Giving At-Risk Children A Chance!! Part One

Part One

The first job I got after getting a graduate degree,  I was in a school system where the Superintendent of Schools hired me to evaluate 72 of their most problematic students and find solutions.

They were mostly poor and black. “Maybe some teachers in this middle-class, white community are uncomfortable with them,” I thought.  So, the first year I arranged to pay teachers to spend time with each child after school and then drive them home, once a week. They would meet the family and see how they lived. The plan failed. Half the teachers improved and half declined in comfort level.

The poverty in these families was profound!  I applied for federal grants, and the Superintendent provided a wing of a school.  I enrolled 50 children above 3 yrs. old, from the families of these 72 students, for an all day, year-round, preschool program. My goal was to prepare them for 1st grade, ready to succeed. They were undernourished, had rotten teeth, and lacked experience for learning to read. The next year I included the 3-year-olds, hoping to prevent the damage, and found they were in the same condition. I hired as many mothers as I could raise money for, to be teacher aides, cooks, and drivers, starting with the ones whose children were most needy.  The best teachers I could find were hired, to provide rich classroom programs. Some were experienced nursery school teachers. The teachers had to be as good at demonstrating good parenting skills to mother/aides as they were at teaching the children. They observed that some aides were learning to read along with the kids. We provided transportation, breakfast- lunch-two snacks, health care, as well as many exciting learning experiences.

Each summer we had the use of that whole school building and enrolled the older siblings up to age twelve, including many from the original list of 72. They were much harder to teach, because they had not done well in school and were defensive. A friend with a swimming pool, who was supportive of our program, let us use her pool, and they learned to swim.  After that success, they were more willing to take more chances learning to read, write and do math.

Each child was examined by our Doctor on site every year, with their mother present, if possible. They were also examined by our eye doctor and dentist. When the children were found to need more treatment, they were taken to the doctor’s offices.

One of several local volunteers was a blind teenager. She took the most non-verbal kids, in small groups, for walks in the woods, saying “tell me what you see”. They were eager to tell her.  When they got back to the school, each child stood beside her and described their walk as she typed what they said.  She then made a book A Walk in the Woods  with the author’s name on the cover. Those children then learned to read from their own books in class.

One little girl, about five years old, refused to eat. Her concerned teacher tried everything she could think of and then consulted me. We talked and thought about it a long time. Finally, I suggested that she try letting her take a lunch home with her if she eats her lunch here.  She then gobbled her food.  She had been taking her food home for her family, who must have been very hungry.

I loved visiting classrooms. One day I asked a teacher “what’s the big bowl of soapy water with an egg beater for”?  “When Sean arrives, he beats it furiously until he can calm down enough to join the class activity,” she said.  Another insightful teacher asked a very shy mother aide to go the front and teach how to tell time. All the kids had made paper clocks with moveable hands.  She nervously walked to the front and shyly said “put the hands at the time when we have breakfast”, they all did it quickly.  “That is 8:30,” she said.  “Now put the hands at the time when we have snack,” “That is 10:30.” By the time she took them through lunch and afternoon snack, they had all learned to tell time.

It is hard to learn to share and negotiate. One day I was talking to a teacher on the playground when 4-year-old Hazel came to her screaming and said, “Derek won't let me ride the tricycle!”  The teacher squatted down, held her, and said “tell Derek you’d like to have a turn? “ Hazel happily skipped off.  When I turned around, she had him around the throat, shaking him. We spent time and energy teaching them negotiating skills. And when they got to 1st grade, they were better at it than the other kids, according to one of their 1st grade teachers.

Continue to part two on the next blog

Giving At-Risk Children A Chance!! Part Two

PART TWO


When one four-year-old-boy entered the program l found him so disturbed that I didn’t think we could take him. I had never seen a child with such a severe problem. He hit, kicked, spit at, or bit, anyone who came near him.  But his teacher did not want to give up on him.  She gave him a secured corner of the class room.  After noticing he was fond of a red truck she put toys and food in the truck and pushed the truck toward him.  I have a wonderful picture of him sitting on her lap smiling, which I took about a year later.  A home visit found his aunt who had custody of him, she picked vegetables on a farm. She had no one to look after him and shut him in a closet while she worked, to keep him safe.  I felt sure that if that teacher had not insisted on keeping him, he would have ended up in an institution.

