expected him to call the authorities, rush to the school, and throw his body on the bomb to protect the school, but that's not how it went down. He went to school at the regular time the next day. He did call the authorities, of course, but the school day progressed without a minute's loss. So much for that!!

School Stories, Part VI

When you teach high school, things get dicey.  The kids aren't really children, but not quite adults--yet sometimes they have adult problems.

When I was teaching Seniors, I had a young man I'll call John.  John was a football player and active with the show choir, which (by Monrovia standards) was unheard of.  I admired his guts.  One day toward the end of the school year, he confessed to me that his father was horribly abusive...that he'd had to go to the ER to take care of a leg wound that Daddy had caused...and the authorities were called when the details became known.  Dad was arrested, and Mom was applying pressure for the kid to drop the charges; however, because of the circumstances of these cases, the state won't allow that.  Mom took Dad back, which left John with no place to be.  He started couch surfing with friends.

I raced to the bank nearby during lunch break.  I caught the kid on the way out the door at the end of the day and gave him $50 with the admonition to stay in school until graduation.  He promised me he would try...and that's the last I heard of him until a bit later when I heard he had been arrested for breaking into snack machines and trying to sleep in the football building at school.

The next time I heard of him happened quite by accident.  I was sitting at my computer with the TV on for background noise.  Suddenly, there was a name and a familiar voice on a show about inmates at a prison in southern Indiana, and there was John.  My heart broke.

John served his time and has been "out" for some time now.  This fellow is doing his best to make good.  He has children.  He had a good road construction job but got run over by a truck.  He's lucky to be alive, but he IS alive.  He seems to be on a good track to be on the straight-and-narrow, and I pray that John succeeds in life.  He didn't have a particularly good start!

That same year, I had a student named "Lenny" who was absent some due to being incarcerated for possession of marijuana.  When he returned to class, he confessed to me that he couldn't wait to be 18 so he could move to Amsterdam where marijuana was legal.  I asked, "Do you hear what you are saying??  Are you really willing to live outside of the US just to have pot?"    Yes, he was.  Not too long later, he said he probably wouldn't be around long because he knew his last drug test would be "dirty".  Apparently, it was.  I never saw him again.

School Stories, Part V

In 1990, it became clear that I was going to be a divorced lady.  I needed to find a place to live...and shocked when I realized that school would start in two weeks, but I was still only subbing.  I was living in Cloverdale at the time.  There was a gal there whose kids were classmates of my daughter, but she taught in Monrovia.  She alerted me that there was a fourth grade position open.  I applied and got the job.  I can't begin to tell you how happy that made me!  I wasn't too experienced at the elementary level but determined to make the best of it.  Thus, I became one of a four-member teacher team at Hall Elementary School near Monrovia, IN.

I stuck with Hall for four years, based on the class needs each year.  Year 1, I taught 4th grade.  Year 2, I taught 5th grade.  Year 3, I taught 6th grade; then in Year 4, I was back to 5th.  Crazy.  Some of those poor children had me as their teacher three years in a row!

Hall School was an ancient building (1902) complete with a cupola.  In my four-year stint there, I was assigned to three different rooms, the first two years of which were a basement "dungeon" room with low ceilings and real rough-slate blackboards, with the school's oil furnace in a closet just around the corner.  Ugh!  I was brand new to the district and not particularly experienced in primary grade teaching, but I did the best I could.  And here are some of my stories from there:

1.  In the very first few days of school that year, the nurse announced that she would be checking heads for lice because some had been found.  Before my class was scheduled for head check, one young fellow raised his hand and told me that he knew he had head lice, and so did his mother, but she had to send him to school because she didn't have any money until payday to buy the special shampoo.  I was shocked.  And I hurt for him.  Here was a mother who was willing to expose other kids to the bugs, hoping it wouldn't get discovered until she could take care of it, never asking for help.

