Journey off the Porch - Series of Four (Part Two)

"He wanted to be an analyst.  I said to him, "Do you know what that means?  It means that you must first learn to know yourself.  You yourself are the instrument.""
Carl Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Ever since I found out about Isabel and Cale's Autism, I've wondered why in the hell I ever went to college.  I spent a lot of money on college.  And if God's plan was for me to be a stay-at-home mom - to do the dishes six hundred and fifty thousand times each day, try to mother three children, and be required to participate in a multitude of never ending therapies for Isabel and Cale for the rest of my life - then why on earth did I waste all that time, and all that money, getting an education that I'd never be able to use?  It's been a serious sore spot in my relationship with God for several years now.

About three weeks ago, I had to rearrange some book shelves to make room for Cale's therapy tools.  In order to do so, I had to move all of my old college text books into one location.  I got them all lined up in two perfect rows and then sat down, feeling satisfied that I completed my chore, and began reading their titles.  It had been a very long time.

Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Problems, Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence, Theories of Developmental Psychology, Human Behavior, The Nature of The Child, Interpersonal Communication, Sensation and Perception (no shit), Learning and Behavior, Educating Exceptional Children, Exceptional Lives - Special Education in Today's Schools, Psychology of Learning and Instruction, Educational Psychology, just to name a few. 

I sat there in absolute shock.
 
I have the foundation, just about, for a career in ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis).  ABA is what's been missing for my kids, the thing I've been searching all over the city desperately for (with seriously varying luck I might add, but which got me learning about the education requirements for an ABA therapist/educator).  "So why," I thought, "don't I just finish up my education so that I can use ABA with my kids myself?  Plus, then I'd be able to use it to go back to work once Cale's in school all day next year."

What this means for me, basically, is going into the therapeutic education of children with Autism.  This would serve my own children for the rest of their childhoods and probably beyond.  I also might be able to participate, some day, in getting ABA into the public schools.  Because the public schools need ABA training for students with Autism worse than people in Hell need ice water.  That's just my own opinion of course.

The more I thought about this over the next few days, the more it sunk in that God, in spite of me, had been preparing me for my children for years before I actually had them.  All I need to do is finish it up.  Since I already have a B.A. in Psychology and a Master's degree in Education, it would only take me about a year. 

To be this close to it, however, seized me instantly with fear.  Not so much the heart pumping, sweat pouring down the sides of my face, unable to move kind of fear.  And not even so much the procrastinating type, the can't call because I'm paralyzed on the front porch kind... wait a minute.  Huh.   

Seeing that I was paralyzed, and because she was looking into the program for herself, my hab. worker brought me the paperwork on ASU's Autism/ABA programs.  She handed it right to me.  The next brick in my road could not have been more clear.  But, I began coming up with excuses about why I couldn't do it, the old gas tank that is this head of mine fueling itself up for a clean get away.

"I've been a stay-at-home mom for a long time now.  And I've let my teaching license expire.  They probably would never let me into the program."  But, actually, that's not it.  "I'm getting a little old to be stepping back into college again."  But, actually, that's not it either.  "I wouldn't be able to leave my kids long enough to attend classes every day.  Scheduling it in would never work."  But, that's not it either.  "Where would I come up with the money for such an endeavor?  Can I really justify stealing time and money away from my already strapped family for my own personal gain?  And then what if I failed?  What a waste it would be."  All of this is bullshit of course.

"Why am I afraid?" is the only real question here.  And most of the time, I can't figure out the answer to that question with my brain.  I have to look back, again, at my actual experiences for the answer.  So I did.  And I came upon an old hurt, which surprised me a little.  And in facing this old hurt, I remembered a tired and incredibly typical old truth.

 Reminder Story #2 - Becoming Something Different

(When one door closes, another will open - if I let it.)

My education was a total fluke.  I never knew what I was interested in, nor did I ever have any idea what I wanted to be when I got done with it.  But I absolutely loved college.  My idea of heaven on earth was a college classroom.  So I just kept randomly picking classes that I thought looked interesting.

When I finally had to graduate, I'd put together enough psychology classes and enough art classes to get B.A.s in both in Psychology and Art.  Then I went to work as a counselor in a group home for about a year before I just had to get back to my preferred environment.  So I went back to the college, opened the catalog to some random page, which Master's Degree in Education just happened to be on, and thought, "That'll do."  Then I went on to get a Master's Degree in Education without any actual interest in becoming a teacher.

In an eventual attempt to use all this education of mine, I became an Art teacher at an alternative high school in my home town.  "Alternative" meaning that most of my students had been kicked out of the regular high schools.  It was hard for me at first.  Soon after I started, Shane asked me if I liked it.  I told him that I loved it.  I loved my classroom with the old black and green checkered linoleum floors, the smell of charcoal, paint, and rubber cement, the sun pouring into the windows in the afternoons, the ability to make art every day.  "I absolutely adore it," I said to him, "I just wish I didn't have to have all these kids in my room all the time."

I very quickly, and quite dramatically, grew to adore my students.  But in order to bring that about, I first had to change my thinking a bit.  You see, I'd always had a huge passion for Art history.  And I'd always just assumed that others felt the same.  So I started out the year delivering long, heady lectures about one hundred year old, dead, french painters.  I jumped around the room, wide-eyed, discussing them as if my current life depended on it.  Then I assigned essays to see if my students were actually listening.  They weren't.