The mother first selected as an aide was a 28 years old with 8 children. The four oldest were in special ed classes in school.  She couldn’t participate unless we took her toddler. The child wasn’t walking so a crib found.  She couldn’t hold her bottle or roll over, and cried all day. I placed the mother as the nurse's assistant, because I didn’t think she would do well in a classroom.  But I couldn’t stand listening to the child crying and found a good nursery for her, wondering if there was some kind of inherited retardation in this family.  

When I visited the little girl several months later, to my shock she was standing at a low table, putting a puzzle together!  A home visit was made.  The mother came to the door with a thick leather strap around her neck that was about 6 ft. long.  That’s how she apparently controlled all her kids.  Once we found a cause of the children's retarded development, we gave the mother more opportunities to learn parenting skills. In the next two years her 4 older kids were retested and put in regular classrooms in school.  She eventually bought an old car with the money she made in our program, got her teeth fixed, and got a job. Her kids were all behaving more like those in their age groups.

Visiting with one of the gentle older mothers, who also had 8 kids, I asked if she was planning to have more children. She said, “No, I had a dream that I wouldn’t”.  Planned Parenthood was invited to come for two sessions with the mothers and their oldest girls to teach contraceptive methods. I could hear them from my office having a marvelous time.

A talented woman was hired as food service director in the summers.  She was a professor of Home Economics at Douglas College and was a marvelous trainer for the 4 mothers placed in the kitchen as cooks.  On the first day they learned to use all the big equipment in the school kitchen and served breakfast and lunch to 250 students and staff.  I bought 4 rebuilt, table top sewing machines for $10 each, a pile of cloth on sale, and put it all in an empty room next to the kitchen. She then taught them to sew during their breaks and they bought the machines at the end of the summer.

Two black High School drama teachers were hired as classroom teachers. They were very successful with the older kids.  One day they announced to all the older kids that they were going on a very long journey, and had kids lay on the floor and close their eyes. They dramatically told the story about their ancestors, who had been kidnapped from their villages in Africa. They were then forced to walk many miles through the jungle in chains, and were held in a prison on a coast. Later they were boarded on ships and were chained to the floor of a lower deck, and endured the long turbulent journey to America.  

When they arrived, they were each put on an auction block, often nude, and sold to the highest bidder.  Their lives in the south, from then on, were spent working in the fields for very long hours in the hot southern sun. They were often tied to a stake and whipped, and sometimes killed for small infractions.  Some women were raped by the owners. Those who survived this inhuman treatment, held their families together the best they could from 1619 to 1865, when the war between the southern states and the northern states ended slavery.  Over the next decades after the north won that war, black people were given the right to vote, own property, and get an education. 

The drama teachers described how, over the next century, black people became outstanding doctors, educators, scientists, and succeeded in many professions.  Some provided moral leadership not only in this country, but in the whole world. However, In spite of this success, distrust and discrimination still plagues our country and diminishes the health of our democracy for everyone. That is the outline of the journey which took a long time, with a lot of detail. As I watched the children laying on the floor, I worried about the effect it was having, It is such a long, grim and painful story of their past.  But those two teachers knew what they were doing and afterward, those kids all stood taller with more self-confidence.

In the summer program, a boy who had been one of the original, and had thrown a chair at his teacher, was found, by the eye doctor to have a very serious vision problem. Once found, it was successfully treated.  Several years after the program closed, I saw his mother in the super market and she told me that he had done very well in high school, and had been chosen by the famous New York City based Alvin Alley Dance Co. to be a summer intern. That mother became such a good teacher aide that after 5 years in our program, she competed successfully for a job as an aide in a regular school class room.

After Nixon became president, all of the Federal Funds changed to benefit those with “educational” deficits, and our funding disappeared. I went to Washington to see if I could get appointments with Congressmen to convince them that it is much less expensive and more effective to treat problems at an early age. I failed to find anyone interested. Both ETS and a Sociology Professor at Princeton University participated in evaluating the results of our Program.
                                           
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This program improved school for everyone in this system over the following years.

