2024-10-21 - A Circle of Children by Mary MacCracken
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Several past friends of mine were involved one way or another with
an intentional community outside of Eugene, Oregon named Circle of
Children. Recently i found a book by the same title on sale in a
used book store, and i bought it for $1. It is an autobiographical
book written by a "special ed" teacher and published in 1973. I
enjoyed the quick pace and i also enjoyed reading her stories of
absurd and unusual situations. I like how she was ever evaluating
and on the lookout for "master teachers" to imitate and learn from.
I recognize a certain kind of brilliance and excellence in the
author, and appreciate her bold, brave style.
The Lost Children is a newer version of this book.
Below are excerpts with my notes in square brackets.
Chapter 2
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She had a rare quality of being alive, involved in, excited by, her
world.
It was not that she always had an admirable response or even a proper
one. She did not. She was no saint. But the one thing was, she did
respond! She was alive, she was human, she cared, and she showed us
that she did. There were no pretenses to Helga. What she felt, she
communicated, and because there was no veneer it came through
straight and clear.
Body language is the first language--the way the mother speaks to the
child long before he can understand her words. ... So, too, Helga
spoke to her seriously emotionally disturbed children, many of whom
had rejected verbal communication, and they listened to this body
language. Most of her touching was light and firm and quick. She
used it to communicate affection, support, pride in the child... She
also used another kind of touching. It was really more holding. It
said in effect, "I am here. We will survive."
Never, however, did she use this body language to express her own
anger or irritation. Striking a child may cause him to become
fearful of your touch and this is too valuable a tool to lose, too
high a price to pay for momentary frustration. Instead, Helga swore.
She cursed as I had never heard a woman do before, and it seemed to
harm the children not at all.
Chapter 3
=========
Various authorities different on cause and treatment, but most
writers and educators seemed to agree on the prime characteristics of
the emotionally disturbed child.
First of all, he has a lack of awareness of his own identity. His
concept of his own body image is very small. He seldom speaks
properly; sometimes he may not speak at all. Certainly this was true
at our school; over two thirds of the children had severe language
problems.
The seriously emotionally disturbed child resists change, often
becomes preoccupied with a particular object, and is filled with
excessive anxiety. His emotional relationships with family, peers,
and teachers are severely impaired. He does not care; he is turned
in upon himself. Although he may appear to be retarded because of
these things, still he may often have flashes of brilliance in
contrast to the even performance of the retarded child.
The books said this and I believed it: still, it was a conglomerate
[generalization], whereas to me each child was unique, an individual.
The more i read, the more certain I became of one fact: the screening
and certifying of teachers of emotionally disturbed children should
not depend solely upon graduation and completion of required courses;
the screening should be different for this field. The art of
communication is just that--an art--and there must be a talent before
the craftsmanship can be developed, or you will have only
technicians, not gifted teachers. You can instill a hundred
techniques into a teacher, have her memorize thousands of technical
terms; but if she cannot make contact with the children they are
useless.
# Chapter 4
[Renée's] theory of permissiveness, she explained, was one that was
used with great success in Canada. She felt that all emotional
disturbance stemmed from the same source: the fact that the child had
never been accepted by his parents. So before he could grow up, he
must be allowed to be a baby and do the things e wanted to do.
I was not happy working in that room. All day long the children
destroyed things. "They are getting the hate out of their systems,"
Renée would say; but if they were, they did not seem any happier for
it.
... Joyce, one of the new teachers, had been in a bad automobile
accident... Could I take her class during that [recovery] time at
substitute's salary?
The thing I wanted so badly had happened; the job I had hoped for had
been offered to me.
"I'll be speaking to my family," I said, "and call you this evening."
Again I was surprised how small a thing it seemed to them.
When I told Larry that I had been asked to teach, he barely looked up
from the television set. I lingered uncertainly, feeling in some way
that I should warn him that this would change me. I was not sure
how, but if the days as a volunteer with Helga had influenced me as
much as they had, surely a full-time job would do more. But the
commercial came on and he watched even that with concentration.
Chapter 7
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It was like singing, more like singing than talking, really--like the
songs I used to sing to Elizabeth and Rick when they were small and
ill with measles or chicken pox and would wake whimpering in the
night. I would sit on the end of their beds and sing all the songs I
could remember, the songs my mother had sung to me, camp songs,
college songs, love songs; the content did not matter, nor the fact
that my voice was funny and off-key. It was a way of telling them
that I was there, so that they could relax and sleep again and not
need to keep opening their eyes or cry or ask questions they didn't
want answered. As long as they could hear my voice, there was no need
to check.
Chapter 8
=========
My thoughts turned back to Mrs. O'Connell. Foolish, foolish I was to
be annoyed by her. I must learn more patience. It was a windfall,
really, to have her here. I should take advantage of the fact, use
it, find out more. I needed her as an ally. I could not keep
children from the institution by myself; I needed help. And what
better help than from the parents?
She says it to me, blunt and clear. "That's what he eats. That's all
he eats. That's what he's eaten since he was four." [From age 4
through 8 her son ate only saltines and instant chocolate milk drink.]
Chapter 9
=========
I needed advice. This was a medical problem, and I was out of my
depth. Could a child live on only saltines and chocolate milk? It
seemed unlikely to me, but to get Brian to eat anything else would be
a major problem and I might alienate him altogether.
"We'll leave it up to you, Mary," added the Director. "You can keep
us filled in."
How can you leave it up to me when I know nothing? Nothing.
