Teaching

I love teaching. But I don't have a lot of pictures that I feel Ok putting on-line. If the pictures are recent I don't want to use them, and as a special Education teacher, I don't want any that might label a particular child as being part of my Special Education Program. This is from a year that was difficult in many ways. I had two toddlers, and my Dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in April of 1996 and Died on Feb. 1, 1997. Also the schools were overcrowded and the principal had decided that making my classroom open up and also have Mrs. Horn's kindergarten in the room with us, was a great idea. It was loud and rowdy with always some student throwing objects or having explosive temper tantrums, and it was hard to communicate effectively while the room was filled with children needing attention. My principal was frustrated that I took a week off three times during that year to fly to Wyoming to my parents home, and when he decided to combine the rooms, he gave two other teachers substitutes to come into my classroom and sort my supplies to make room for the new room, without telling me until I had started class that day, when he brought them in and told them to do whatever they needed in the cupboards. He also made sure to transfer me to a middle school Severely Emotionally Disturbed Classroom when I came back the following year after 10 years in preschool. And he sent multiple copies of every memo about my desk being disorganized or my lesson plans incomplete or . . . on and on.

Needless to say, I couldn't stand that man, but fortunately I haven't seen him for years. As always, the good part of teaching was the time spent with kids, and in spite of the way we were thrown together, Mrs. Horn and I had many good months with this group of children and our assistants. We did a lot of art and field trips and having themselves immersed in a room of "Regular Children" stressed my kids but also stretched them.

I think I never quite recovered from this year. I took the next year off to stay home with my boys and then my husband took the year after that off. then I quit being a full time teacher and have substituted ever since, although subbing and writing has been wonderful and allowed me to spend a lot of time being Mom, as the boys were growing up, I know financially we would be in a much more secure place if I hadn't stopped teaching full time. I don't regret the choice I made, but I regret making it out of exhaustion and harassment instead of out of confidence and a plan.

April 1994

Because I had gone through menopause at 20, like my mother did when she had me at 24, I knew I couldn't get pregnant, but 10 years after we got Married, we managed to adopt a 14 hour old baby boy. When the adoption agency called to ask if we would be interested in a newborn, we said Yes, but when is the birth Mother due, and they said

Two Weeks Ago.

So then we had our son and it was instant love, and every moment revolved round how lucky and happy we were. And six months flew past, and we were to finalize the adoption in front of a judge but first we needed a physical for the baby to prove that he was thriving in our care. The Dr. asked how I was doing and I mentioned that I was afraid I might have breast cancer because they HURT!!!

"No," he reassured me, "breast cancer usually doesn't hurt. Go pee in a cup."

Then "Think Positive" and 18 days after my son's birthday, his baby brother was born. Look at this picture. I love it because it clearly shows, what we tend to miss. It shows how fast a baby changes between birth and 1 year old.

The day I went to the Dr. (17 days after my oldest turned 1) complaining of back pain, and figuring with 6 weeks to go I might be needing bed rest, the oldest son also had a fever and was demanding being held even more. instead of bed rest, I ended up in an ambulance to a hospital 127 miles away and my 1 year old was at the daycare Grandmas home. I was sick with HELLP syndrome but din't realize how deadly it could be, Even when I was waking up from the emergency C-section all I could think of was my feverish, 1 year old 127 miles away from me and his Daddy. I came out of the general anesthesia sobbing, "I want my Baby!"

Not surprising in a woman who has a newborn in the NICU but when the Dr. and nurses tried to reassure me, "Your baby is doing great. He's on oxygen and in an incubator and in the nursery."

I just screamed, with tears pouring down, "Not That Baby You Idiots! I want MY baby!"

the next day my husband drove the 250 miles round trip to bring back the toddler and I still hadn't been allowed to leave my recovery room to see my newborn. When the 1 year old and my husband came in, the boy took one look at his Mom, and had totally been missing me too. He sobbed "Mommy" and flew across the floor, climbed up the bed, threw his arms around my neck, kissed my cheek

and then, the only time in his life
delivered a punishment for having abandoned him.

He turned his head and bit my shoulder hard enough I still have the scar - then hugged me like he'd never let go

There was however never sibling rivalry, he was a proud, loving helpful big brother from the first moment they met.

1989 was a year when we finally stopped being students and began to live a life where most people would consider us adults.

