The lesson I learned from this was how valuable it is to get a chance to evaluate and prioritize your life. Sadly, many do not get the opportunity. I understood death could strike at any moment. I tried living life with that in mind.
The Afterglow
Rob Olson was a medium sized kid with a quizzical face, and an easy smile. He was a bit plump for a kid who was always outdoors. You could not help but notice his two large bright, white incisor teeth that dominated his round face. It made his smile infectious. Rob seemed to be a happy-go-lucky boy. He fit right in with everyone. To me, he was like any other nine-year-old. Their world was an oyster and their days spent in carefree abandon.
The screws of schooling turned snugger with advancing grades. It squeezed the carefree Rob tighter and tighter. He entered third grade fearing a continuation of his terrible cycle of failure and frustration. His parents shared the trepidation because they knew the academic demands this watershed year posed. It is the year to transition from introductions to expectation. In third grade, the work comes fast and furious. The idyllic days of a happy youngster immersed in the school tasks of reading, writing and ‘rithmetic’ had long since turned to a nightmare.
Rob was learning disabled.
For three years, his family clung to the hope their child would ‘catch on’ in time. They spent hours following assorted recommendations dutifully sent home from the school. They organized his free time, supervised his schoolwork and ran interference between teachers and their son. Both attended extra conferences. Despite the best efforts of all involved, Rob failed to prosper at learning.
He watched his peers advance to read chapter books while he still wrestled with his letters and basic words. As classmates began multiplication, he struggled to count. Letters and numbers were not familiar friends but some foreign code Rob could not decipher. No matter the exhortation, threat or bribe, the academic awakening never came. Rob was hopelessly lost in an academic world he did not understand nor did it understand him.
In the 90s, special needs education was still in its infancy. Unfortunately, for Rob and his parents, the school was ill prepared to meet his needs. Shortly after the school year began, Rob was already done. Attentiveness became indifference. Refusal replaced effort. Temper shoved aside temperance. Rob morphed into a surly, uncooperative, troublesome student at school. For the most part he sat apart, played alone and grew isolated from his schoolmates.
My gifted students were the antithesis of Robert. They were culled for their academic ability. Thus, the last place you would expect Robert to succeed was with me.
My Nature Center served the District’s high potential students. Contained within the room was an amazing array of living creatures from land, sea and air. The large collection required tremendous care well beyond the time I had available. The animals needed feeding, cleaning and attention daily. I was sagging under the load even before I became ill. I could not go on without help. With the consent of my Program Supervisor and the Building Principal, I launched a special lunchtime activity in 1991, dubbed ‘the Habitat Helpers’ program. Students from my base school, Dickinson Avenue Elementary, volunteered their recess to work with the animals. Habitat Helpers serendipitously opened up the incredible inhabitants of the Habitat House to the entire school. At the same time, it provided the care needed to maintain the animal laboratory for my accelerated students. Because of obvious limitations of the very young, the volunteer program began, as fate would have it, with third grade.
Each group of new volunteers entered my classroom amidst chirps, croaks, cries, a squealing potbelly pig, singing bullfrogs, slithering snakes, hopping rabbits, barking prairie dog, squeaking guinea pigs, tottering tortoises, and waving lobsters as if being welcomed by the inhabitants living there. I saw each student as a helper, another set of hands, a pair of eyes and tireless young legs to shoulder my onerous load. It was a far different relationship than the traditional teacher instructing while students passively sat in stiff seats armed with a pen and paper.
Educational research clearly supports the fundamental importance of student involvement in the learning process. Habitat House taught through action. Kids worked with the animals and learned responsibility, organizational skills, math, science and language simultaneously. In the Habitat environment, Rob blended in like everyone else with one exception - he seemed to smile a bit more intensely than the others did.
Weeks ran into one another and Rob’s group harmonized their tasks more efficiently than a colony of worker ants. My nature center was clean, the display cages bright and inviting but above all, the animals were well cared for and fed. The room was full of pulsating life and learning. The additional assistance provided by the Habitat Helpers offset my physical limitations.
Inevitably, Rob began to stand out. I realized there was something different about him. He had an aptitude for handling animals. He roared through his work like a freight train always asking for more things to do. He questioned everything soaking up my responses better than the clay litter that lined some of the animal cages. He stood out as an indispensable contributor to the nature center. Sure, I could see he had academic challenges, but who didn’t? I was challenged myself in school. Like Rob, I struggled in school. I was disorganized, forgetful and lacked concentration in class. My high school chemistry teacher would die laughing if she could hear me today explaining the complexities of the nitrogen cycle to elementary students in a clear, understandable way by using our aquariums.
“Not bad,” I could hear her say approvingly of her once struggling student. Understanding what he experienced, I used Rob’s love of nature and animals to encourage him.
One afternoon Rob’s parents appeared at the center. When parents showed up to talk unexpectedly, it was usually not good. Bracing for the worst, I rolled off different justification scenarios in my mind. Goodness knows Rob’s parents had enough fodder to complain: soiled clothing, minor scratches, occasional animal nips and how I perennially returned the students well after recess ended. I took a deep breath, welcomed and invited them in.
They looked around, much as the children did when they first arrived. I nervously narrated a tour.
As I did, they nodded and occasionally “uh humed.”
We worked our way to the rear of the room to where my desk was located. I noticed a surreptitious elbow bump accompanied by a faint smile. What was up with these two, I wondered. We finally sat down and Rob’s mother, Cathy, began to talk.
I want to tell you about something that happened with Robert last night,” she declared in an even, measured tone, as if she had rehearsed her lines. “I checked on Robert last night before I went to bed. I quietly opened the door of his dark room. A flashlight was on. I saw him on his bed, hunched under a tent made by covers. He glowed in the darkness. I could see him outlined there, sitting up looking down on something,” she told me. I listened not knowing where this was going and how it pertained to me.
“Okay…,” I replied.
Her pace quickened with anger, annoyed with his disobedience. “He went to bed an hour ago and should have been asleep.”
I got the picture. Instead, he was up doing God knows what under those covers. Already convicted of an unknown infraction, she was all set to hand out justice. She was about to pounce and throw off the cover to apprehend him in the act. His mother would have reminded Robert of a snake back in Habitat House striking the food he just fed it. I waited for her to finish.
Her voice wobbled, “Do you know what I saw him doing?” Caught off guard, I had no idea what to say.
She went on before I could even answer. “He had a notebook and pencil,” she confessed to me in tears. “And he, he,” she stammered, “was secretly writing a letter to you in the dark using a flashlight! He wanted to tell you how happy he was and how he loved coming here.”
“Really?” I tried to respond convincingly so I would appear to understand the point she was so emphatically making. I had no idea of the significance she placed on that event.
“Robbie can’t write. He is dyslexic and refuses even trying anymore. Writing is torture for him,”