Authors: Debra Ginsberg
January 1997
I
am in Blaze’s classroom, ensconced in what Sally euphemistically calls “the quiet room.” This is a new incarnation for me—parent volunteer. As part of my plan to understand what is really happening with Blaze, I’ve decided to come here, to ground zero, and learn what I can. I discussed this with Sally a few weeks ago and she was all for it.
“We can always use the help,” she said.
The quiet room is small and stuffy. The air in here is moist and heavy with the scents of childhood: peanut butter and jelly, glue sticks, and playground sweat. I sit in a tiny blue plastic chair at a low table, grateful that I can fit my thirty-four-year-old behind onto a seat designed for grade-schoolers. I’m waiting for my first student on my first official day. Sally’s left me a note that I read, then tuck into my shirt pocket.
Today you’ll read with kids one at a time,
it says.
They get to choose a story to bring to you for five to ten minutes. If a child makes a mistake or substitutes or deletes a word, but the story makes sense—let it go. If a child makes a mistake that doesn’t make sense or changes the story significantly, ask that child to try that part again.
At the end of the note, Sally says,
Please don’t take it personally if a child initially resists reading to you. Transitions are hard, but the kids will get used to you quickly
.
Sally has included a list of twelve children who will come read to me in the little, glassed-off quiet room. Blaze is one of them. This should be interesting, I think.
Jake enters the room first. He’s a big fourth-grader, full of pouting attitude. Jake falls heavily into a chair beside me, slaps his paperback down on the table, and folds his arms across his chest.
“I don’t wanna read,” he tells me.
“Okay,” I start. “What
do
you want to do?”
I’ve said the wrong thing. Jake gives me a confused smile. Rookie, his smile says, you’re not supposed to make it this easy.
“I mean, is there another book you want to read?” I ask quickly, trying to cover.
“No,” Jake says. “I want to go to sleep. I’m tired. I’m always tired in here.” He puts his head down on the desk and begins mock snoring.
“Jake,” I say a little more firmly. “You’ve only got ten minutes in here with me, so let’s make the best of it. Sit up now, please, and let’s read. This looks like a good book. What’s it about?”
“I don’t know,” Jake says, his voice muffled by his sleeve.
“Then maybe we should read it,” I say.
“I’m not gonna read,” Jake says. “I’m too tired.”
I wait a few beats. “Jake,” I say, “should I tell Miss Sally that you’re tired and maybe you need to spend
more
time in here with me?”
Jake lifts his head and glares at me. I’ve hit a nerve. He picks up the book and opens it but stares at me, sullenly. When he opens his mouth to speak, I expect him to defy me again, but he says, “Are you Blaze’s mom?”
“Yes,” I tell him.
“He’s weird,” Jake says.
“I suppose he is, a little,” I tell Jake, thinking, weird by special-ed standards, that really takes doing. “But we’re all a little weird in our own way,” I add. “Let’s get started on the reading.”
Finally, Jake complies. I’m surprised by how good his reading
seems. He’s reading from a fourth-grade novel and he has no trouble pronouncing any of the words. I’m impressed until I realize that he isn’t really reading, he’s only saying the words on the page out loud. He has a complete lack of inflection in his voice and when I ask him to tell me what has happened in the last paragraph, he can’t.
“I’m only supposed to read,” he says. “I don’t have to talk about it.”
“Yes, but—” I start to tell him about understanding the story and how important that it, but he’s out the door. Our time is up.
Katie is the next one in. She’s in second grade and reading on a kindergarten level. She’s brought me a picture book and struggles over
cat
,
the
, and
ball
. She rubs her eyes and pulls at her shirt.
“Are you Blaze’s mom?” she asks me in a surprisingly husky voice.
“Yes.”
“He’s nice,” Katie says. I wait for the other shoe to drop but it doesn’t. Katie struggles through a few more three-letter words and then slides out. She sends Tommy in and Tommy is followed by Alex who can’t read at all—not a word. He’s memorized some portions of the book he brings me, but that’s it. He seems pleased with his effort. Blaze is the next one on my list. He saunters in and takes a seat next to me. He hasn’t brought a book to read.
