Being an ‘emergency worker’ I tend to see a few more situations of crisis than some with classroom assignments, crises a teacher is having usually. But there are times when the crisis is one students have, and sometimes one for the school.

At a large urban high school a few years ago one of the students coming home from  a James Bond movie one Friday night with his two friends, had been hit by a drunk driver. The driver was killed, one passenger was seriously injured and one walked away nearly unscathed physically.  It had been a cold night, their little car apparently was very much a beater as kids can only afford and their lives were full of optimism.  I was called to teach at the school shortly after the event and the French class I was subbing in had many students who knew the victims well.  They come in slowly, some late, many red eyed, girls hugging, boys were very quiet, one or two absent. One as I recall asked to leave to go to the washroom and cry.

We were to read a play and I let them choose roles to read aloud. I have to admit a few who stepped up to volunteer to read major roles seemed to so  mainly to ‘get us through this’. I notice we have to get through 40 pages this class and one says “We can do that”.

It is a play of manners, with odd characters and some jokes.  As each’s turn comes up to read there are normal things like some student  not noticing it is their turn, gasping at a page turn to see how long their particular speech has to be, and then a kind of camaraderies develops. Once in a while the humor of the play strikes someone actually funny and tiny tiny ripples of laughter erupt, over little things, sexual overtones, someone misreading a line. There is healing here.  

I am in a high school class of recent immigrants .They are fro Russia, China, Taiwan, Africa, France and Poland and I have never in my life seen kids so eager to learn. We talk about their lives and they reveal they are chefs, fast food servers, and I suspect this is to make ends meet.  They write compositions which I read quietly as they move to the next assignment.   They have actually done the work. They actually have done every single question and want so much to get it right.  Their halting English is endearing and it seems wrong to even correct it for grammar. The  heart is so keen. “I like very much to speak with my firend. I ride horses at the weekend. I’ve got a two cat and one dog. I do the collect of the figurine of Lord of the Rings. I have a lot of book of comics. I am born in French. I do bicycle near my house.  I feel very protective of them.  For those who speak English easily and take so for granted they leg up they have for jobs, this would be an eye opener.

A grade 8 girl is upset and it seems appropriate to take her aside and give her some privacy. In the hall she reveals that her parents aren’t getting along and she cries.  I hug her, it’s not really allowed to hug her but sometimes that is the best message I can give.

It is pizza lunch day and all the little kids have brought their $2 and are crazy – excited to get their pre-ordered slice of cheese or pepperoni pizza, with a bag of chips and juice. It is an efficient handout system and obviously some great contract for a  local pizza parlor but I notice one grade 2 boy is not taking part. He has no money. Surely this humiliation should never ever happen and I offer to the lady doling out pizzas to pay for one for him. She says no, that’s fine, she has an extra.

At some of the schools wealth is glaring – the high end backpacks, the fancy toys, cellphones, gameboys and gadgets.  But because of the way school districts are drawn up and bussing, sometimes the poor are also at the same school and I approve of them mixing. The problem is that poverty has its own mark. It’s subtle of course.  The lunch that only has a piece of buttered bread in it. The mother who on the day she was to bring snacks for the class brought a few oranges cut up, and that’s all.  The little kid in the gym whose Tshirt is faded and very light, on a cold day.  One day I was subbing in a lower income suburb and as I helped the kindergarten kids put on their winter coats for the trek home, I noticed one girl’s jacket was actually just summer weight and about three sizes too large. She was aware of this difference though and whispered to me” We’re poor”

At another school, pre-Christmas, every class is asked to bring food for the food drive to help the poor. At some schools these campaigns generate lots of cans of food and at this little grade 4 classroom there are contributions too. However they are packages of noodles, boxes of Kraft Dinner, tins of beans, tuna,  tiny gifts of very inexpensive food and I realize the irony. These little kids are the poor, but they too want to help out someone.

At one school as I waited for the parents to come pick up the kids, one little girl did not want to go home. I was concerned why and it was not because she had loved the class experience so much. Her mother was very slow to arrive at the door also and when she did come, the mother’s dyed blond tousled hair was unkempt and the mother seemed agitated.  She urged the girl to hurry up because “My boyfriend’s waiting and we don’t want to get him mad”

Some kids are dealing with health problems that nobody in a fair world would have to face. I remember one girl who for the first hour of my time there seemed to be hiding her hand. Only towards the end of the day as she felt more comfortable with me did she let the hand show – it was congenitally deformed and missing all fingers.

