Not Always Happy

by Kari Wagner-Peck

  Mrs. Holt shared with me moments before the meeting in a regretful tone, “I have no backbone.”

  I realized I had to boost her confidence. “No worries! I’ll present the criticisms. You just back me up, okay?”

  “Okay!”

  The meeting with Craig Joyce quickly devolved into him yelling at me. He was offended I would suggest he had made a mistake. He was a real prima donna.

  “I am telling you we want to change course to a device that’s easier for Thorin to use.”

  He went from just yelling at me to spitting unintentionally on me, due to the fact he was foaming at the mouth. I looked at Mrs. Holt to see if she was okay. If normal talking freaked her out, she must be a complete mess thanks to the yelling. She didn’t utter a word during the meeting.

  As he was still yammering away, I stood up and said, “We’re done here. I’ll figure it out another way.” We weren’t getting anywhere, and his spittle was nauseating.

  After he left, Mrs. Holt said, “I’m sorry! He intimidates me. I couldn’t talk.”

  “It’s okay. It wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.”

  The next week, the district found another communication specialist to say Craig Joyce was wrong. The new communication specialist recommended an application that was easier to use. She would show Thorin the application to see if he liked it before implementing it. That same day, I spoke with Thorin’s teacher, Mrs. Bruce, who was less than helpful. I asked how he was doing educationally.

  “I don’t know. I’m not really his teacher.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he thinks you are.”

  “Oh, that’s so nice!” I wanted to punch her. She felt no sense of duty to Thorin who was a student in her classroom.

  Mrs. Dean was also increasingly becoming a bigger obstacle to Thorin’s education. She had been doing assessments with Thorin but admitted she didn’t understand him when he talked. Still, she wanted to present her findings at the year-end IEP meeting.

  Thorin shared with me at breakfast one morning, “No more Mrs. Dean.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Please.”

  Ms. Shay, from the district office, seemed sympathetic to our concerns about Thorin’s education. I asked if she would attend a staff meeting. She was happy to attend and also said she would push Mrs. Dean to give concrete reporting on what she was doing with Thorin.

  Before the meeting, Mrs. Dean offered to meet with Thorin and me. Both Mrs. Holt and the occupational therapist sat in with us, so they could update me before the meeting as well.

  Mrs. Dean said to Thorin, “Want to show off for your mom?”

  “Okay.”

  “Alright, what have we learned? Let’s do it together.”

  In unison she and Thorin said, “4, 3, 2, 1! Blast off!”

  “Thorin, you forgot to jump out of your seat on blast off! Let’s do it again!”

  “No, please don’t,” I said. Seeing it once was disturbing enough.

  “We have to! He didn’t get out of his seat.”

  They did the routine one more time. Mrs. Holt and the occupational therapist looked sad.

  “Mrs. Dean, Thorin counts to fifty at home.”

  “Um, not here.”

  I bet not here. Mrs. Dean had the bar set too low. Thorin went back to his classroom.

  Ms. Shay was true to her word. She pressed Mrs. Dean for details on Thorin’s progress. In official mode, Mrs. Dean referred to Thorin as a cognitive profile. The fourth time she did it, I interrupted.

  “Mrs. Dean, he has a name.” Then I turned to Ms. Shay and said, “Make her stop.”

  Ward put his hand on my back.

  “Mrs. Dean, I want you talk about some of Thorin’s specific gains, please,” Ms. Shay requested.

  “He can hold a book right-side up and he knows words go from left to right.”

  I knew Thorin was reading pre-literacy books at home, and Ms. Alice was working with him on reading as well.

  “He knew those things before he got to kindergarten,” Ward said.

  Ward and I refuted the remainder of her reporting as well below his capacity. Ms. Shay suggested adjourning with the suggestion that a formal end-of-the-year IEP be held with the expectation that Thorin’s skill levels would be increased. Also given school was ending soon, a proper and supportive summer session needed to be determined. Everyone left the room except for Mrs. Holt, the occupational therapist, and me. I put my head on the table and started sobbing. They sat quietly with me. When I lifted my head, I saw both of them had tears in their eyes.

  “Does she hate him?” I asked referring to Mrs. Dean

  They told me there had been so many complaints about her regarding the children she worked with that the district had moved her caseload to other case managers. Mrs. Dean had fought to keep Thorin, and they had agreed.

  I emailed Ms. Shay requesting Thorin have a new case manager. She wrote back quickly agreeing to the change.

  Thorin’s new case manager was Jay Trask. He was retiring in a month after a thirty-year career and had been moved from a high school to Thorin’s school that week—that couldn’t be a good sign. It made me wonder what Mr. Trask had done at the high school since they were transferring him to an elementary school to be a case manager for students who had disabilities. I had also heard Mrs. Mallory, Thorin and David’s former case manager, was also retiring. Maybe there wasn’t a rubber room in the school district, but Superintendent Samuel’s words came back to me: “I can’t do anything until they retire.”

  I also hoped the district moved Mr. Trask to say they had a warm body handling case services for children with disabilities at the school rather than he was menace to children. That’s how all the districts tactics had affected my expectations for Thorin: “Gee, I hope he’s just a do-nothing and not a dangerous pervert.”