“Hi, Mom,” he says. “Do you like the quiet room? What are you doing in here?”
“I’m reading with the kids,” I tell him. “Where’s your book?”
“What book?”
“You’re supposed to bring me a book to read.”
Blaze looks at me, bemused, as if to ask why he would possibly need a book or anything else resembling schoolwork while he’s in the quiet room with me. “So, Mom, what do you want to talk about with me?” he asks.
“I don’t want to talk, Blaze, I want you to pick out a book and read it to me.”
“I don’t want to read,” he says. He sounds almost insulted. We
tango back and forth for a few minutes on the question of what book he will read and then I reach behind my chair and pull one out from a stash Sally keeps there, probably for this express purpose.
“I don’t want to read
that
book,” he says.
“You’re going to stay in here until you read something to me,” I tell him. “You can’t get away with this kind of stuff with me.”
We argue for almost the entire time that he’s in the quiet room, but, finally, Blaze reads something to me. It’s only a few sentences and he stops every third word for a non sequitur, but it’s something. I’ve been in here for an hour and I’m completely exhausted.
I have no more kids after Blaze leaves. The rest on my list are absent or busy working with Sally or with one of her three aides. I crack open the door of the quiet room and peer out into the classroom, hoping to catch a glimpse of insight. I see a couple of kids working on computers, oblivious to everything around them. I see Sally teaching a lesson about what lives in the ocean. Jake still looks angry. Alex looks as if he’s perfected the art of sleeping with his eyes open. Blaze is tapping his pencil on the desk, softly at first and then louder and louder until Sally tells him to stop.
The bell rings for recess and all the kids rise at once. Were it not for Sally’s stern admonishments, they’d all try to press through the door at the same time.
“Bye, Mom,” Blaze says perfunctorily and is out of there with the rest of them.
“Thanks so much for your help,” Sally says brightly. “How’d it go?”
“I had the most trouble with Blaze,” I tell her. “So, not bad, I guess. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Oh no, you don’t have to come every day,” Sally says.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I want to.”
I follow Blaze out to the playground, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. I scan the swings, jungle gym, sandpit, and blacktop. He’s not in any of those places, not playing with any groups of kids, not even
playing by himself among the others. I spy him, finally, walking the perimeter of the baseball field on the outer edge of the playground. He’s just walking, head down, alone, deep into the recesses of his own mind. I feel angry seeing him like this—not at him or anyone at the school, but at myself for being so long away, for drifting to the other side of a great divide that has opened between us. I feel sadness too, and not the wistful, photogenic kind. This sadness constricts, closes my throat, forces my hands into fists at my side.
My tall shoes totter on the spongy grass as I walk over to Blaze. He sees me coming and stops.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Nothing,” he says guiltily.
“Why are you all the way over here by yourself?”
“I like it here,” he says.
“Why don’t you find somebody to play with?”
“I don’t want to find somebody to play with.”
“It looks weird, walking around by yourself.”
“Mom, aren’t you going home? Are you going to be here all day?”
“Yes, I’m going home. But, please, come back to the playground.”
“In a minute,” he says. “Okay, Mom? In a minute.”
I kiss him good-bye and turn to leave. But with every step I take off the grass, through the playground and off the school grounds, I have to fight an almost uncontrollable urge to run back, grab my child and take him home with me where I know he will be safe.
Quitting my job was not the magic bullet I’d hoped for where Blaze was concerned. Although I could now see what was going on at school for myself, Blaze’s problems there remained the same, regardless of the fact that I was physically present. In Sally’s class, Blaze was openly defiant and most of the time he simply refused to work.
“He
is
learning,” Sally told me, “but I can’t tell you what he knows or how much. I can’t even tell you how he’s learned it. He can do basic
math, but he must have sponged it because he never gives any indication that he’s paying attention.”
