I couldn’t help but get my hopes up when The Lab School—my first choice—invited Paul to spend a day. A few weeks after Paul’s visit, I was able to speak with an admission officer who said a space for Paul was unlikely but gave me feedback about his visit. “In many ways, Paul looked familiar,” she said. “He was receptive to the instruction and was dutiful and polite, but his processing seemed to be an area of difficulty. He was not inattentive by choice and certainly not rude, but he couldn’t always focus.”
She also said Paul was cautious in his interactions, and she noted his tremor, asking me if he was a nervous child. I said he was not, but in a new setting he was shy. She told me they might end up with a space before school started but then said she was concerned about why Paul had not been invited back to Meadow School.
I knew it. I was painfully aware of the fine line I walked. If I was candid, pointing to the school’s absence of professionalism in providing me needed information, I risked being perceived as a problem parent. At the same time, I was desperate to keep Paul from being unfairly judged. I suggested she contact Paul’s teachers directly, as well as Dr. Watkins, for additional information.
Aware that I had skirted the issue, I wrote a follow-up letter to the admission office, which may well have been overkill on my part, but I didn’t want to leave any stone unturned. The thing is, I had fallen in love with the school and wanted it so badly for Paul that I could taste it.
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June 17, 1994
Dear Admission Office,
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Thank you for the information you provided regarding Paul’s application. Although this process is stressful for me, and I do worry it is tiresome for you, I am dedicated to providing all the information I can.
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Despite my many unanswered questions surrounding the current school’s re-placement decision, which is not documented in the report card or elsewhere, I have a good relationship with Paul’s teachers who all stand ready to provide information in support of his application. I am attaching his year-end reports.
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I sensed during our conversation that one of your concerns had to do with his interaction with others. I understand your reasoning based on his visit, but he works well in a group and is sought out by his peers. Paul is taking Karate classes, which was his idea, with mainstream children and is doing well. Also, he is registered for overnight summer camp—a week camping in Shenandoah—again with mainstream children ages 10 to 13 who he doesn’t yet know; this too was his idea.
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At the end of the year, the dispatcher at Associated Cab Co., who provided Paul’s ride to and from school each day, called to tell me Paul is the nicest child they have ever transported. Recently, Paul found a twenty dollar bill in a public parking lot, which, without my knowledge, he took to a homeless shelter in our neighborhood. In fact, Paul is amazingly well-adjusted considering his differences, the ego insults he has endured, and his untapped potential.
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Because I agonize over whether you will accept him, I forgot to mention that, if you do, he will bring much to your school.
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While my contacts at the county are optimistic about the space situation, I am obviously anxious.
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Thank you again for your time.
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Warm regards,
Jessie Dunleavy
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A space never materialized.
I took Paul to a well-known educational consultant, Ethna Hopper, located in Washington, D.C., for an assessment and for her advice. Paul’s long-time summer tutor since kindergarten sent a letter to Ms. Hopper in advance of our visit, providing an overview of Paul’s progress and distinguishing the deficits she believed were due to Paul’s handicaps from those she saw as programmatic. In conclusion, she wrote:
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My history with Paul is perhaps unique in terms of its duration. As with any successful teacher-student relationship, roles frequently reverse. Paul has taught me a great deal about diligence, flexibility, selflessness, and humor, all often in the face of great strain. He is undeniably a gifted, talented child who seeks the appropriate instructional format for reaching his high potential.
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In addition to the schools where we had already applied, Ms. Hopper suggested a school for bright children in need of an individualized program in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Paul would have to board—a concept I just couldn’t imagine but one I probably should’ve considered. She agreed that Paul didn’t need a clinical setting and said Paul’s dismissal from Meadow School probably poisoned his pending applications. Lastly, she urged me to ask the county to strike from his record the statement that he required a classroom aide, considering he didn’t have one.
*
IN AUGUST WE left for our annual two-week beach vacation with my extended family. I was determined to have a good time but was unsettled by not knowing where Paul would go to school. With several balls in the air, and the need for me to ride herd on the process, I took my notes and the needed phone numbers along to the beach. Our cottage didn’t have a telephone and, with cell phones off in the future, I used a pay phone across the street. After days of multiple calls and lengthy discussions—keeping me on the pay phone or standing by it awaiting a call—I finally moved a Rubbermaid chair across the street, parking it next to the phone for the duration of our stay. At least then I could sit as I watched my family members head over the dunes to the ocean. I think they would vouch for the fact I spent half my vacation tethered to that pay phone.
In spite of my focus and determination, we returned home without a solution. By the end of the month, with only a couple of remote possibilities still in play, the county put another option on the table—six hours per week of what they termed “home and hospital teaching.”
The first day of school came fast. Foreseeing the lack of resolution, I had taken a couple of days of leave from work. After getting Keely off to school, Paul and I went to the Baltimore Zoo for the day. We had fun, and I was able to leave my troubles behind. After we saw all the animals, and I mean every last one, and had lunch, we went to the gift shop where I told Paul he could select a small stuffed animal based on his favorite of the day. A lover of all living creatures, Paul couldn’t decide between the giraffe and the prairie dog.
“The giraffes were the most interesting,” he said, “but the prairie dogs were the most cute!”
He asked me to decide. We got both.
The next day, we went to Ikea and got Paul a desk and chair and supplies for setting up a homeschooling work area, which we did in a sunny nook in a back room of our house. Over his desk, we hung a bulletin board and a small framed print, selected for its fitting message, “Dreams are Travels for the Soul.”
Thankfully, my parents took over after day two, but I was determined that this gap would be short lived. Taking the county up on the six hours of instruction per week, I got to work on figuring out how to cover the other twenty-some hours and, by October, I had devised a full schedule that would suffice while we continued to seek school alternatives. As an educator myself, I was fortunate to have connections. Supplementing the county teacher, who came to our house three times a week for two-hour sessions, I hired three other teachers: One was a colleague of mine, one had taught Paul in his most recent school, and the other was a special education tutor I knew of through my work.
There were lots of logistics that needed my attention, both practical and programmatic, but I was energized by what I had come to see as an opportunity for Paul. After all, he often needed one-on-one attention to learn and, even though he had made academic progress in recent years, he fell far behind the averages for his age and, more important, he fell far behind what he