  When I went to see Mr. Trask, he told me in a confused and sad sort of way, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  “Oh! That has to be hard.”

  “It is. The kids I met are nice, and they hang out in my office. Thorin could do that, too.”

  “Well, let me think about that. Do you want me to take the lead on ideas regarding Thorin?”

  “Yes! Thank you!”

  “No prob.”

  I went to see the principal and reported, “Mr. Trask says he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  “He does know.”

  “But he said he doesn’t.”

  “He’s wrong.”

  I ordered a book prior to the end-of-the-year IEP meeting titled The Paraprofessional’s Handbook for Effective Support in Inclusive Classrooms. The book is written by a paraprofessional, which is another term for an Ed Tech, and is considered a resource for best practices. I learned implementation of inclusion is often facilitated by the paraprofessional or Ed Tech, and that person modifies the curriculum given to them by the teacher.

  I wanted Ward and me to be better prepared to discuss what we wanted for Thorin. The school said they were inclusive, but the reality was that they had no guiding philosophy, no living document. They had no clue other than sticking a child with a disability into a regular classroom and calling it good. We had learned too late that for inclusion advocates like Trisha, Thorin was cannon fodder to lob at the school. She was trying to force change through IEPs—too bad if Thorin was the collateral damage. Ward and I had relieved her of her duty. We wanted a working document; a plan that said this is inclusion.

  The meeting went better than expected. Ms. Shay ran the show and called people to account. Mrs. Bruce could not get away with saying Thorin was not her student. But what she did do was lie about her role; she said she had been facilitating inclusive practices. When asked if she had provided class plans to Ms. Alice for modification, she said she did provide them.

  Ms. Alice responded, “That’s not true. You do not give me lesson plans.”

  Go Ms. Alice! From the look on her face, I could see
she was as about done with Mrs. Bruce as we were.

  Ms. Shay asked, “Why aren’t you providing the plans?”

  Mrs. Bruce didn’t say anything, but Ms. Alice did. “You don’t do your plans until the day of class.”

  Ms. Alice went on to explain she had facilitated inclusive classrooms in the past. She outlined how an inclusive classroom operated and explained the roles of the teachers and Ed Techs. She was clearly excited by being in a role she was supremely qualified to fill. Her enthusiasm was contagious. I would ask questions of her from the paraprofessional book that I had on my lap. Ms. Shay, the district person, took copious notes, smiled, nodded, and said, “Great stuff!” I saw the principal, who was seated to my left, lean in to write down the title of the book I was holding.

  As the meeting drew to a close, I became less enthusiastic. The responsibility of planning the classroom and coordinating with the summer school teachers was given to Mrs. Bruce and Mr. Trask—Mrs. Do Nothing and Mr. Know Nothing. Ward and I tried to be positive. Ms. Alice had been assigned as Thorin’s Ed Tech for summer school, which would begin in a month and half.

  Two days later, I was called into a meeting at work and told I had been laid off along with sixteen other people.

  Given how plans in the past hadn’t shaken out the way promised, I went to the school the day before summer school started while Thorin visited with Bubba. I found the summer teacher, and she told me she hadn’t heard from Mrs. Bruce or Mr. Trask about a plan. I knew those two wouldn’t be able to pull that kind of coordinating off. Ms. Alice should have been placed in charge, but she hadn’t; even though she had more education and experience, she had the title Ed Tech.

  In lieu of receiving plans for Thorin, this summer school teacher had taken it upon herself to create a plan for Thorin. Each day, Thorin would be allowed to attend the morning meeting, and in the late morning, he would join the regular class for an experiential science project. The remaining three hours of the day, he would work alone with an Ed Tech in another room.

  When I heard the plan, I notified Ms. Shay and the principal that Thorin would not be attending summer school. We fell for it again! I think one of our worst characteristics as parents was our enduring hope the school would do right by Thorin. We were banging our heads against a brick wall. The school could not do better by Thorin whether it was because of their ignorance or their resistance. Or both.

  When Ms. Alice arrived for summer school, she heard what happened. Then, she did an amazing thing. In forty-five minutes, she created an inclusive summer experience that she got the teachers to happily accept. The next day, Thorin and I went to check it out. He agreed to try it.

  Soon the insomnia, the crying, the school refusal, and wetting himself started. He began wetting the bed at home, too. I was called to the school by one of the receptionists who told me Thorin had wet himself three times that morning.

  Ms. Alice was out sick that day, and I was met by a substitute aide. She explained what had transpired during the morning. As Thorin went to get his things from his locker, she said kindly, “I don’t think he wants to be here.” The simplicity of her statement struck me. That may have been the truest thing ever expressed about Thorin in the school.

  When he got into the car with me, Thorin said, “I will wet and wet to leave.”

  “Oh, Thorin . . .”

  He cried, “No, Mommy! You do more for me, please.”

  That was a mouthful for any kid but more so for Thorin. It was if the sheer frustration of two years were pushed out of his mouth, demanding I do something.

  I told Thorin I had to make a quick call. I stepped out of the car and moved several feet away. Ward answered.

