Anthology Pieces
Love Ya
Driving to Rhode Island.
A journey to see a good friend.
Unfamiliar roads. A detour.
Which way do we go?
Headed in the wrong direction.
Turn around. Back on course.
Over the vast bridge.
Water flowing slowly below.
The beach.
The cool, salty mist in the foggy air.
Arriving at the hotel, starving after the long trip.
A glass of wine and a toast to a good friend.
Recalling our journeys and memories.
Helmet diving in Bermuda.
Our snowman on the golf course in Hiltonhead.
Custody of Pete.
The small cramped room.
That unforgettable smell.
Flowers.
Pictures everywhere.
Smiles. Joy. The biggest grin one can make.
Family.
Love.
Tears. Sadness. Loss.
Stones in the park.
The bridge in the distance.
A bright, blue sky.
Filled with the wish that I’d be remembered in the same way Kathy is today.
A last goodbye.
Love ya, a remembrance of the way cards were always signed.
Love ya, a reflection of our friendship.
Insights from a Five-year-old
Barbara Chorzempa
Robert Fulgrum wrote, “All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten.”
Although I’ve never read the book, so many times I reflect back on this one statement and think: all that I really need to know, I’ve learned from my children, but mostly from my son. The last five and a half years have shed more insight on the world for me than the prior thirty I think. Just as any mom probably does, I’ve learned quite a few lessons along the way.
Lesson number one: Children will exemplify the definition of their name. Not wanting to know the sex of either child, my husband and I decided we would separately list names we liked and then we’d compare lists to decide on one boy’s name and one girl’s name. I really liked Keegan. It was different, unusual. It sounded very Irish to me, and I presented it to Kevin as my chosen boy’s name. “Keegan?” he said. Well, I lost the fight for it to be a first name, but he agreed it would make a nice middle name. After comparing both lists, we selected the name Bryan, a name on both our lists. Bryan Keegan. It flowed nicely, and we like the way it sounded. Then I was curious to know, what did it mean? Strong, fiery one. Little did we know just how much he’d live up to that definition when we decided on the name. The fiery characteristic evidenced first. At 36 weeks he decided he didn’t want to wait until 40 weeks to be born, and so there we were, naming our first child Bryan Keegan, a full one month before he was expected to arrive.
When we were expecting our second child, Kevin and I were convinced it was a boy. In fact, Kevin was so convinced, that I wasn’t even allowed to discuss any girls’ names with him. Hours before she was born, I said, “Humor me. Let’s decide on a girl’s name.” We quickly arrived at the name Abigail, the girl’s name we picked before Bryan was born. It held no special meaning to either family, but I had always liked the name, even before it became so popular. I mentioned this to Kevin. I was concerned with just how popular the name had become, to which he said, “Why should that matter? You still like the name, don’t you?” Knowing in my heart it was the right name, I added that I wanted to change the middle name we had picked though, to Catherine, after my grandmother. Abigail Catherine. It was decided then. It wasn’t until after she was born that I looked up the meaning of her name: God’s grace. How very fitting after all that we had been through before and after she was born: a high risk pregnancy, a premature birth, and admission to the neonatal ICU at 7 days old. She is our God’s grace.
Lesson number two: Children often know more than adults. When Bryan was two years old, he so loved the trains from Thomas the Tank Engine. He’d watch the videos for hours if we’d let him and would sleep with his favorite trains every night, about twenty or so of them. He knew every one by name. Because of his language delay, he couldn’t name all of them himself; but if you asked him to find one, he knew exactly which one it was. However, I was still not able to differentiate between Thomas and Edward, they were both blue and didn’t have a tender (i.e., coal car); or between Donald and Douglas, they were twins after all. I had to read the names printed on the bottom of the train. But Bryan couldn’t read the names yet. How could he know them just by sight?
When Bryan was three he became very interested in dinosaurs. I recalled a few from my childhood: Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Stegosaurus, and Brontosaurus. These were the ones I could identify in the books I was often asked to read to Bryan and was proud to be able to do so. That is, until I learned that there really is no dinosaur called Brontosaurus: It really is the Apatosaurus. Not yet a reader, Bryan began teaching me the names of the dinosaurs he recognized through the pictures and amazed me at how many dinosaurs he could identify. I was now required to become well-versed in dinosaur identification as well: Pachycephalosaurus, Deinonychus, Parasaurolophus, Ornitholesthes, and Compsognathus among the favorites.
