Читать книгу The Lost Children - Mary MacCracken, Mary MacCracken - Страница 8

I worked even harder the remainder of that year with Helga. I canceled my Tuesday bridge and my Thursday afternoon tennis foursome and went three days a week to school rather than two.

From the time Elizabeth and Rick had entered school I had always worked as a volunteer, either at the hospital on the library cart or in the county shelter for adolescents. There was strong tradition in our family for community volunteer and board work, and I had always enjoyed it. But the school was different. I had worked at the hospital and the shelter because it had seemed part of a responsible way of living. I worked now at the school because I loved it and couldn’t stay away.

If I had studied Helga carefully before, I watched her even more closely those last weeks, for she told me suddenly, one day as we walked with the children, that she would not be back the following year.

“Why?” I asked. It seemed impossible to me. I could not imagine Helga without the children or the children without Helga.

“They want me to go back to school,” she said, “An old woman like me. What would they teach me? Ha! What do I need with their fancy courses, their methods-teaching, visual aids, curriculum-planning? They say I will not get my proper salary unless I go to the college and take courses given by some young pup, because our school is about to become approved by the state and I will need the courses for certification. Ach, it is a waste. They can take their shitty courses.

“I know what I am saying, Nick took me to visit the college. The professors either say in fancy language what I already know, or they speak foolishness that is best never heard.”

“Where will you go? What will the children do without you?” I asked.

Helga laughed out loud and put her arm around my shoulders, and I could feel the resiliency of her strong, still-lithe body.

“There are plenty of sick children in the world. Come with me on Saturday and I will show you. As for these, my children here, they will be all right. They are almost ready to go now – and if not, she will hire another to teach them.”

I could not tell whether it was bitterness I heard in Helga’s voice or only disappointment.

On Saturday, Helga picked me up in her ancient coupe and drove me over to her new school; she had met its young director many years before. She led me to the central resource room filled with shelves lined with paper, paints, clay, doll families, puzzles, books, workbooks, textbooks, pencils, blocks, on and on – and outside in the shed beside the building, bicycles, scooters – contrasting to our own meager supplies.

Helga spread her hands. “We are rich!” she said. “Come, come.” Down a long hall, then she threw open a door marked Girls: there in white-tiled glory were five sinks and seven toilets, and Helga flushed each one with satisfaction.

On Memorial Day weekend Helga went bicycling through northern New England with her husband. She was anxious to be gone, and I knew those last weeks of school were very difficult for her. She might say she didn’t mind leaving, but I saw her eyes fill with tears more than once, and her cursing had increased. She decided to add a day and a half to her weekend and asked if I would take charge of her class during that time.

I was pleased to be asked, of course – I was proud that Helga felt that I could teach alone. I knew she cared too much for her children to leave them with anyone she thought incompetent. It was not until much later that I realized that Helga was now consciously teaching me, preparing me, making me grow, just as she did the children. Helga had never taken an education or psychology course, but she was a born teacher, and she knew instinctively when it was time for me to take on more responsibility.

Now, too, I read, researched, balancing what I was reading against Helga’s teaching. Helga had not thought much of education courses, and yet I was greedy for every morsel of information I could find on childhood schizophrenia, autism, the emotionally disturbed. I soon exhausted our local libraries and moved on to the libraries of New York, and bought my own books. Still, amazingly little had been written about these illnesses in children, and many of the authorities disagreed with one another on the cause and range, on diagnosis and prognosis. I wished Helga would write her own book. The others were confusing, contradictory – and yet valuable. So I kept on reading – textbooks, case histories, personal experiences – agreeing, disagreeing, gradually evolving my own beliefs, though these, too, I knew would shift and change as more research was done and my own experience grew.

The term “seriously emotionally disturbed child” covers a wide range, including both the withdrawn, autistic child and the hyperactive, violently acting-out child. Many of the children in our school were diagnosed as being autistic, but the Director preferred the broader term “seriously emotionally disturbed.”

Although there were differing views, gradually a pattern appeared as I read. Various authorities differed on cause and treatment, but most writers and educators seemed to agree on the prime characteristics of the emotionally disturbed child.

First of all, he has a lack of awareness of his own identity. His concept of his own body image is very small. He seldom speaks properly; sometimes he may not speak at all. Certainly this was true at our school; over two thirds of the children had severe language problems.

The seriously emotionally disturbed child resists change, often becomes preoccupied with a particular object, and is filled with excessive anxiety. His emotional relationships with family, peers, and teachers are severely impaired. He does not care; he is turned in upon himself. Although he may appear to be retarded because of these things, still he may often have flashes of brilliance in contrast to the even performance of the retarded child.

The books said this and I believed it: still, it was a conglomerate, whereas to me each child was unique, an individual.

The more I read, the more certain I became of one fact: the screening and certifying of teachers of emotionally disturbed children should not depend solely upon graduation and completion of required courses; the screening should be different for this field. The Helgas of this world must not be lost. The art of communication is just that – an art – and there must be a talent before the craftsmanship can be developed, or you will have only technicians, not gifted teachers. You can instill a hundred techniques in a teacher, have her memorize thousands of technical terms; but if she cannot make contact with the children they are useless.

We said good-bye on the last day of school, Helga and I. We stood on the paint-stained green linoleum of her classroom and I knew I would never see her just so again. I tried to memorize her – the short, thick, straight, graying hair; the horn-rimmed glasses slipping ever closer to the end of her nose as she bent her head nearer, closer, to get a better look; the strong legs above the sneakers. Not young or fashionable or beautiful – merely ageless and phenomenal, like the mountains I had seen in Canada. She had charted a new course, opened a new door, turned a new leaf; there were no right words, only clichés; but Helga had done it for me – and I loved her.

I had wanted to give her a present but I could not think of the right one, and so I went to her now and put my arms around her and out loud could only say, “Thank you, Helga.” But I hope my body language spoke to her.

She held me, too, and we stood like this. Then she moved back a little and took my chin and held it in her hand, smiled, and said, “You will be a good teacher, Mary. Yes. Just watch out for the shitty volunteers.”