That is a big deal because we took it slow and fun through college, getting our four year bachelor's degrees in only seven years. We met freshman year at the jr. college in Powell Wyoming when I replied to his ad in the "Hot Line" and moved in together Sophomore year, and graduated with our AA (me) or AS (Greg)

and then decided we loved the school there and didn't know where else we wanted to go yet, so stayed for a third year of fun classes, drama, voice and dance and spelunking and painting and it was great. He traveled to China and the Phillipines with the Northwest Singers. I spent more time with my family and took creative writing classes then took care of him when he had surgery to straighten his femur and make one leg an inch longer, coming nearer to what he could have been if he didn't wreck this motorcycle at 15.

Then we got married and spent a summer in the Black Hills and moved to Ashland, Oregon and took a year off to get in-state tuition at Southern Oregon. Then we went to school while working in pizza and tacos and managed to get into a program in China for Education majors and then when I tried to do my student teaching, my appendix ruptured and delayed graduation so I added a Special Ed endorsement to my English Credential and he stayed in school with me so Yes, finally growing up enough to accept the end of student life was big deal.

I wrote the following letter on Oct. 1, 1989

Dear Friends,
It can't be . . . but it is! Another of those dreadful form letters which seem to arrive just when you were convinced that we had vanished from the face of the earth! The usual excuse for such letters is, "I have so many people to write to, and I have so little time." Why change the routine now?
We thought that graduating from college back in June would be a relief and we would finally have some time to catch up on our lives. Not True. Life since graduation has been filled with some of the best, as well as, some of the worst moments in our lives and we have had lots of everything except time and money.
Right after graduation, when my Mom, Dad, Grandma and brother Lance, as well as Greg's Mom, Aunt Melissa and sister Laura had just left Ashland, when the many job applications which we had sent out paid off, we were hired to teach in Crescent City, California, on the coast just south of Oregon. So we had to move. Luckily we found a very nice, enormous duplex for a very cheap price.

However, no sooner had we signed the rent check than my grandma Grace became seriously ill and was hospitalized. So we went back to Wyoming to visit her one last time before he died on July 8, from cancer. Losing her hurt quite a lot because she was very much a part of our family and a person whom we loved very deeply.
The trip to Wyoming was not all bad. Newcastle was celebrating its centennial and we had a chance to get over there while the Goodes were all in one place,and that is an occurrence which is only slightly rarer than snow in our new hometown.
As soon as we returned to Oregon we began packing our belongings for the move to California. Moving is always a chore with ver little enjoyment attached to it but this time Greg came down with the flu and had to sleep in a borrowed sleeping bag on a concrete floor while I scrubbed and mopped and filled the house with ammonia fumes. It was pretty miserable. We rented a truck for one trip with the piano, couches and the like but we still had to make so many trips back and forth between Ashland and Crescent City that we cold drive that road blindfolded, and it's a narrow winding road to drive.
Once we had all of our bags and boxes stacked into our new living room, we had to interrupt the moving process and just leave everything sitting for two weeks. We had accepted jobs in North East California at a wilderness, Easter Seals Camp for orthopedically impaired children and adults. Camp Hawley is located outside of Quincy, CA through 12 miles of rugged, four-wheel drive only territory. We loaded people, camping gear, and wheelchair into the "Plumas County Jeep Posse' and rode trough some incredibly beautiful country; mountains covered in wildflowers, deep green lakes, towering firs which could almost compete with the redwoods. We arrived at a clearing beside Hawley Lake, hot and dusty councilors unloaded the jeeps and met the camper who would be assigned to them for the next week. The jeeps went back to town and we proceeded to set up camp beneath the stars. It was an exhausting week, made more so because we had begun it already tired. We were both assigned to adults in wheelchairs, we had to help feed them, lift tim on and off the toilet, in and out of bed, dress them, shower them, brush their teeth, wipe their butt and push their wheelchairs over dirty/rocky/rutted trails. We got to know our campers very well. and also the other campers and councilors, and we made some very good friends. Nights around the fire, singing, were great.

On the last night there was a dance and everyone gave a hand-made gift to the person whose name they had drawn on the first night. The jeeps came and took away the adult campers, then returned that evening with younger people, ages eight to eighteen. The second week was harder for Greg and much easier for me because of the campers we were assigned to. Luckily we didn't have our difficult campers on the same week so w could help each other a lot.