Lesson number three (and very closely related to number two). Children make you feel ignorant by asking you questions you can’t answer. How many times have I said to Bryan: “That’s a great question! We’ll have to ask your Uncle John.” I came up with this answer one day after feeling like there were so many of Bryan’s questions I just couldn’t answer. “What’s the difference between a marsh and swamp? What’s a mineral? How did Kane (our dog) get up into heaven? Do people need to eat in heaven? Who cooks for them?” I wish I wrote down all the questions Bryan has asked in the last few years so I can ask them of him when he gets older. For now, we just call Uncle John when we really need to know the answer. He’ll either know the answer, or can make up an answer on his feet that sounds much more credible than any answer I could create.
Lesson number four. Children are never too young to have a fetish. It seems like every time we go to the store, Bryan asks for a new toothbrush. And for some reason, this also seems to be the item we leave home without when we go on a trip, resulting in the purchase of yet another one. So, did we start this fetish? Bryan has received toothbrushes as part of a tradition, always finding one in his Christmas stocking, and when we see Aunt Mary, otherwise known as Toothmary, as she passes along toothbrushes she gets from her boss, a dentist. But he’s also received toothbrushes at unexpected times, such as in a goodie bag from a birthday party. His difficulty parting with toothbrushes is also evidence of his fetish. It takes some convincing on my part to throw away ones that are only good for cleaning the grout in between the shower tiles.
I’m not really sure how or when Abby’s fetish started, but it was certainly before she was 18 months old. She knew which shoes she wanted to wear and would shake her head no with a simultaneous and an emphatic “uh-uh” if you guessed wrong. Then you’d have to hold up each pair of shoes until she gave you the head nod with a smile and an “uh-huh.” Sometimes we found it easier to sit her in front of her closet and let her pick, but this could lead to her changing her mind several times. Thus we tried to avoid this practice unless we had nowhere to be. This fascination she had with shoes, unbeknownst to us at the time, has lead to great difficulty when we walk past the shoe aisle or go to a shoe store. She will not be appeased until she tries on a pair of shoes if we happen to stop to look at shoes for another member of the family. Of course this usually leads to the purchase of yet another pair of shoes, because if she likes them, there’s no “putting them back where you found them.” It probably didn’t help either when I let Kevin know that Abby was outgrowing her sneakers. He not only came home with a new pair, but also a new pair of shoes and a pair of boots because “they were on sale.” I can only reason to believe that we have started this fetish for her.
Lesson number five. Children will help you learn the most interesting facts, whether you want to learn them or not. My son’s fascination with different animals, at times even bordering on obsession, has significantly increased my knowledge of what I view as random facts. For example, to put it in Bryan’s language (as I had learned it), hyenas poop white because they eat their entire prey, even the bones. Coyotes love watermelon. Another name for animal poop is scat, and if you view an animal’s scat, such as an owl’s, you’ll know what he had recently eaten. Did I never learn these things? Did I never want to learn these things? Who knows, but maybe I know enough random details to be on Jeopardy now.
Lesson number six. Children really do say the darndest things. First made popular by Art Linkletter and then later by Bill Cosby, the television show hosts interviewed children, capturing the funny things children say. This is how it feels living in my household on a daily basis.
When Bryan was four and his sister just a month old, he was playing Power Rangers, pronouncing he needed to “kill these girls.” I quickly said, “Bryan, I don’t want to hear you talk like that,” to which he replied, “So shut the door.”
As I was on the phone one evening, lying stretched out on my floor, Bryan came into the room and repeatedly jumped on my stomach. I asked him to stop, and when he didn’t, I sent him to his room for not listening. Not even a minute later he came back into my room and said, “Mommy, that’s boring.” How do you explain to a four-year-old that a punishment is supposed to be boring?
Lesson number seven. Children’s views make you reexamine the way you think and view things. Like many parents and their children, we have read books as part of our bedtime ritual since Bryan was very little. One night he asked me to read a Spiderman book, not one of my favorites, but at the time it was his present superhero of choice. In the book a simple statement is made that Spiderman helps people. Completing the rest of the nighttime ritual, some time passes and Bryan asks me if Peter Parker or Spiderman could button. I said “Sure,” but couldn’t understand why he asked this. Then Bryan clarified, “Like today, he could have helped me button my pants at school because I couldn’t.”
