Love Is a Classroom

Love Is A Classroom

Love Is A Classroom

Andrew D. L. Goff

Copyright © 2023 Andrew D. L. Goff

All rights reserved.

Love Is A Classroom

ISBN

979-8-88926-735-5 Paperback

979-8-88926-734-8 Ebook

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. Vista Elementary School

Chapter 2. The Clipboard

Chapter 3. Cálmate Before the Storm

Chapter 4. La Tormenta

Chapter 5. The Team

Chapter 6. Jovan

Chapter 7. Hand Over Hand

Chapter 8. Support

Chapter 9. Tangled and Untangled

Chapter 10. Something More

Chapter 11. Mask of Professionalism

Chapter 12. Work Does Not Stay at Work

Chapter 13. The Transition

Chapter 14. Prioritizing

Chapter 15. Grow What Works

Chapter 16. Redefining Curriculum

Chapter 17. Love

Chapter 18. A New School Year

Chapter 19. Too Precious to Hide

Acknowledgments

Appendix

For Jovan, heroes are remembered but legends never die.

Introduction

There is a reason you’ve never read a book about a teacher working with young children who have disabilities. It’s not because there is a lack of inspiring stories. The emotions, relationships, and program politics I share in Love Is a Classroom are universal for teachers who work with children who have disabilities. The frustrations, fears, sorrow, and joy; the clouded boundaries between families and teachers; the restless nights stewing over endless what-ifs; and the often-overlooked life lessons are part of the daily routine for early childhood educators. Teachers working with young children have powerful anecdotes and stories, but they never extend to a book. Books are linear. Working with children who have disabilities is complicated with nuances and contradictions.

I have written and told many short stories about experiences from my twelve years working with children who had, or were at risk of, disabilities. The stories typically have one dilemma and one lesson that can easily be shared in a few pages or a ten-minute talk. Love Is a Classroom has dozens of dilemmas and even more lessons. It would have been much easier on my health and well-being to share the messages with more brevity, but that would be a disservice to anyone who values the inclusion of children experiencing disabilities. With a heavy heart, I was able to write Love Is a Classroom, which is about the journey that changed the trajectory of my life. Perhaps it will encourage you to take actions that change the trajectory of your life too.

The lessons in Love Is a Classroom are based on events that occurred in 2012 and 2013. The language, policies, and research related to working with children with disabilities have evolved since that time and will continue to evolve. In sharing this story, my purpose is not to suggest the lessons I learned at that time are the absolute truth for including children with disabilities at this moment in history. On the contrary, I want you to use this story as a lens for possibilities and dreams for the future.

For any teacher or future teacher who reads this book, my intention is for you to analyze your role in creating inclusive environments for children. What can you do to make your classroom more inclusive? I would like administrators to recognize the influence leadership has on high-quality, meaningful inclusion. How can you leverage your leadership strengths to benefit children with disabilities and their families? Parents and loved ones of children who have disabilities, I want you to see yourself in this story. Think about the important partnerships you have. What relationships in the classroom need to be strengthened? I want you to raise everyone’s expectations for the inclusion of the child you love. For every other reader of Love Is a Classroom, this book is a call to advocate for more meaningful, inclusive experiences for children with and without disabilities in society. Inclusion cannot be restricted to educational settings.

* * *

My wife Natalie, twenty-month-old daughter Citlali, dog Kobi, and I moved from Tucson, AZ, to a suburb west of Denver in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains two months before the start of the school year. We were sad to say goodbye to our friends, but everything else looked much better in the rearview mirror. The only thing we could anticipate in Denver was our apartment, which was less than half the size of the house we were moving out of, and my job in Metro Denver Unified School District. Anxious to get out of Tucson, I accepted a job as an early childhood special education teacher in an inclusive preschool classroom where there was a morning session and an afternoon session. Each class was intended to have sixteen children, six of them with disabilities and ten without disabilities. Similar ratios are common in public preschool classrooms across the country. You will learn more about the children and the classroom in the story. Needless to say, my prior six years of teaching in similar classes provided me with much more confidence than I deserved.

Two weeks before the school year started, I received one day of training on the curriculum assigned to the classroom, another day on the mechanics of early childhood education in the school district, and one day on the computer programs used for special education. No follow-up training or coaching was provided. I did not realize it would be an issue until it was too late. You will learn more about my challenges and the impacts on the children in Love Is a Classroom. But one student’s story, in particular, changed the trajectory of my career and teaching philosophies.