2.  Had another young man who came to school with the left side of his face red and swollen.  I asked him about it.  He said it was a spider bite.  I sent him to the nurse.  He told her that his mother was going to call a doctor.  No problem.  As the day progressed, his face became more and more swollen and red.  I was alarmed.  I told the nurse that she needed to contact the mother to be SURE that she was actually going to contact a doctor.  (The mother hadn't, but did upon the nurse's urging.)  Turned out that the student had a major sinus infection that had escaped his sinuses and was threatening his brain.  He was prescribed antibiotics and put on immediate bed rest.  I like to think that I made a difference in this case.  The young man moved out of the district not long thereafter.  To this day, I don't know what became of him.

3.  One day, I was teaching in the basement dungeon room when smoke starting coming out of the ceiling vents.  Not a good sign!  I called the office to alert them that I was evacuating the children and to send help.  As I got the kids out, the principal came running down the hall toward us.  Didn't take too long to determine that the furnace had burped.  We were soon returned to the classroom, no harm, no foul.

4.  Had a charming young female student seated toward the front of the class.  She had a small, purse-sized tube of Vaseline that she had procured between her teeth and was flicking with her finger.  I heard a crrrraaaack.  Looked at her to see a big blob of Vaseline all over her lips, with her pointing at her face with the funniest look on her face.  The tube had cracked and given up a tablespoon-sized dose of gooey stuff, but the look on her face, and her reaction was absolutely priceless.  I sent her to the restroom to clean off her face, but I laughed so hard over that deal!!

5.  In those days, I was a non-tenured teacher.  Contractually, I had to be evaluated by the principal twice per year to determine my fitness for tenure down the road.  On one such classroom visit by "Billy Mac" (the principal), I had brought one young troublesome fourth grade Lochinvar to the front of the class, with his desk, so I could keep an eye on him.  (BIG MISTAKE!  Since he was in front of his classmates, he could perform and get their attention.)  Meanwhile, Billy Mac was seated at my desk watching me teach.  In fact, I was sooo attentive to my teaching that I wasn't paying enough attention to Lochinvar, who was (behind my back) pretending to stab me in the rear with a pencil.  He was entertaining the troops!  I was oblivious.

Out of seemingly nowhere, Billy Mac blasted out of his seat, grabbed the kid by the shoulders, and roared, "Young man!"  He yanked that kid out of his seat and marched him down to the office, with the rest of us watching in shock.  It wasn't pretty.  When the trauma wore off, a small voice from the class asked, "Ms. McNary...don't you think that was a bit harsh?"  I will never forget it.

6.  Billy Mac had announced his retirement plans.  I was his last non-tenured teacher, requiring contractual evaluations, but it seemed that every effort he made to come to observe me was thwarted by other expectations.  He was struggling to find an appropriate date to do so.  Finally, I said, "Bill, you know how I teach.  How about you write a fair evaluation?  I'll sign it, and you can be on your way."  He did and I did.  Understand that his write-up wasn't glowing, but it was fair.  Bill retired, and I have loved him ever since.  (Bill died a few months ago.  I will never, ever forget him.)

The Latest "School Story"

Since most of my friends on Facebook are former students and colleagues from my teaching days in Monrovia, IN, I stay in touch with many of them in my retirement.  I still buy from band fundraisers, help out former students who have fallen on tough times, and generally keep up with the news.  

When I was still "in the trenches", so to speak, I made it a point to belong to the Indiana State Teachers' Association (ISTA), which is the state branch of the National Education Association (NEA), even when I was married to a school administrator.  Those associations are, for teachers, a bargaining union.  While never forced to join (and under some pressure from my husband not to), I felt that it was in my best interest to support the group that was negotiating my salary and benefits every year.  The annual dues weren't cheap, but nothing of value ever is.  And, as it happened, I had need of the association's help one year.

That story goes thusly:

My then-husband took a principalship in Pontiac, IL.  We moved there when our child was 18-months-old.  I was still on maternity leave during the move.  When I was ready to apply for a teaching position in the local school district, I found that I was aced out by an unwritten (and probably illegal) rule that the district would not employ the spouses of administrators.  I had to branch out to other communities nearby.  One such district was in Saunemin, IL, where a third grade position opened up from a teacher taking a yearlong maternity leave.  I got the job.  Thereafter, I commuted the few miles east from Pontiac to Saunemin every day.  No big deal.