You can imagine the chaos and strain those 72 kids had put on that whole school system!
As a result of this program, In the following year there was:
    Far less stress on all class room teachers and other staff.
    Improved opportunity for attention and learning for all children in classrooms.
    A reduced need for special teachers, money saved.  ETC.
    
The problems in schools today are far worse, since prices for food, rent, and health care are so high, many more people are falling into poverty, and then the virus hit! The added stress and violence is so high in schools that many teachers are retiring early and others leaving the profession. In addition it’s harder to find new qualified teachers.

There could be a program like this in every community in the country!  You can quickly find the needy preschoolers by identifying their siblings in school who aren’t doing well.  It is expensive in the short run, but improves the effectiveness and functioning of the whole system.

It’s time to make “healing” a goal for schools, police departments, and prisons, as well as U. S. Congress, as they do their jobs. We need to prevent further damage from being inflicted.  Our country has a history of discrimination and violence, that is getting much worse. If we don’t change that, we may lose our democracy.  What could be a more important?

Post Script

I am dyslexic, and my mother, a teacher, was embarrassed that I couldn’t read, and lamented out loud, “how could I have a dumb kid like you!”? So I learned to hide as I went through schools. As a result I don’t remember ever being in a classroom K through Grad. School at Columbia, it was very painful!  However, Miss Rose related to me in 6th grade, and I then developed sensitivity and creativity, and found that I could identify problems and find creative ways to solve them.

After I married and had children my husband taught me to read and write. I’ve been an avid reader since then. When he died at 32 years old, I became the bread winner. I frankly knew next to nothing about education when I took this job. But I could spot a good teacher and I hired an outstanding staff. Then we all listened, watched and as we worked together we learned from everyone and we created a very warm, healing school.

I’ll be forever grateful to my kids Cris and John for reading, editing, and making recommendations for the clarity of this entry.

Schools don't have to solve enormous problems...

Schools don't have to solve enormous problems (lack of funds and not enough good teachers) before responding to the needs of children.

My last job in a 22-year career of working in schools, pre-school through University, was in the coldest, most dysfunctional school I'd ever been in. One day after observing a teacher physically abuse a 3rd grade boy in the hall, I decided to see if I do could something.  

 I asked the secretary in the main office to give me a printout of all the kids in the school who rated highest on 5 factors:  
     *Missed more than 10 days of school a year
     *Reading below grade level
     *Qualified for free lunch
     *Sent to the vice principal for behavior more than twice a year
     *Had a serious health problem.
I selected sixty-five kids at the top of the list on the printout.

Then I sent a letter to every employee from janitors to Superintendent, asking them if they wanted to be a Big Buddy to a student for one year.  Amazingly the result was close to the number of Little Buddies selected.  

I sent letters to the Little Buddies and their parents for their permission to participate. Then sent letters to the Big Buddies to welcome them, and give them the name and classroom of their Little Buddy.  I suggested that they arrange to meet once a week for an hour, in a classroom with the door open, and have fun!  I never met with anyone, they were on their own.

At the end of the year, I sent a simple note asking Big Buddies if they would like to continue another year - everyone did.  I also asked them to evaluate the experience on a simple scale, all rated it high. (The assumption I’d made turned
out to be correct: good teachers love children and crave the opportunity to be with them one on one where they can impact their lives more powerfully.)x

I then sat down with each child and had them rate having an ice cream cone on a scale of 1 to 5. They all rated it a 5.  I then asked them to rate their experience of being a Little Buddy.  They also all rated it a 5 and wanted to continue next year.

I compared the kids’ attendance records and reading scores for changes from the previous year.  I don't remember those details (it was many years ago)  but theresults were very impressive. I recall one 4th grader who went from reading at at 2nd grade level to a 4th-grade level.

Before I met with the children, the principal came to my office to apologize
because he had not had time to meet with his Little Buddy all year.  I was devastated and dreaded meeting with that little boy!  When that boy rated being a Little Buddy a 5, I said "tell me about that”.  He enthusiastically said, "Every time I saw the Principal in the hall - he smiled at me!"

I wrote a report describing the program and the results, and sent it to the Superintendent.  He didn't respond, but I suspect the superintendent wanted to
share it with other schools, since I was made the School Social Worker of the Year in the State. I observed that our school atmosphere was much warmer than it had been.