One boy I was very inspired by had vestiges of fingers on one hand but none on the other and he carried with him a laptop to take part in lessons. He had a wicked sense of humor and quipped in fake panic “I can’t find the ‘any” key!”.  At one point after he got to feel more comfortable with me, he took part in a skit the kids were doing about a Shakespearean play and he took off one of his prosthetic legs and hopped around without it. Laughing.  He felt protected in this space and the kids were actually great because they did him the service of treating him like normal.

I don’t often teach in high needs classrooms or special settings but I have done. The kids who are low functioning, who not engage in eye contact, who do repetitive actions or can’t be sat down, the ones lying in cots who do not engage much in the world and who are on feeding tubes I have not had special training to help. But at one such school I was fascinated to hear from a principal that on some days one of the nearly nonverbal students suddenly would engage in conversation at near adult level and other days he seemed not only unresponsive but unable to respond.  At another school I noticed the handibus came at the end of the day to pick up all these kids in their wheelchairs but not quite all. One parent came to pick up and take home her son in his wheelchair and she obviously had  made his care her top priority.

I met some amazing parents for these kids. One woman disagreed that her child was resigned to be low functioning and she was doing intense patterning of physical actions to get the child’s body used to them and she felt she was having great success.  I saw selflessness writ large and deep love.

There are kids who touch your life forever. the little girl who was gaining weight very fast in grade 7, who had to take some time off school for her chemo and who told me in private, ‘It’s not so bad”. She passed away about a year later.

The tall boy who in grade 7 hoped to be a doctor, shared his dream with me, and, I read in the paper, who died in a house fire two years later.

One little girl was crying because someone stole her locket. I was kind of irritated that parents would give kids anything really valuable to wear at school and a little unhappy that so often kids come to me with their stories of lost mittens, pencils, anyway. And yet I had my come-uppance. I asked what color the locket was. It was pink. I asked the kids to all look for it, which they did. One found it. I asked her about it and she told me’ It’s from my mother. She’s dead and sometimes when I’m sad I like to rub it”

There are students in the regular class who are not as mobile as others, a little grade 3 boy who walks dragging his legs, and pushing a walker, who takes part in phys ed nonetheless. When I subbed his class I tried to figure a way to let him race with the others by giving him a bit of a head start and his aide thanked me.  One girl I did not teach but saw in the school had two prosthetic legs and in grade 8, on ‘shorts day’ she too was wearing shorts. I loved it, the defiance of it, the ‘I’m dealing with it. You deal with it’ attitude.

Some kids’ are in the class whose background precedes them, with indications in the notes that I am to notice them in particular to be aware of disruptions they may cause. Some in the senior high have criminal records. Some have just returned from being suspended for a few days. Some are just to not sit together and others are to not be part of the group and to remain at their desks when the rest have ‘carpet time’ and discussion. It is not for me to know the background of these kids and I have to respect the judgment of the teacher that these alerts are necessary. But I have found sometimes that a new teacher though for some kids a chance to break out and wreak havoc, is for others, a chance to be a new person, to present a new and better self.  I have often found that the rebellious child I was warned about was no trouble at all. On the other hand, sometimes he or she turned out to be exactly as advertised. or moreso.

What I’ve noticed is that when a student has a chronic or congenital problem in the elementary classroom, that child is treated in a beautiful way like family. The kids doing a task to hold hands hold hands with the child whose hand is deformed without even cringing. The kids who know the boy with the enlarged head only has tunnel vision are often very nurturing to make sure things are printed clearly for him.  One day I was subbing in a class where one of the children was very much shorter than the others, and likely a ‘little person’ by heredity. I had called various students up to the blackboard to answer questions and as it turned out, when his turn came the question was too high up for him. One girl rushed over to get a special step and place it under his feet, no bidding given for her to do so and no words. said.

Other times I not alerted.  One time I am in a grade two class and the kids are milling about handing in documents or just standing there. I ask them all to go to their desks and all do but one. A pretty little girl with long hair stands rigid, staring at the wall, and refuses to budge, not by words, not by defiance, but just by not budging. She seems to not be connecting with reality and I am wondering if she has been assessed for autism.  She pushes hard against my body nonstop and it is an angry push but she is still not taking part in any eye contact or conversation.  I am not sure if this is a game, if she is pretending, or if this is a genuine problem but I call the office for someone to come and help her.  The girl starts writing on the teacher’s desk

At one school I see the note that one of the little grade two girls tends to use the washroom a lot. Sure enough for much of the day she excuses herself briefly and returns. When her dad comes to pick her up I mention casually if she has seen a doctor lately and he says she has not seen a doctor in about two  years. I mention, trying to in no way sound alarmist or butting in that it might be good to check out why she uses the washroom so much. I mention that it might be a treatable bladder infection or maybe even diabetes that could be treated. I feel awful for mentioning this and yet somehow it seems like I should.