Frustration and weariness pile upon me. Five experts in the room, at
approximately thirty dollars an hour. We sit around this table, at
this meeting, for two hours--sixty dollars times five means three
hundred dollars for our problems this afternoon--and they decide to
leave it up to me. [I am guessing this happened in the late 1960's,
which would make it about $3,000 in 2024 dollars.]
What we seem to have here is do-it-yourself therapy. All the books
I've studied warn the teachers against playing psychiatrist. Good.
Right. But suppose nobody else will play?
Chapter 11
==========
He was right. I had thought that the trip we had gone on to weeks
before was going to be too difficult. We had walked four miles
around a lake on a narrow path, hiking single file, the six boys
between us--Dan going first, breaking off branches that grew across
the trail, calling to warn us of rocks and holes. I brought up the
rear, carrying discarded sweaters as the day grew warmer and the boys
hotter.
But they had loved it. No one had ever done this kind of thing with
these children before. The Director in her fund-raising speeches
often referred to them as "attic children," meaning that many of the
parents had kept the children secluded at home, never taking them
out, hiding them, unable to cope with them in the outside world.
But Dan took them out, opening the world to them, expecting them to
be able to cope with it. And they did. They adored him and followed
where he led. In the following, their legs and backs got
stronger--they grew. I followed, too--I had met another master
teacher.
Chapter 12
==========
This was one of the few things we disagreed about: the Director. I
felt an increasing respect for this woman who had managed to found
the school and keep it operating for thirteen years. And her dream
was coming closer. ... Dan... disliked the way she said one thing one
day, another the next, agreeing with the psychologist during staff
meetings, disagreeing with him after he left.
To me--she survived. And kept us all surviving with her. The
pressures upon her were incredible. She could not remain rigid or
she would be felled.
Dan was not concerned with some future dream: he was young, he was
interested in now.
Dan's other complaint was that Doris did not visit the classrooms
enough, was not in close enough touch with the children, the
teachers. She was not, he said, aware of what we were doing and
trying to do. Consequently, Dan, like a child himself, felt that if
she didn't care enough to find out, he had no obligation to inform
her.
But again the fact remained: we did survive, and more than that, we
grew.
Chapter 13
==========
I went to the marriage counselor alone. I tried to persuade Larry to
come with me, but he said it was ridiculous because there was nothing
wrong. I thought perhaps it was true--it might be ridiculous, but
for the opposite reason: everything was wrong it could not be put
right.
Chapter 15
==========
Helga taught me first to begin where the child is. Never
assume--always find out. In more academic language this means
diagnose, teach, diagnose, teach. Never go blindly on from lesson
plan to lesson plan, as they seemed to suggest at college. With so
much talk of lesson plans, unit teaching, curriculum planning.
My job, as I saw it, was to teach the children how to live within
homes and communities. If what I taught contributed to that, good;
if not, it was a waste. The children obviously had to learn
self-help and certain social skills. They had to learn how to adapt
their behavior so that it would be accepted to the society in which
they lived.
This aspect of teaching is first and foremost. We must first reach
the children, reach through the rage and fear and hate, before we can
teach.
For me, it was communication: the give-and-take between
people--spoken, written, however it came--and I wanted to give my
children the chance to learn these things. They deserved to be
allowed to learn the techniques of communication.
Chapter 17
==========
I was gradually learning as a teacher why teachers' colleges were
wrong to spend so much time on planning. The most important thing to
learn was to be able to throw the plan away, whatever it was. What
was necessary was to listen, to follow each minute to its peak,
learning as you went. And this is difficult. It takes experience
and self-confidence and courage.
If you have spent much time and energy in preparation, it is natural
to want to cling to your plan, preserve all you have prepared. If I
were ever to teach a college class, I would teach that a lesson plan
should never be more than five lines long. A teacher should know
where she is going, what her goals are, but a five-line plan can be
easily discarded or postponed.
Instead of so much training in plan preparation, we should have
training in reaction, role play with the unexpected. I would also
insist on tremendous amounts of background reading in learning
theories, psychology, all fields of education. The goal would be to
have the information so absorbed and internalized that what was most
pertinent would be used at the right time.
Chapter 18
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It was a lonely, even dangerous thing for one teacher to take
disturbed children in a car or in a crowded place. Explosion was
never far away. But now both Dan and I found that all the children
knew each of us well enough so that one could handle seven while the
other took care of an emergency.
Because we were a private school and because the Director also
believed in our trips, and most of all because the parents were
tremendously enthusiastic, there was little red tape. Things were
kept simple.
Chapter 19
==========
I shiver in the seat beside Dan and turn away from him for a minute,
trying to erase the specter of an institution. The one in our state
is huge and bleak and monstrous. Dan and I had visited it together
one day, and we had come back more determined than ever to work
harder with the children, be more patient with the parents, to find
or create some other alternative.
Chapter 20
==========
Now I realize what a unique position we were in. Where a child
psychiatrist could see a child once, twice, three times a week for an
our at a time in a specialized setting, we saw our children five
hours a day, five days a week. We learned with them, we played with
them, we ate with them. We lacked psychiatric knowledge, but we had
a deep and special knowledge of the child.
Chapter 21
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Not only should there be loving, there must be loving, in our
schools. Tough, strong, responsible loving by people who can accept
other people's weaknesses and ignorance--and their own as well. They
must accept and then attempt and act, taking responsibility for the
consequences the actions bring. Because there is no real loving
without action and responsibility.
The loving to which I refer must be better than what we ordinarily
mean by loving.
author: MacCracken, Mary
LOC: LC4165 .M32
tags: biography,book,non-fiction
title: A Circle of Children
Tags
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biography
book
non-fiction