At one point, I had to refer a student to the Principal for a serious classroom incident that required administrative discipline.  At the end of the day, I met with the Principal to ask how things went down.  He said he had paddled the student.  I asked if he had called the parents.  He said he had not.  I asked if he wanted ME to call the parents.  He said no, that children have to learn to stand on their own two feet.  (In third grade??)  I was shocked.  He didn't have any children of his own.  I simply believe/believed that it isn't a good practice to discipline a student (especially with corporal punishment) and not inform the parents--but I didn't, because he had told me not to.

The very next morning before school, guess who was knocking on my classroom door?  The irate mother of the student, demanding to know why she hadn't been told that her son had been paddled at school!  That put me in a tight spot.  I didn't want to call the Principal out to her because, well, that isn't good practice, either; yet, I didn't particularly want to take the heat for it.  I explained as best I could, without pointing the finger of blame anywhere.  Not sure what she did after that.

The next time a student got paddled from my class, I didn't even ask.  I just called the parents to let them know.  As a result, I got in trouble with the Principal.  He said I had gone over his head.  He said that HE had to live with these people while I could just escape to Pontiac at the end of the day.  He wasn't happy.

At the end of that school year, the teacher I had taken over for resigned to become a stay-at-home mother.  I applied for the position but was denied.  The Principal said that it was never his intention to hire me for more than just that one year.  I said that he had no basis on which to "non-renew" me since he had, not once all year, ever stepped foot in my classroom to observe my teaching, as required by contract.  I filed a grievance, so the NEA assigned my case to an association employee to represent me through the whole process.  

Understand that this was the school district in a small rural town in the middle of corn country in Illinois.  There wasn't an African American within a 50 mile radius.  The person that the NEA sent to represent me was a big-city fellow, very well dressed and articulate, and black as black can be!  To repeat a cliche', he stuck out like a sore thumb in that area.  Nonetheless, I had confidence that I was in good hands.  Unfortunately, I failed to understand the clannishness of local school boards in small communities.  Although he and I produced a good case, the Board stood behind the Principal, and I lost my case.  I could have pursued it further but decided against it because, if they HAD renewed me, I knew I would still be working with that Principal, and it just wasn't worth it.  I had stirred things up for that particular principal, however, because he had not fulfilled the responsibilities of his own contract.  I moved on. 

The year after that, I was on that school district's list for substitute teachers, and (mercifully) only the high school did call a few times for me to sub--which I did.  On one of those days, I had been warned about a particularly challenging class and to beware.  In the middle of that class, the district Superintendent peered through the window in the classroom door to see how things were going.  I was teaching, and the kids were attentive.  (Hallelujah!)  Later, the Supt. told me, in so many words, that he could see I was a good teacher and expressed regret that I had gotten a raw deal the previous year.  It didn't change my reality, but at least I had that vindication.  I don't know how long the elementary principal lasted after me.  

Now, back to the real purpose of this blog post.

Teachers feed off of each other.  We steal each other's ideas and expertise (with permission), and gain support from each other when things get rough.  When I joined the Monroe-Gregg School District as a teacher, in the course of my nasty divorce, I was blessed by coming to know a teacher named Phyllis, who became my mentor, of sorts, both as a teacher and a friend.  Of all of the people in my life, she is the one who was the most supportive in getting me through some of the darkest days of my life.  I love her to pieces!  Even though we don't see each other often, we always take up where we left off when we do...and we are always in touch on Facebook.  Phyllis has always been a mover-and-shaker politically FOR educators--very active in ISTA.  Even though we are both retired now, we still have close ties with friends who are still in the trenches and the community in which we both taught for many years.  Those friendships don't just go away.