I have to remember though I am not an expert. I notice one grade ten student insists on sitting very very close to the white board to read the messages. It is the first week of September and I leave back a note in the margin of my notes to the teacher to suggest that maybe his eyes should be checked.  Later in the afternoon I notice the bios of the students and the boy is clinically blind.

I am in a class were one of the students has just informed me this is his last day, and that he is moving tonight to Ontario.  I want to make sure his last day is  a happy one and as in other schools when this has happened, I try to make sure the kids all sign a card for him and wish him well But he is upset to be leaving and it’s hard to make the mood light.  He tells me he was in a custody dispute and he came here four months ago to try lviign with his step mom. he says he can’t stand it here, that he threw his suitcases at her and now he’s going back home.

  One of the students is a native girl. I am to administer a grade 7 test and she sits there, coat on, the entire time not even opening the test booklet.  I go over to her and suggest she at least try. She asks “Why?”

I am very concerned at one school when we are discussing holiday plans and one overweight girl the kids seem to be ostracizing says’ I’m going to get hit by a car”

One time a teenage girl asks to use the phone to call  home. This is a privilege not permitted except in emergency so I ask it if it is one. She says sort of so I let her call. I notice and can’t help overhearing that she is talking to her mother, asking if the mother’s boyfriend is still there  and if she should come home or if she should meet her mother at the mall.

One time the kids are asked in grade two to write a sentence or two about what they have been learning. They are to complete the sentence “I am learning to…”. One girl all morning has been quite disruptive and I was also warned about her as a known quantity prone to not obeying. I read what her paper says, and feel a heart crying out. She has written, kind of hopelessly’ I am learning to be bad”.

These kids are facing a world I did not. I notice in a few essays the senior high kids say that pressure at this school to take drugs is very intense.  One student’s file is marked, in grade 11, as having come out of rehab. I notice he is a very quiet kid, and he works very hard. He is climbing back from a deep hole, very young, and determined to climb out.

I am called to a ‘street school ‘for kids who drop in for a few hours of distance learning. They are a transient group, usually girls, often very attractive girls, and there is an onsite daycare for their babies.  I am told by one teacher that one of the girls dropped out because she found she could make a lot of money fast as an exotic dancer.  The regular teacher takes a lot of phone calls, liaising with high school credit equivalent tests and paving the way for these kids to still get their credentials despite hurdles.  But this is a no-nonsense teacher too, very savvy about the world. She is saying on the line to one student who apparently says she’s been trying to find work and just can’t. “This is Calgary. If you’ve really been looking for a job here tow day and you haven’t found one, you’re not trying”

I am not sure what parents are thinking and yet they must know what’s best. There is the grade 9 girl with spiked hair at the top, shaved at the sides, dyed bright red, whose dad comes in to get her and just says’ Hi. How’s it going?” I kind of admire the casualness. My mother said that it is important to be casual with kids and the more rebellious they get, the calmer you should get.

Yet when I see a little grade five girl with a tight tight shirt, way too short, or a grade six girl with a low cut top, earrings and eye makeup, I feel like protecting these kids from a route that may not turn out at all well.  I heard a police office presentation once that impressed me a lot and I think it did too the several hundred kids in grade 7-9. The officer was simply saying to the girls there that he knew it sounded old-fashioned but that they should tone down their sexy dressing because they were more than that and if guys saw first that, that was all the guys would see in them.  Yet sometimes you see girls in the high school who are experimenting with an image and in the low academic classes, the experimenting is often intense, even desperate.

I am in another street school where the kids have come back to catch up on schooling having dropped out. One girl with short cropped hair arrives late and I learn she cut her hair dramatically last weekend it used to be lovely and long. She told the teacher she had done something she was very ashamed of. These kids are dangling on a precipice.

Some of these kids’ problems are just more extreme versions of normal. It is the second week of September and one grade one girl is wearing a bracelet with two heart on it. She tells me it is to help her when she is missing her mother and little brother back at home. He is two.  she nearly tears up talking about them and I see separation anxiety, and it’s very touching. In fact I am more concerned about kids who have been away from their parents often since they were babies.  I like to see kids who have a firm grounding in feeling attached to someone.  One time a little girl in grade two has just moved to town from two provinces away and she is homesick. Her dad got a promotion and the family has relocated but all her friends, her old school, all the routines and things she set up have gone and she is so sad. I take aside another little girl to sit with her and help her with the math worksheet and to be her friend.  The little helper girl succeeds.

