Changing Schools

After two years at Saunders, a K-6 grade building, the district decided to move to grade level buildings. For some reason they decided Saunders would be a K-2 building and Harlan would be a third and fourth grade building.

To this day I am somewhat mystified as to why they did it. I have never read in research or professional opinion that one is significantly more effective than the other. I was also surprised that if they were going to do it they would put the smaller kids in a building on multi-levels with lots of steps.

Anyway the district moved me and the third grade teacher, Nadine McCoy, to Harlan over the summer. Becky was set to be the building secretary at Harlan, too, but took a job at the Coop over the summer to be Lawrence McCoy’s (Nadine’s husband) confidential secretary. That was probably good because she probably would have killed me if she had to live with me and work with me everyday.

I loved my top floor room at Saunders. The big window on the north looked out over the playground and the south facing windows in the hall outside my room were perfect for starting tomatoes. Every spring the windows were lined with the little milk cartons with plants sprouting out the top.

Harlan was a much newer building on the north side of town. It was over a mile from our house on West Clay. Not a really long walk from home but a lot farther than the three and a half blocks Saunders was.

At Harlan they put me in the classroom at the end of the north Hall and on the left. The new principal was Philip Speidel. The windows along the north side of my room looked out on the street. It certainly wasn’t the pleasing view that I had at Saunders and I lost the advantage of being able to watch my kids on the playground during recess.

Gertrude Miller taught 4th grade across the hall from me and the other 4th grade in the room just south of mine was Mrs. Morrison. She passed away that year. It was a very sad and sobering thing for the whole building.

Nadine was teaching 3rd grade along with a new teacher to our district, Marilyn Strohman. I can’t now recall who the other third grade teacher was. There was also a kindergarten in the building.

You couldn’t see the playground from the windows of my room but could from the teacher’s lounge down the hall. Teachers would gather there during their breaks and watch their kids outside the window even though there was plenty of supervision out there. You could learn a lot by watching your kids in that environment.

One warm spring day I saw a group of fourth grade boys in a tight circle near the far edge of the playground. I could tell they were looking at something but couldn’t tell what. I walked out of the building and in their direction but tried to avoid having them realizing I was headed toward them. I got within twenty yards before they spotted me and panicked. I zero in on the kids who had the goods and soon had them all. One boy had quite a collection of material.

It included two adult magazines, a package of condoms, and three Polaroid photographs of a naked woman in a lawn chair. I took the bundle into the teachers lounge and told the other teachers what it included. They were on me in seconds and took it all away from me as if I was one of the students. Eventually, it all got handed over to the principal who, in turn, met with the boy’s mother and handed it all over to her.

The stories of Harlan are many and I will tell some more another time.