Jovan joined our classroom in November 2012. But concerns about his development began months earlier. On January 5, 2012, sitting at Swedish Hospital in Denver, Chenyl shared the following post on Facebook:

Everyone. Please pray for my baby. He had a seizure today. As of now, he is doing ok. Thanks, everyone! (Allen 2012).

This was the first time she publicly revealed symptoms that would later be attributed to his disease. Several other events unfolded between then and the first week in November, when he joined our class. You will become more familiar with those and much more as you read the book. You need to understand the context of the classroom already in motion before Jovan enrolled and how everything changed after he enrolled.

Before you begin the first chapter, there is one last thing I want you to know about me. My perspective since beginning my years teaching in Tucson was that children are only as disabled as their environment allows. Children develop at different rates. If they are not achieving widely expected milestones, they may be limited in their ability to participate in certain contexts. To what extent depends on the conditions in the environment and the barriers they create or minimize. Going into the 2012–2013 school year, I saw formal preschool classroom curricula assigned by district officials unfamiliar with special education as creating more barriers than solutions for children experiencing delays or disabilities. What I did not recognize was that the policies governing special education have just as much culpability. In this book, you will discover that the concerns incurred by curricula and special education can be mitigated by creating a classroom curriculum guided by love.

Chapter 1

Vista Elementary School

Vista Elementary School spoke to both the distant and contemporary narrative of American progress in public education. The school’s curb appeal shared elements of thousands of other schools across the United States. Every feature of Vista was true to an American post-war architecture school building. The structure exemplified 1950s democracy, patriotism, and the institution of civic education. Notable was the adjoined park with a quintessential Colorado tapestry of soaring maples and pines shading a well-manicured late summer lawn, which was a pleasant aberration from the generic surroundings. My first day on the job, I discovered the interior of the school resembled the park more than the building.

Awaiting me at the entrance of Vista on that mid-August morning in 2012 was a repurposed sheet of printer paper taped to a yardstick. Written in faded black magic marker ink was an arrow directing me to the library. I approached the front office door prepared to wave. Three women fraternized behind a waist-high wood counter. One swept her eyes in my direction. Good morning! I sang with a grin tampered by my effort to control the adrenaline stirring my insides.

Good morning, she replied with a soft soothing timbre. I was struck by the vibrance of her green eyes. The other ladies echoed her. The woman’s voice sounded familiar.

My name is Andrew. I paused for two breaths, waiting for one of the three women to associate the bald, bearded man in front of them with their mental list of new men to the school staff. I knew I was possibly the only one. I’m the new early childhood special education teacher.

Andrew, stated the woman who initially greeted me. The shy, tenderness of her words blunted my fear of being an outsider. Welcome to Vista. I’m Grace. Without hesitation, my thoughts mapped the numerous emails and phone calls Grace and I had in preparation for that morning. Her demeanor was as warm in person as it was over the phone.

It’s nice to finally meet you, I replied, certainly more dismissive than I intended. It was the nerves. That way? I asked, pointing in the direction of the faded black arrow.

Everyone is in the library. Go down the hall and take the stairs up. The library is right there.

Thank you, I replied as I turned and headed to my destination.

* * *

Vista’s hallways were quaint in a bureaucratic way. Taupe linoleum tiles covered the floors. Overhead fluorescent lights embedded in white cork ceiling tiles lit the way. Brown bricks of various shades lined the walls. Walking forward, my surroundings created an aura reminiscent of my experiences growing up in public schools. Advancing, the energy changed. I arrived on the second floor. In front of me was the library. Anticipatory anxiety rushed like snow melting down the Rockies. I walked in. A stack of blue papers and a small black plastic basket with aged crayons caught my attention. Next to the crayons was a folded piece of yellow paper. I could see something written on the side but could not make it out. Scanning the room, I noticed a similar piece of paper that said ECE, the acronym for early childhood education, and another at the neighboring table stating, Resource Support. Where do I belong? After asking around, I determined ECE was my place for the time being.

Like a new kid in class, I sat in silence, afraid to prematurely reveal my weaknesses. I surveyed the space. I recognized patterns in the social culture of the teachers. Most of the teachers were young with a hunger to save the world. Others appeared hungry for retirement. Everyone carried themselves with an agnostic spiritual friendliness. Teachers shared humor and seemed to be more to each other than soundboards for breakroom fodder. Unlike most of the structural aspects of Vista I observed, the school staff was teeming with life, educators appeared to cover a vast continuum of maturity, and they reflected stereotypes of the Colorado of which I was gradually becoming familiar. They came across as valued for being who they were as people and professionals.