Okay...so...I was aware that a contingent of our school family was touring Europe for the past couple of weeks.  I no longer know any of the students, but three of the teachers on the trip are my friends on Facebook.  It was a 39-person group of students, teachers, and parents from Monrovia who are/were touring in Europe when President Trump announced that he was ordering a ban on incoming flights from Europe (due to the corona virus thing), starting yesterday. Unfortunately, he failed to mention that the ban did not include US citizens coming home, and it threw American tourists vacationing in Europe into a panic. And that affected the travel company our group was working with. They were overwhelmed and scrambling. Unfortunately, our group was quickly becoming collateral damage, with everything coming to a roaring halt.

The situation was complicated.  The group was in Krakow, Poland, expecting to go to Budapest, Hungary, to then catch a flight to Frankfurt, Germany, for their scheduled flight home to Chicago O'Hare on Sunday (yesterday).  Then Hungary closed its borders, so that trip was shut down.  The travel company that the group was working with (Explorica) was supposed to provide flight tickets out of Krakow to get the group to Frankfurt, but that wasn't happening, either.  The clock was running out.  Countries were closing borders.  International travel was getting difficult, and even the US was shutting down.   Suffice it to say that 20 students (age 12-18), and 19 adults from Monrovia, IN, were stranded in Krakow, Poland, unable to get transportation out of there, as promised by the travel company, in order to catch their scheduled flight out of Frankfurt, Germany, to Chicago O'Hare. 

This, my friends, is a teacher's nightmare! These tours are not school sponsored, but travel companies send info to teachers. If a teacher agrees to escort a group, he/she gives the info to interested students/parents, and the plans are made. Of course, no one expects the COVID Apocalypse when making payments for the tours, nor do they expect international borders to be closed while they are on tour. We (speaking of the teachers as if I were one of them, which I once was) are responsible for the kids, no matter what. Teachers have died protecting their students. My heart went out to the folks on this trip. I do so remember being a 10-year-old, living in Japan in 1957-58 with our USNR Officer dad, worrying about what we would do if there were some sort of political uprising making it hard for us to get home.

So, without a flight out of Krakow to Budapest, the group had to start making other arrangements, and Explorica was dragging its corporate feet, while the clock was ticking.  I got a FB message from Phyllis that our friends needed help.  The group had posted phone numbers of politicians to call, everyone from State Representatives to US Senators, and the US Vice President, in order to get diplomatic pressure to bear on their behalf.  They had to be in Frankfurt by Saturday evening in order to catch their flight to the US on Sunday morning.  But how to get there?  It's 12 hours from Krakow to Frankfurt, overland...and no buses or drivers to be found.  Things were getting critical.  

One of the teachers on the tour had posted details--INCLUDING PHONE NUMBERS FOR POLITICIANS--for us to call, hoping for diplomatic pressure to blast the travel company off Square One to get them out of where they were. I didn't know it at the time, but that info also went out to many others. Phyllis and I were calling, nonstop, and I guess others were, too. (Between the two of us, we only reached ONE human person. The rest were answering machines, and Vice President Pence's number only produced busy signals all day. But that's another post.)  The only actual human being that I personally was able to contact, was an assistant at Rep. Baird's office who said they were already on it, working with the State Department and the American Embassies in Germany and Poland to get our folks home.  I'm pretty sure he got weary of hearing from the whole lot of us!

A bus somehow was provided.  It was thought that they'd have to de-bus at the German border to change from a Polish driver to a German one...but then Germany decided to let them in, and the driver agreed to drive all the way to Frankfurt.  (I'm pretty sure some big bucks changed hands.)  That saved our crew from having to wait at a train station for further transportation to Frankfurt.  And then we got the word, "We are in Germany!"  They would then have to get to Frankfurt, find accommodations for 39 overnight, catch their Lufthansa flight to Chicago the next morning, get through Customs and virus screenings at O'Hare, and hope that the bus to take take them from Chicago to Monrovia High School in Indiana would still be waiting for them.