This school has a little garden in it, right next to the playground swings and climbers. It has bushes, a few trees and immaculate landscaping, and mainly a little plaque dedicated to a little boy who apparently attended this school and died very young.

I am in a grade 7 class and we are to watch and then discuss a movie. One boy is very chatty, disruptive and inappropriate, making allusions to spanking sex during the movie and using every possible opportunity to refer to any words as double meaning about sex.  I find out he has no mother at home, that his dad leaves for work at five and the child is not supervised for most of the nonschool day.  He is loud and obnoxious but I realize he is calling for an attention he is not getting.

I get to the school at 7 Am for an 8 Am start. I am so early the office is not even open but there is a student playing basketball alone in the school courtyard.  He is shooting hoops and yet why is he not at home sleeping?  I realize he, like some kids around the city, is dropped off very early while the parent heads to work.

 I am in a grade two class and as the kids come in at 8:30 one tells me his news. His little sister’s heart is not working well because she has a kidney infection and he has been in hospital five days.

Other times, the crisis is not from home but possibly also at the school. I am called by a very hoarse voice to come sub for her and when I get to the scholl I fiind I am the third sub in a row. The teacher’s absence has become prolonged because the pneumonia is not getting better as hoped.  The kids look at me verytoubled, scared even in grade 1-2 that something very serious is wrong.  I try to be reassuring but what they need at the very least is the same sub for the next few days.

Sometimes the classroom is very noisy and often in grade 8 in particular, it is hard for anyone to get work done and not ‘cool’ to try. Yet there are those kids who are trying, who try to hear the assignment, who come up to see if they are doing it right, who buch the social pressure and are survivors.  I become very upset at kids who  not only don’t do their own work but who in essence robs others of chances to succeed by the time they waste.  I’ve even made the case to kids that way.

I am taking attendance and the kids inform me that the other day one student in another class broke the collarbone of a boy in this class and that is why the one boy is away. I suggest we make a get well card for the one in hospital and we let it be seen by the other class. Even the perpetrator signs it.

Sometimes there is no answer.  One time a high school student told me there was a girl crying in the washroom and she didn’t know what to do. I went to the student washroom cubicles, did hear the girl crying and said “I’m a teacher. Are you OK? Can I help?” She said she was OK.  I mean what else would she say really but I was not sure what I could do.

Sometimes the revelation is about background. If this child is having trouble reading and writing, there may be a reason.  One time recently I noticed on the teacher’s desk a note from the parent of the grade 3 child. It read ‘He told both my wife and myself that he did it once and stoped. He clames the other boy kept doing it and he got in trouble. Could you check out his story?”  Another note reads “I tak to her and shs hundrestand she is doing bad job and she give me the promise she is not do anymore”.

Another time a very smart student was sitting very quietly and simply not taking part in the lesson. He looked pale, seriously depressed and seemed to have given up on lessons only the day before he had been doing. I was aware his family was going through a difficult marital situation and I phoned the school counselor.  When little kids are said you can cheer them but when bigger kids are sad, it can be a life-threatening crisis.  She told  me to keep him there even if the bell went and that she’d come right away. She did. I have always felt she saved his life.

The other day one of the grade  5 boys, after gym class, told me he was very tired and had a stomach ache. He said he had eaten twenty desserts the day before. I asked why he had eaten twenty desserts and he said he had been at a funeral. “Whose?”  I asked. His grandpa’s.  It is odd to think how things affect a child. There he was telling me in this very circuitous way that there had been a death in the family. And yet it was hard to know if he was saying he was upset, or not.

Many teachers have magazines around the room for kids to use for cutouts, projects, crafts or just to read if their work is done. One teacher told me that girls in low-income districts often leaf through the house beautiful type magazines in grades 7 -9, dreaming of their ideal home but that once they are in grade 10 and 11 they no longer do. Many have given up on the dream.

Some of these kids are on medication, full time. Some are already balancing insulin doses and blood sugar levels. Some take longterm medicine for ADHD and one even entered the room saying ‘Sorry if I’m hyper today. I forgot to take my Ritalin”. I was surprised and sad to discover in one discussion we were in a grade 9 class tha the girl in front of me and her brother in grade 8 both had cystic fibrosis and slept every night in an oxygen tent.

One of my students had purply fingers and apparently a very challenged circulatory system and heart defects. I mean how do these little kids manage such big problems ?

And yet in them there is often great joy, great courage, great determination.  I sometimes think that the ones with medical challenges are wise very young, wise about life.

Were I ever tempted to think I knew more about life than the kids in front of me, these instances keep me humble.