Kris, the principal, stood before the staff ready to speak. She had long dark hair pulled back with administrative style. She smiled with her eyes as much as her cheeks and lips. Kris wore a red pants suit and black plastic glasses. Her attire made her an unmistakable member of the public education upper ranks of influence. She had an energy that told me she was driven by her ability to make every individual in the room feel genuinely loved. Her liveliness assuaged fear and ignited optimism. Kris spoke. It’s so nice to see all of you this morning, she began. She communicated her appreciation for each staff member’s commitment to the coming school year. It meant the world to her, she told the group, because it meant the world to the children and families.

To the outsider, Vista Elementary School may have appeared to be generic and a trite representation of public education. Based on my first half day and the ensuing year, that was far from the experience inside the school. During the next nine months, the classroom I was introduced to later that afternoon became a community for unconditional belonging for the children, families, and professionals. But it did not start that way.

* * *

The afternoon sun was at its peak. Teachers were dismissed from the library for planning time in their classroom. For me, that was room 125. The room was tucked away in a fifteen-year-old addendum to the school. Until this school year, the wing included the music room, the gymnasium, the art room, and four ECE classrooms. Perhaps due to its civility, the art room had been relocated to the fourth- and fifth-grade sector, across the hall and a few doors down from the library. With the loss of the art room came the addition of an early childhood special education classroom: a much better fit for that region of the building. The rooms were so far away from any other classroom that the loudest scream of a preschooler could not be heard or seen by anyone not interested. I suppose the same could be said for the teachers in the wing.

I strode down the dimly lit hallway. It felt more like a tunnel drilled through miles of mountain rock than a corridor in a school. The ceiling seemed lower than it was in other locations in the school. The brick walls broke for doors that only opened to closets and the gymnasium. Noticing the distance I had to walk to get to 125, the hallway struck me as a symbolic representation of a passageway between high and low administrative responsibilities, formal and informal education—work and play. In a syncopated rhythm, my aged black mailbag pendulated off my hip. A conglomerate of hormones churned in me. I was unaware of what to expect in the former art room.

Past the gymnasium and the music room, I descended eight steps into the ECE wing. To my right, I caught a glimpse of a communal bathroom with an entrance fit for a loading dock. The bathroom was designed specifically for young children. Next to the bathroom, mounted at eye level was a brown plastic squircle with the number 125 in the left corner. I paused momentarily to take a 360-degree view of the surroundings. The higher ceilings and spacious hallway caught me by surprise. A bend in the walls obfuscated the ECE atrium beyond. Across from me, an impressionist painting of a park landscape where faceless children and community members rejoiced in recreation covered the wall. Perhaps it was a reminder of the adjacent park that could otherwise be forgotten when entering the wing, or maybe a cue for what to expect in early childhood classrooms. The other half of the wall had a cove set knee-high above the linoleum tile. It appeared to be a bench and stair for children. At the top of the cove was a coat rack. My body squared with the door. I felt as though I was about to step on stage and give the performance of a lifetime in front of my most vicious critics.

I opened the door. The room was generous in size, with dimensions similar to a four-car garage, something a lifetime of teacher paychecks could never pay for. There was no questioning the origins of the room. Where are the closets? The wall of cabinets might have been ideal storage for an art teacher, but they were absurd for a preschool classroom. There was no place to store theme buckets, stash temporarily unused furniture, or hoard teaching materials that could be swapped on and off of shelves to maintain novelty. Chalkboards stretched across two walls, perfect for demonstrating how to draw pictures of three-dimensional objects for second graders. In an early childhood classroom, they were nothing more than eye sores. Room 125 was not a space anyone familiar with young children would designate as an early childhood education classroom. Fortunately, for young children, the people in the space are more important than the decor.

How old are the kids in your class? a man inquired over the sound of rolling wheels strolling in my direction from the ECE atrium. Within moments, we stood eye to eye at six feet. He had four chaotic inches of sandy-brown hair. He wore well-worn baggy blue jeans adorned with a long chain connected to the wallet in his pocket and crown-sized hoop securing close to twenty keys. The prized possessions were distinguished by a spectrum of colored covers.

I scanned the room, trying to envision a preschool classroom floor plan in an art room. Ninety percent of my attention was on the future, 10 percent on the present. I thought about strategies I had used during my past years