Tower School

I worked as an educational consultant for two years at Tower School. It was on the top floor or the Mental Health Institute and thus the name. I liked being able to say I was an educational consultant. I worked two nights a week for about two hours each.

The truth is I was a tutor along with several others and worked with kids from the children’s unit at the hospital. We worked mostly on reading and had one or two kids for each of the two hours. Many were very needy and all had serious mental health issues. While I was fascinated with many of their stories I was also saddened by their misfortune.

All of them attended a day school at the institute and this program was designed to supplement it. The day program had a principal and this tutor program was lead by a professor from Iowa Wesleyan College. The two guys didn’t see eye to eye and their dislike for each other spilled into the evening program. The guy in charge of the evening program had a Ph. D. and insisted on being called doctor. I didn’t mind doing that but thought he was rather arrogant in insisting on it.

The night principal had a routine he expected everyone to follow. At the end of your session with a child he wanted you to parade the child before him. Then he proceeded to interrogate the kid about what they knew. Most were quite intimidated by the ritual and would beg to avoid it if they could. I sympathized with them and never quite got the point of the activity. I think it was more about authority and control than anything else.

Overtime we did build relationships with the kids we worked with. I remember one boy being so excited that he was getting a home visit over the weekend and would get to see his father. That weekend he went to the basement and got a rifle and went upstairs and killed his father and then went back to the basement and shot himself. We were, of course, shocked!

Another time when I was tutoring a student he was sitting in an old fashioned chair with the writing surface that was part of the arm of the chair. As we were talking he slowly slid out of chair and on to the floor. He started chewing on the arm of the chair and too my amazement was taking large chunks of wood off with each bite.

One of the boys, a teenager, was brilliant! He had an incredible memory and could tell you who won the World Series for whatever year you choose and all the details of each game. He was incredibly bright and from a wealthy family on the west coast. How he ended up in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa I don’t know. He left before the year was over and went back to be with his family. I don’t know why he was there in the first place?

Other than the above and a few other isolated incidents the kids were a lot like any other kids you might encounter.