I love this drawing. I found this on Pinterest, and I’m researching to see if I can find more of his work.
It’s the first day of school here in Arkansas. It seems REALLY EARLY in the year to start school, but it’s happening. In the 1970’s, I was an elementary school teacher in Tulsa on the north side. I taught in the public schools for eight years. The students in my classes were all black. I fell in love every year, wanting to take them all home with me. I loved the kids and loved the job, but felt really frustrated with the rules that just didn’t jibe with what I felt needed to be done in my classroom.
I’ve never really thought of myself as a ‘troublemaker.’ I tend to follow whatever rules there are, not wanting to cause a scene or get into problems.
My kids’ lives were challenging. Some of them were dealing with really harsh conditions or hurtful situations. One of my kids actually lost a brother overnight because the police came to the door and the family inside didn’t respond to their orders. His brother was shot and killed before his eyes, his family devastated, and all he could do was hide while it was happening and then try to live through the aftermath the best he could.
My 1st grade kids felt that school, reading, math, etc., were all useless. They were in school because the police would pick them up if they missed too many classes and then they might be taken out of their homes. So it was a ‘heavy, heavy hangs over your head’ situation. I worked on various ways to get them interested in what I was trying to teach them.
We started with a ‘What do you call this?” game so that we could build a broader vocabulary and better communication. ‘Sharing Time’ was where the kids could tell us what was happening in their lives if they wanted to. Our ‘book sharing’ session enabled the kids to choose a book and I would read part of it aloud each day and we would discuss it. We started writing our OWN book about our class. I used a humongous lined pad of chart paper. The kids discussed what they thought belonged in the book each day and then each child had a turn dictating what I recorded in our growing book. Once a week I started at the beginning and we read what we had written so far. Until I established a base that reading was the reception of ideas, feelings, and we shared a common vocabulary, trying to teach ‘reading skills’ was pointless.
I got called into the principal’s office because I brought my guitar and taught the kids a silly phonics song I had come up with that brought home the fact that letters stood for sounds, and that sounds and letters put together formed words, and that words could communicate things. The kids really got into the song, getting up and dancing, singing along with the sounds and words. I was told, “Ms. Lewis, this is NOT a music class!” PLUS we were making too much noise…
I also got called in because I took my class outside each Friday afternoon – to sit under a tree – weather permitting, of course – to present paper certificates of good stuff for the week. Since behavior was a challenge, I gave certificates for sitting in seats, completing assignments, listening well, keeping ‘lips zipped,’ improving in the subjects, of course, etc. The kids really tried and were proud to be given recognition, that someone NOTICED and APPRECIATED the fact they were trying.
When the principal and the superintendent of schools walked into my classroom unannounced one afternoon, I was standing on the waist-high heat register under the windows with the Weekly Readers for the class rolled up in my hand, trying to smash an errant wasp. When I managed to kill the wasp, the class erupted in cheers. I saw who ELSE was watching and almost died of embarrassment. I climbed down from the register, smiled at my two visitors as I asked one of the kids to pass out the newsletters, and said, “This is the best use of the Weekly Reader I’ve found yet!”
I taught for 8 years in that school, moving from 1st grade self-contained to a team-teaching experiment where I taught reading, writing and spelling to grades 1-6. I earned my Master’s Degree as a Reading Specialist. The whole time I taught in the public schools, we had to supply our classrooms with the basics, like paper, pens, pencils, erasers, art supplies, etc out of our pockets. We were under strict orders not to mention the lack of supplies to the parents at PTA meetings. We had a hard time requisitioning supplies, but did get a chance to get a limited supply of things at the beginning of each year. Back then, teaching on the north side in Tulsa was challenging, to say the least. I hope that things are much better now.
I stopped working in the public schools and opened my own reading clinic, also in Tulsa, but that’s a subject for another day.
I hope that this school year is a good one for all the students, parents, and teachers.
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