I had the honor and privilege of attending the funeral service of a former colleague yesterday, in the quaint chapel of a funeral home in Vienna, Virginia. Like most services I have attended over my lifetime, the moments were surreal and devastating, even as I am always comforted when provided the opportunity to hear stories and see photos from a person’s life, which allows me to understand more about who they were beyond my immediate experiences.
Yet, grief is a terrible thing. Managing grief in a public way, even more so, especially for family members. I wish I didn’t know so much about that.
“Grief is the price we pay for love,” a quote attributed to Queen Elizabeth in the aftermath of 9/11, adapted from a passage written by Dr Colin Murray Parkes.
I looked around at the group of teachers and retired teachers from the little elementary school where I am still working, after changing careers in 2015, and thought about my journey in education since that time and the people who helped me along the way. Most of them were sitting right there; some I haven’t seen in years.
The retired teacher we were there to remember and honor stands out like no other in my memories, of the support I received through the difficulties and challenges I faced in the first three years on the job as a new teacher of children with disabilities.
Julie.
I clearly remember the day, very late in the 2015-2016 school year, when I was unexpectedly offered a teaching position on the 6th grade team by the principal I still work for to this day.
The road to a provisional license in a field with critical staffing shortages was not too difficult, however the road to full licensure would take a considerable amount of time, energy, dedication and effort.
I told the principal I had to think about it. I wasn’t completely sure I was prepared to go back to school in my late 40’s, and learn a new job on top of that.
I recall approaching the 6th grade team of seasoned veterans in education, to obtain their thoughts on moving from assistant to teacher on a provisional license, and remaining part of their team. That team had been together for over a decade at that point, so I trusted they wanted some input in who might be joining them.
If I was going to take this on, I knew in advance I would need their full support.
I received it right then and there, in a little work room/lunch room in the lower level of the building, with six simple words. Don’t worry. We will help you.
Fast forward to the fall of the 2016-2017 school year. There were so many moving parts and components to the new position, I actually drew a basketball net on my whiteboard with little circle magnets so I could move the magnets to the floor as needed, to represent “dropped balls” on the job, in life.
It was the only way I could think of to handle the pressures of the new job with humor.
My in-person graduate school classes started in September of 2016 and took place on Thursday evenings at Fairfax High School.
On the very first Thursday, I recall a minor panic about mid-way through the school day, in realizing I had to drive from my school across town to Fairfax High School, at rush hour in Northern Virginia, and I had to be there by 4:30.
I would have exactly 40 minutes to do it, or I would be late. I will never make it.
I’m going to get lost in a time before GPS and smart phones, like the virtual map I pulled up with two clicks, on the way to the service yesterday when I was all “turned around” in Vienna and couldn’t find Maple Street.
ALL the magnets are going to have to move to the floor of the whiteboard and it’s not even the middle of September.
Julie noticed my affect around lunch time that day.
Are you okay? No! I’m not okay! I don’t remember how to get to Fairfax High School, even though I grew up in Fairfax County since 1984. Everything looks different now. I’ll never make it.
Don’t worry, I will help you.
Julie started to provide me with verbal directions to take the back roads and must have realized from the expression on my face, I was never going to remember a right turn here and a left turn there, on little neighborhood streets through Vienna, with unusual names.
After a minute or so, and with her perfect sense of humor and maybe a slight hint of sarcasm Julie asked: “Do I need to draw you a map? Fine, I’ll draw you a map.”
She dropped everything, picked up a piece of blank paper and a blue felt tip pen, and drew me a detailed map, complete with little R’s for right and little L’s for left. I remember taking the map from her, and thinking even in that very moment: I am going to save this map and pull it out on the day I graduate, if I make it that far.
I made it to my first class on time.
On the day of graduation on May 18, 2019, long after Julie’s retirement from teaching, I pulled the map out of the glove box on the way to the ceremony, and thought, I need to tell Julie I still have this map the next time I see her.
This morning, in reflecting on the events of yesterday and remembering a former colleague, I went out to the glove box of the beat-up old car, now driven by my teenager, to see if the map was still there.
Sure enough.
She even wrote “up hill” for the treacherous drive from Rt. 50 up to the high school. If you’ve ever been there, you know the one.
As the 2016-2017 school year got underway and I settled into the new routines, I ran into a near-immediate roadblock as I realized how very little I remembered about upper elementary school math.
How am I supposed to teach this curriculum to children with learning disabilities, when I barely know it myself. I spent nearly half the year as a “co-teacher” in Julie’s math classroom, doing little more than trying to learn the math myself. She was remarkably patient about it. I’m not sure I would have been so patient in her position.
She broke it down so well for her students (and for me by default) it all came flooding back to me by December. Decimals, fractions, order of operations, polygons, circles.
Ahh.. wait, I remember this now. Mostly. I need to brush up on circles. I can’t remember the difference between radius and diameter. Something about Cherry and Apple pies. Circumference. Area. Pi.
By the second semester of the year, we both realized there were two students in the 6th grade classroom who were considerably below grade level and having significant difficulty in the larger classroom environment. My job (in theory) as a special educator, was to figure out an intervention for these students and then make it happen.
I met with Julie and we talked about a different plan. She was especially disheartened by one particular student who had become so demoralized due to a significant deficit in basic foundational math skills, the child had started quietly sobbing through the entire class. We have to DO something, she told me.
We decided to call IEP meetings and propose to place these kids to a small math group. Under the direct guidance of a seasoned and experienced math teacher, I was going to teach them the same curriculum as everyone else in a very small group, and a slower pace.
The idea was beyond daunting to me, but just as Julie had stated before, in encouraging me to take the position in the first place, she said: “don’t worry, I will help you.”
From that moment on, she was always available if I needed something but for the most part she just trusted me to do the job.
I remember one day in early May, in the heat of the pressure of the annual Virginia Standard of Learning Assessments, during an unusually hectic transition between recess and the afternoon math classes, she came running over to my little resource room with an unusual directive.
“CIRCLES!”, she yelled. “You have to teach them about circles this week! Use those magnets if you have to!” pointing to my whiteboard, which still had a few hovering on their way to the net, instead of the floor. The memory is so funny to me now.
I wrote the following over the past week, and will finish this blog post by writing it again:
I am forever thankful for the opportunity I was given to work directly with Julie and the 6th grade team for my first three years in education.
Rest in peace to a beautiful soul, and to all those who loved Julie and were touched by her life, may the memories bring you comfort and peace.