I genuinely couldn't understand why my students seemed more interested in huffing the rubber cement than in learning about Matisse.  But I knew that many of them didn't have the easiest of lives and I could understand the need to escape into rubber cement (amongst other) highs.  What became clear to me right away was that my students needed people in their lives that they could trust.  People who loved them.

Providing entire groups of kids with love that they can trust, all at the same time, and throughout each and every day, requires structure.  A lot of structure.  And providing structure to that extent exhausts a person like me.  I dumped all of my energy into it, sunk deep down into the furthest depths of my reserves, to access the strength to provide that kind of structure.  Because whether or not my students felt loved depended on it.  I got very, very clear about the expectations in my classroom.  And this helped things a lot. 

The other thing I had to do was to distract them from the rubber cement.  I had to make Matisse meaningful somehow.  Fun.  Fun for them, not me.  So I created projects that I thought might interest them.  And, as it turned out, cutting out giant chunks of cardboard, painting them, and then creating individual wall sculptures, which we later glued all together into one, giant wall sculpture and hung in the school's main hall, was much more interesting for them than listening to lectures.  In fact it made their own Art larger than life.

For weeks I watched my students stand in the main hall with their friends, pointing out their part in the giant, unified sculpture.  They told their friends and the other teachers all about Matisse, how we'd made the sculpture exactly, and that they thought the sculpture should stay in that spot forever.  Our principal agreed completely.  So the card board, large appliance boxes that several of my students had rummaged alleyways to find, were transformed into something that had a permanent place on our school's wall.

Many of these kids had never actually done anything like this before.  Watching their genuine awe through the whole process made me feel kind of sad for them, but incredibly proud of them at the same time.  And that's when I realized that my students, not Art history, had become my passion.   

Money was always tight in the school district we were in and one day, in an attempt to spot places they could cut spending, the school board began looking into closing down our school.  We, the staff and students of our school, responded with a polite fight.  We all went to board meeting after board meeting after board meeting after board meeting, attempting to persuade the board to keep our doors open.  We had to evaluate and specify every detail of our program.  We had to demonstrate, clearly, the value of our students, the value of our staff, and the value of our school for the future of our community.  It was such an eye opening and magnificent experience to do this. 

I watched my students, the ones who'd started the previous year huffing rubber cement (and doing meth) show up, repeatedly, to these board meetings with purpose, and intent - bright eyed, dressed up, and there to share their experiences about how the school was their home, about how it was changing their lives to get a second chance.  "Please don't give up on us," came politely and calmly out of their mouths.

My students were present the day the other students came to a board meeting, ONE board meeting, and presented their arguments about why they should get the school district's money instead.  Some of these were my husband's old students, although he no longer lays any claim to them.

These were incredibly bright kids with ridiculously articulate mouths.  They were clearly the Honor roll batch - fresh hair cuts, clean clothes, gifted, snooty - debate team types, from wealthy families, who'd probably never seen one single real problem in the entire course of their young lives, ones who seemed to believe that elitism is still the wave of the future as opposed to that flat, dead thing in the past (whew - still a little bitter I guess).

They showed up, laid out their arguments, and then one of them finished with this, "We don't do drugs (like hell they don't) and we don't get kicked out of school.  We get excellent grades, we will succeed in life, and WE are the future tax payers in this community.  Invest in us.  We should not be deprived of the opportunities to run our extracurricular activities." 

The shock of it ran all the way down my back, through my legs, and hit the tips of my toes with a thud.  Those words - so perfectly articulated, so beautifully laid out by debate team standards, so thoroughly and sincerely brutal - stay in my memory to this very day, clear blocks of ice left standing on my brain.   

In the end, the school board did decide to close down our school.  But they, at least, let us finish out the school year.  During the last weeks of school, I didn't provide a drop of structure.  Not one.  I told my students they could do whatever they liked in my class.  Yet they remained absolute angels.

One of my students came to my desk one day, during these last weeks, and asked me, "What should I do today Mrs. Spears?"

"You can do whatever you'd like sweetie.  You can draw or paint or doodle.  Whatever you want," I told him.

"Wow.  They're really going to close down the school aren't they?" he asked.

I stopped what I was doing and turned around to look him in the eyes.  "Yes, they are," I replied, "But you are going to be just fine in the regular high school next year."

He looked down at the papers on my desk and said, "But I didn't make it in the regular high school before."

"You were younger then," I said, "And you're more grown up now.  Just show up.  And try.  And doors will open for you.  You can succeed.  I know it.  You'll be okay."

"But Mrs. Spears?" asked this big, tough, sixteen year old boy, with tears filling his eyes, "What if we never see you again?"

I can't count how many identical conversations I had during the following weeks.  And, shockingly, I didn't tell him, nor any other student, to round up some buddies, find some debate team kids, and kick some future-tax-paying ass.  It would've been unprofessional of me.  Instead I told him, and every one of my other students, that he would always be able to call me, or any of the other teachers, any time he ever needed help with anything.  But you know how that goes.  Kids like these don't call.

The whole thing broke my heart at depths I didn't know existed in me, and left an awful taste in my mouth for any future public school teaching.  I politely declined applying for other available Art teaching positions in the district.  By then, Shane had been accepted at Thunderbird anyway.  And a month after school got out, we moved to Phoenix so he could begin work on his M.B.A.  I never, one time, looked for teaching jobs in Phoenix.  That door, for me, had closed.  I never wanted to be a teacher again.

They didn't just close down my old school.  They demolished it.  And turned it into something altogether and completely different.  Now it's a Walgreens.  And I'm a stay-at-home mom.