Character also counted down the street, at Clay’s Mill
I went to a terrific elementary school for grades 3–5; I recently learned that the whole family had lived outside of town in a rental house for an extra year while we waited for a house to come available in the area of town where the best public elementary, middle, and high schools overlapped. After matriculating there, I was tested at a teacher's suggestion and then enrolled in the school's once-per-week Quest program for gifted students. This is all just to say: it was a pretty great primary school.
In fourth grade, the school began an experimental program of having students switch classes: each fourth-grade teacher specialized in one of the four big subjects (science, math, social studies, & language arts), and so we were sort of practicing the kind of class-switching we would do for all subjects once in middle school.
Ms. Dever was the science teacher. Now, I don't remember why, but in that class—and that class alone—we had a special-needs student added to the classroom. We’re going to call her Emily, and I remember that she was obviously older & bigger than the rest of us, slow to understand what we were grasping relatively easily, and always carried around one or more Polly Pocket playsets that she loved.
I don't think this was precipitated by anything bad happening in our classroom, I want to say. I still clearly remember one day, early in the academic year, Ms. Dever starting class very seriously. She explained that/how Emily was different, and then made it very clear how absolutely fucked-up it would be if any of us were to treat her with anything less than the utmost respect. She couldn't help how she was, she's doing her best, she doesn't bother anyone, she's sweet and kind-hearted (in a way, as fourth-graders, we were quickly becoming less so), and if anyone even suggested—if there was even the shadow of a whisper of anyone treating Emily poorly, or even speaking poorly of her in her absence, such wrath would befall our class that the world had never before seen. Did we understand?
Yes, yes we did. Emily attended most science classes with us for the rest of the year. There were no incidents. I hope she got everything out of it that she could. And I wonder where she is, today, these some 33 years later. I hope she’s happy and healthy and that we, in some small way, contributed to that.
thumbnail image: Science Club by Ashley Crane (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