As I continued to volunteer in Sally’s class, I became more familiar with her kids and their behaviors. Blaze had certainly been a quick study in this arena and had managed to mimic every inappropriate behavior he saw, whether this was pencil tapping, making odd noises, or banging his books together. He was a one-sided mirror of his class, reflecting only the negative. Added to this were his own quirks: fear of fire drills and loud noises, and difficulty writing. Despite the fact that he found imitating them so interesting, Blaze had formed no friendships with the children in Sally’s class. He continued his solitary treks around the baseball field at recess and when I occasionally found myself on campus at midday, I noticed that he ate lunch by himself as well.
While these behaviors were bad enough, they paled in comparison to what was going on in Mrs. Noel’s class in the afternoons. Now that I had no day job, I was able to pick Blaze up from school every day. I came a few minutes early and snuck around the side of the classroom to observe. Blaze seemed completely out of touch with the teacher and with his classmates. He was always in the back of the classroom, lost in his own world. I tried talking to Mrs. Noel, but I felt as if I was butting up against a brick wall. Blaze was completely unable to handle the academic demands of third grade, she told me, and therefore it was difficult to include him in her lessons. I asked her if there was anything to be done about the fact that Blaze didn’t seem to have any friends and spent so much of his time alone in a crowd. Mrs. Noel assured me that Blaze’s classmates were “very tolerant of him.” She gave me several wide, fake smiles and used my first name often when she spoke to me: “Well, I’ll tell you, Debra…My feeling is, Debra…Did you know, Debra…” I found this disconcerting and more than a little annoying.
At home, I pulled out the Yellow Pages and looked under the heading of
schools
. I had no idea what I was looking for and didn’t see much
to begin with. There were a couple of private schools named after famous people with learning disabilities, a Waldorf school on the other side of the county, and a smattering of Montessori schools, most of which only went through second or third grade. I called a few of the schools and discovered the monthly tuitions were double what I was paying for rent. It was clear that I wouldn’t be able to pay for a private school on my waitress income. I knew that several school districts subsidized private-school education for special-education students whose needs were not being met in a public-school setting, but Blaze’s school district prided itself on having one of the highest standards in the county for both academics and special education. They weren’t about to finance a costly private school education when they felt that they were quite capable of doing it themselves, thank you. I could hire an educational advocate (essentially a lawyer versed in educational law) to argue a case for private school, but there was no guarantee that an advocate would succeed either. In any case, advocates charged an average of $100 per hour ( I called a few just to be sure) and none of the advocates in my area worked on a pro bono basis.
Sally confirmed all of this for me when I raised the issue of alternative schools with her during recess one day.
“The only programs that this district has considered in the past are the ones that are more for kids with—kids who have—meet the criteria for severely emotionally disturbed,” she said. “There’s one a few miles from here, if you want to check it out.”
“No, I don’t,” I told her. “Blaze is not emotionally disturbed.”
“No, I don’t think he’d do well there,” Sally told me.
“Well, what if I hired an advocate?” I asked, knowing full well I couldn’t, but wanting to gauge her reaction anyway.
“That’s certainly your right,” she said, “but before you got Blaze placed somewhere, he’d have to have a diagnosis. An advocate would have to present that diagnosis coming in.”
“Do you have any suggestions for me, then?” I asked her. Although
I’d always liked Sally, I had developed a new respect for her since I’d started volunteering in her classroom. The sheer effort and emotional output she offered every day was staggering, yet I never saw her level of energy flag. Watching her teach was like watching a math genius work a dozen puzzles all at the same time. It was more than impressive. Although I was wary of teachers in general, I trusted her more than I trusted anybody else at the school.
Sally couldn’t recommend any private schools, but she did say that it might be easier to develop a more effective educational plan for Blaze if it was clearer exactly what his problems were and how they could best be addressed. It couldn’t hurt to have him reassessed, she said. The professionals were learning more each day and it could only help his teachers to have additional strategies for teaching him. So, despite the fact that I’d always disliked labels and wasn’t entirely sure that it would benefit Blaze to have one, I went in search of a diagnosis.