  “I want to tell Thorin right now that we are homeschooling.”

  “Do it.”

  “We’re okay?”

  “We’re okay.”

  When I got back in the car, I turned to face Thorin. “Okay you don’t have to go to school anymore.”

  “Good! Thank you!”

  “We’ll do school at home. You can learn reading, writing, and math, everything with me.”

  It was done. It felt wonderful. That calm that had eluded me for so long was back. That night, Ward and I talked about the logistics of homeschooling. We had started saving money ever since Thorin came into our life. That money was being put aside for his future when we weren’t here.

  Ward pointed out, “You don’t have a job. Thorin’s future is now.”

  “Can we do this?”

  “Yes. You homeschool. We live on less money. That’s not such a big problem.”

  We rented and didn’t have car payments. All of sudden, it seemed like a low-risk proposition with high rewards.

  I emailed the school the next morning that Thorin was not returning and would be homeschooled. I went to the school alone to get Thorin’s materials from Mrs. Holt and Ms. Alice. Mrs. Holt handed me his speech folder.

  “Tell Thorin I will miss him, okay?”

  “Of course I will.”

  Ms. Alice handed me his writing and reading folders. She also gave me a plastic bag filled with laminated cards, each with a different word on them.

  “He knows these words. You can build on this. I really wanted it to work.”

  “I know. You did a great job!” I reassured Ms. Alice.

  That evening, my mom came over to our house. She and I stayed up late, talking.

  “Everything happened to bring you to this moment. Don’t worry about anything,” she told me.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, that’s how God works. He brings you to a place you’re supposed to be.”

  Thorin busy at work

  Photo by Thorin

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Funny How Life Happens

  When I explained to Thorin we were homeschooling, he had two questions.

  “I call you Kari?”

  I laughed. I wasn’t expecting that question.

  “If that’s important to you, sure,” I said.

  “Thanks you, Mom.”

  “Who the teacher?” he asked.

  I wasn’t expecting that question either. I didn’t see myself as the teacher but more like a coworker. I had no frame of reference for this new model of our relationship.

  “No one is the teacher?” I said.

  “No! Who the teacher?”

  “We could both be the teacher?”

  “No!”

  “We are both the student,” I offered.

  “No! Who the teacher!” he screamed it.

  I realized public education is a potent force, particularly when removed.

  “You need to learn reading, writing, and math. I have to figure out how to help you by learning how to help you. So we’re both learning.”

  Thorin didn’t have a response.

  “Thorin, I am not sure what I am doing, yet.”

  “No!”

  “I am learning, too. I don’t want to be a teacher. I want us to be a team.”

  Again, Thorin didn’t respond.

  “Can we be a team? Can we try?”

  “Okay, Kari.”

  Luckily, Maine had several resources for homeschooling: Christian-based and secular organizations, religious and secular homeschooling cooperatives, Facebook groups offering classes, fieldtrips, and group playdates. I learned there were homeschoolers and unschoolers—and those in between. I felt excited and overwhelmed.

  We briefly checked out one of the homeschool cooperatives where families join together for classes and social time. Everyone was pleasant and laid back. I needed pleasant and structured. This was a huge leap for us. I wanted a safety net.

  I discovered a nonprofit Christian ministry, HOME, dedicated to supporting homeschools in Maine. They didn’t care if we were religious. They also had an informational workshop for new homeschoolers the next week.

  It took place at a church an hour away. When we arrived, we found a seat in a pew in the back. The presentation was already going, so I started taking n
otes. After the speaker finished, he asked for questions. He answered some, and his wife, who was seated at the reception table in the back of the church, answered others.

  I whispered to Ward, “Why isn’t she up there, too?”

  “He’s the head of the household.”

  “Really?” I wasn’t entirely convinced that was the accurate explanation, but Ward was having fun with the idea. They didn’t care if we were religious, but, apparently, that didn’t stop us from stereotyping them.

  He poked me in the ribs. “Now you’re going to have to start listening to me,” he whispered.

  I snorted, “I don’t think so.”

  “Shhh, woman!”

  After the meeting, Ward and I introduced ourselves to Ed and Kathy, the couple who ran HOME. “I emailed you about visiting for a curriculum consult,” I said.

  “We’d love to have you. Just let us know when,” said Kathy.

  A week later, we visited their bookstore. Kathy asked Thorin questions about what he liked. She asked me how he learned best.

  “I would say Thorin’s a visual and kinesthetic learner.”

  She turned to Thorin. “You like to learn by doing, Thorin?”

  “I do.”

  Kathy’s energy was calm and confident. She suggested Thorin go outside with her grandchildren and Ed. Ward asked if he could go, too.

  “Kathy, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I confessed.

  “That’s okay. This is time for you to learn, too. You’re going to figure it out, and what’s best is that you get to do it with your child.”

  “You always knew this is what you were going to do.”

  “Always.”

  “I didn’t. School was so painful for Thorin.”

  “I hear that a lot.”

  “I really need help.”

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  While everyone outside helped load up firewood, Kathy suggested some math and writing texts. She cautioned me to buy only a few things and told me that I didn’t have to figure it all out now.