We came back to Crescent City, our beautiful town in the redwoods by the shore. We spent a week going back and forth between ashland and CC while Greg performed in a vocal group as they did Mozart's "Requiem"and we finished all the little details involved in leaving a city.
Then we spent the next week in our new home, unpacking boxes 14 hours a day. We were not quite unpacked when our friends from Germany arrived and they were still here the next week when we began our first year teaching jobs. Greg has around five-hundred students for classroom music, band, and chorus. He works at two schools, grades k-8. He has no room of his own except a small storage area. Sometimes his band meets in the library, and sometimes on the gym stage while another class plays floor hockey.
I have nine students, six are classified as severely handicapped and three are normal pre-school kids whom I use as "revers mainstreaming students"/ role models. My kids are three to five years old. I have a huge room with an enclosed, tree lined, trike-path attached. I have three aides who are so good they could teach the class themselves. I have wonderful kids and I am falling in love with tim but they are difficult. Every day I come home physically exhausted. Some are not toilet trained. Some like to bite. I have some who always have to be kept away from the door or they vanish. I have a girl in a wheelchair who only weighs 22 pounds and I have a 50 pound boy who likes to dump people out of wheelchairs. I have a student who says nothing that isn't obscene and I have others who cry each time they hear swear words. I'm starting to understand how combat soldiers become addicted to always living on the edge of a life or death situation. It never gets boring and the days go by fast so I don't have time to get depressed,

Yesterday we got our first "real" paycheck and spent an hour paying the bills that we have had to ignore all summer. so now we haven't got a lot of money to spend on extras but maybe we'll stop being threatened with collection agencies and maybe soon we will be able to actually pay some of them all the way off. That feels good.
Last weekend the whole town got together and picked up over two tons of litter from our beaches. They look great and it went a long way toward making us feel like we belong to this community. With all the students that we have we are recognized in every store or park that we go to. Greg was even told by one of his students, "I saw you kissing on the beach." Such is small town (3,000) life.
Someday I may have more time to write a real letter. Until I do this will have to serve as a reminder that we really do remember our friends and talk about, and miss, and think of you often.

The Christmas Letter

The week we moved out of the college, a lot of other students did too, and many dump things they don't want to take with them. We got a cool electronic typewriter called a "Panasonic Pen Writer" that way and that is what we wrote on until 1996 when we got a computer

Hello,

Merry Christmas 1989

Sitting here, looking outside past a fly crawling on my window, at blue skies, green grass and a small flock of junks searching for food under the watchful gaze of a large robin, well, it doesn't feel much like Christmas. But I turn inside and see our tree, the small part which shows beneath or tinsel and glittering decorations, and the many Christmas cards we have already received, and I know that it is only 16 days away. This is my favorite time of the year inspire of all the headaches and last minute jobs which keep popping up. For too many of my friends, it is the only time of the year that we ever hear from each other. Anything which reminds people to say, "I love you" is good to me.

The weeks before Christmas will always be hectic for a music teacher and Greg has been working like crazy to satisfy all the teacher's desires for Christmas programs. With the largest, super maximum security prison in America opening here nine days ago, and guard families moving to town and flooding the schools with new children, it has been an extra hectic and confusing time for very teacher. Th city population just doubled. We are ready for vacation. However the long vacation of teachers is a myth. the first week without the students will be spent getting the Christmas materials stored away, and planning new materials and lessons ad redecorating rooms so the kids don't come back to Santa Claus bulletin boards, and dried out trees. Greg's choir is coming caroling at my school on the last day before vacation so my kids can finally see him.

Greg is sitting with his new cockatiel perched on his shoulder. It was our birthday gift to Greg in that I agreed he could but the bird with the money that I would have normally spent on him. (Lord if I had known then we would eventually acquire 12 birds and most of them would be so much larger, louder and more destructive than a little cocktail) Then we didn't do anything for Thanksgiving, but we went up to Gold Beach for Greg's birthday and did a lot of our Christmas shopping.

We plan on going back to Wyoming in June for Greg's parent's fortieth anniversary so we are not going for Christmas. My parents and Brett and Lance decided to come out here for Christmas, so we will be spending a lot of time on the beaches. This will be a strange Christmas, but without Grandma, it would be anyway.

A lot has changed for u since last year. Most of it is kind of symbolized in the picture on our card. Graduating and moving to small coastal town and becoming teachers. For once we are even getting out, instead of in, debt. So we are well, and happy and hope that you are too. May this first year on the nineties bring you much luck and laughter and may your life be as wonderful as you are yourselves.

Love

Dixie and Greg

some 1989 pictures