This whole thing became personal to me.  I identified with the parents and teachers who were trying desperately to get home in spite of critical obstacles (the whole COVID-19 thing).  I held my breath every step of the way, as things--little by little--unfolded.  I was on that trip in spirit, even if not in body.  I wanted them all HOME as surely as if I were the one responsible for it.  I respected the dickens out of the people in charge--the professionalism, the activism, the knowing-what-strings-to-pull guts, and providing all of that information to those of us at home so we didn't even have to look up names or phone numbers for politicians to beg for intercession.  There is no one particular hero in all of this, but many.  I think most of the tour was wonderful for these folks.  Just the last few days got frantic as countries closed borders and things got critical.  It took the State Department, American Embassies in two countries, the ISTA, and a whole lot of prayers to get these people home, but it happened!

It occurred to me that Monrovia often had police escorts for victorious teams to come home from competitions.  I wanted this crew to know the value of HOME, so I reached out to another former student who is in Law Enforcement in Mooresville, IN, (a neighboring city).  His name is Brian.  I wanted the bus to have a police escort into Monrovia, but didn't have a clue how to make that happen.  Brian did.  With so many variables in the whole situation, I thought it was iffy to even ask...but I shouldn't have doubted.  The Monrovia Town Marshal intercepted the bus at the Plainfield exit on I-70, and escorted them the rest of the way to Monrovia.  (I'd had to alert one of the teachers on the bus what was going to happen because I was asking so many nosy questions.  The rest didn't know.)  

What a glorious ending to a long strange trip!  Guess the kids on the bus thought the CDC was after them.  I'm just happy that I could contribute a little bit to let them know how happy we ALL were that they were HOME.  So many thanks needed for so many people in the interest of a few folk from a tiny town in Central Indiana.  We are all in this together. 

We are so blessed!   

   

   

My Corona Virus Heartbreak

A couple of months ago, my daughter and husband decided to take a 2-week camping trip in their new Airstream trailer that Santa Claus brought.  The trip was planned for late March, and I was asked to come and be with my grandkitty.  I accepted the challenge.  Megan purchased a flight ticket for me, the only non-stop flight from Indy to Seattle on Alaska Airlines.  Over time, it was determined that my 16-year-old grandson wasn't going to cooperate with going on that trip, so it looked like I would be taking care of grandkitty and grandson for two weeks while the rest of the family traveled down to California and back.  I planned accordingly.

And then the Corona Flu Virus (COVID-19) hit the United States.  And WHERE did it hit?  Right smack dab in the very place I would be flying into:  Bothell, WA.  Very quickly, schools were closed for weeks.  Then any gathering of more than a few people.  The dominoes fell, one after one, until--in the period of a week--most every public gathering had been canceled or amended.  Then it hit the community just north of me in Indiana, and they closed the schools.

I read everything and anything I could read about the whole virus thing and how to avoid it.
Every stinkin' thing I read said that if you were over 60 and had any underlying problems, you should not be out and about, nor flying or on cruise ships.
Wash your hands.  I do that.
Don't touch your face.  Hard for me because I need to blow my nose often.
Stay home.  I do that, big time.  My isolation actually contributes to my seasonal depression.  I don't have the supplies needed for a whole family, but I have what I need unless things get weirder.
I have bleach.  I have hand sanitizer.  I have bleach wipes.  I have alcohol wipes. I even have toilet paper.  What I don't have is patience!

For a week or two now, my daughter has been asking me if I need to cancel my trip.  She acknowledged my risk.  I don't give up easily, especially when my family is involved.  She left the decision up to me (which just killed me, btw...I would much rather have had someone else make the decision for me), but she never stopped sending me info to provide the pluses and minuses of the whole virus thing.)  My flight is scheduled for Monday afternoon.  Today is Thursday.  Just today, I caved in to the hype and canceled.  It hurts my heart.  So much money down the drain.  So many plans to be changed.  All because of a microscopic organism that will bring whole countries down.
It's happening now.  In fact, situations are changing by the minute.  Institutions are shutting down for no less than two weeks, with no end in sight.

I have flogged myself all day for the decision I made, but now I think maybe it was the right one.  I even made a piece of paper to tell fellow air travelers that I am not contagious just because I cough.  I expected to be treated like I had the plague because of my emphysemic cough.  Now, I'll just be like the whole rest of the world.

Please pray for mankind and the world's leaders.  God bless us, every one!