I treasure the time I can spend alone with both of my children as well. Since the time Bryan first became enamored with dinosaurs, I had wanted to take him to the Museum of Natural History in New York City. We never made it when he was a full-fledged dino fan, but I had the opportunity to take him this past spring. He was just finishing his first year of school and a bus trip was planned at the end of the semester for the students I teach. Knowing Bryan would miss a half day of school, I decided that the experience of spending an entire day at the museum would be just as educational as a half day in Kindergarten. I also knew both him and I get queasy being in the car, so I brought along some Tootsie Pops for either the bus ride there or the ride back as a precaution. Just as I had anticipated, we had such an exciting day seeing the dinosaur skeletons and mammals he was fascinated by. We started the day on the fourth floor, where the dinosaurs are, and worked our way down as the day progressed. We ended our tour of the museum in the exhibit detailing facts about the planet earth. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and a cross section of the earth were some of the last things we saw. I found it very interesting, but it seemed to me that Bryan was over-stimulated with information and was ready to head home. Bryan and I talked on the bus on the way home, stuck in traffic trying to leave the city of course, and I asked him what he liked best. The answer received, touching the tooth of a T-Rex, was not a surprise to me. As we ate our Tootsie Pops, his cherry and mine grape, Bryan stated, “Hey Mom. Ever realize the earth is like a Tootsie Pop?” Not being able to foresee his insight I said, “How Bryan?” “Well,” he said, “it’s hard and crunchy on the outside and soft and mushy on the inside.” I couldn’t have created a better analogy for him if I had tried and here I thought he had breezed through the planet earth exhibit.
One of the greatest things about visiting my parents is that they saved many of the toys my brother and I had as children, especially the Fisher Price ones. The A-frame house, the Cape Cod with the yellow roof, the airport and airplane, the parking garage and the replica of Sesame Street are favorites among the grandkids. From the youngest, Abby, at age one and a half, to Owen, my nephew at age eight, they all still play with them at some point during the visit. Now that Bryan is in school though, the trips to my parents’ house have become much more infrequent. One night at dinner, four months after our last visit to my parents, Bryan, Abby and I were sitting at our dinner table. Bryan, out of nowhere, says “Hey Mom. Know those little people we play with at Nana’s house and how we move them around, make them talk and do things?” “Yeah?” “Well, maybe there’s somebody up there, moving us around, making us do things.” Needless to say, I was speechless after my five-year-old brought me into his philosophical world.
All these lessons can no way compare to the most important lessons I’ve learned being a mom: There’s no feeling better or more heartwarming than your children’s smiles and laughter, their hugs and kisses, and the call of “Mom-my!” when you walk in the door. There’s nothing I am more thankful for.
Crazy Lady Miss Fink, Part Two
Barbara Chorzempa
All too well I remember my first year of teaching. Already being certified as an elementary teacher Pre-K to sixth grade, I accepted a position as a resource room teacher in a K-6 high needs school in Maryland, just over the Washington DC border. I had just finished all my coursework for my Master’s degree in special education and opted to teach full-time in place of student teaching. Even before I graduated with my B.S. in elementary education, I knew I wanted to be certified as a special educator as well. Unlike many of the preservice teachers I now teach, I wasn’t seeking the additional certificate in hopes of increasing my chances to secure a position, but rather because I myself felt unprepared to teach diverse learners. What I realized in my first year of teaching, however, was that I was still unprepared, even though I had nearly two degrees and two certificates.
I reflect now on my decision to accept the position as a resource room teacher as someone just entering the profession. Maybe if I had accepted a position instead as a general education teacher first, I could have been informed of the curriculum for one grade, developed and refined my own classroom management techniques, and focused my attention on teaching. Maybe. Instead though I found myself balancing how and what to teach with so many other responsibilities, such as: providing resource support in the areas of reading, writing, and mathematics to more than 20 students in grades two, four, and six; floundering to orchestrate a schedule that allowed me to meet all the hours identified by the students’ IEPs (with several students receiving special education services for more than 15 hours per week); informing myself of the curriculum for three different grade levels but also recognizing the skill levels for each of my students; administering assessments for students referred for special education services; attending child study team meetings; collaborating with general education teachers in an attempt to align my instruction with theirs; meeting with teachers who were sometimes resistant to provide accommodations and modifications in their classrooms; and all the while, trying to teach nonreaders and reluctant learners in a supportive environment. It was so hard to not fall into the “skill and drill” method of my mentor teacher and to abandon so many of the ideas I envisioned myself using. Coupled with these and so many other unmentioned responsibilities was my hope to reach the students that had yet to be reached, students like Amos.
Amos was in the sixth grade, reading at not even a first grade reading level. When I first saw his IEP I thought, “How is it possible that he is still receiving pull-out in sixth grade? If he wasn’t reading by the end of fifth grade, wouldn’t a self-contained classroom be a more appropriate environment?” He appeared to need more than what a resource room could offer.
Amos was smaller in stature than many of his classmates, but I had been warned about his temper. Establishing a good rapport early in the year resulted in rare episodes of noncompliance with me though. Mid-way through the year, I felt he had made progress and was quite satisfied with the instruction I was providing. That is until one day in January. As we walked to the temporary building (i.e., my classroom) outside the school, he stops and asks me, “Miss Fink, why can’t I read?” Then he burst into tears and my heart broke. Here was this tough kid whose temper I had been warned about, sobbing on the steps up to my classroom. I wanted to do so much for him, but what I really felt he needed was one-on-one intense instruction. I truly believed he could learn how to read- he just needed so much more than I could provide.
I turned to a veteran teacher for help, another special educator teaching in a self-contained classroom. We made arrangements for Amos to go to her room every day during her reading group time, and I would continue to work on his writing and math skills. For the rest of the year, Amos would share strategies he’d been learning and things he’d read, as he grinned from ear to ear. My greatest accomplishment that year was guiding Amos through the writing process to compose his first story, a one paragraph story titled “Crazy Lady Miss Fink.” His final copy still hangs in my office.
At the end of the year, Amos was promoted to the middle school where he’d be placed in a self-contained classroom. On the last day of school, he gave me two gifts wrapped in old newspaper: one was a picture of Jesus and the other was a spiritual message in an old, cheap frame. It appeared to me he had searched his apartment to find me something to remember him by and in doing so, had touched me deeply. I’ve moved several times since then and somewhere along the way, Amos’ gifts did not get packed. But I’ll always remember Amos for another reason: how I failed as a teacher. But I’ll also remember him for the third gift he gave me, the inspiration to do all that I can for all my students. I may not succeed all the time, but I can at least say I tried.
Amos was in my class over 13 years ago, and now sitting in my classes are men and women just about to enter into their first year of teaching. I often think back to the struggles and challenges I faced as someone new to the profession, and sadly, so many questions my current students ask are the ones I struggled to answer: how do I meet the needs of all my students; how do I balance what I want to do with what I am asked to do; and, how can I reach the students who have yet to be reached?
This leads to me to think of the many ways we set up first year teachers to face those struggles and challenges, sometimes alone and overwhelmed. I wonder then, what we can do in teacher education to minimize those experiences. First, I strongly believe preservice teachers need more courses in literacy instruction. Addressing the theories, methods, and strategies for the six modes of language arts (i.e., reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and visually representing) grades one through six is an incomplete task in just two courses, the requirement in NY state.
Second, two of my colleagues and I have taught in partnership schools, where pedagogy is clearly linked with practice. That is, what the preservice teachers learn about in the morning with their teacher educator is then observed during the day in the elementary classroom and reflected on at the end of the school day. More types of experiences such as these may help to alleviate some of the insecurities the preservice teachers often feel.
Third, we need to incorporate more classroom management techniques into education courses, or require preservice teachers to take a specific course or workshop with these techniques as its focus. Fourth, more information about English Language Learners needs to be embedded in preexisting courses, or a separate course should be required so preservice teachers are more informed of what needs to be considered when teaching these children. Similarly, we need to ensure we provide more information on teaching diverse learners in the classroom. Lisa Delpit’s book Other People’s Children has reminded me of this.
There will always be struggles and challenges faced by those in our profession, especially ones in their first year of teaching; but I can’t hasten to believe that we can also help them to feel a little bit more prepared as well. That’s at least what I owe Amos.
