City Kid. Mary MacCracken
center. Its chief industries were the dyeing and finishing of textiles and the manufacture of silk. But with the rising popularity of synthetic fabrics, business declined and companies closed. Although pockets of culture remained, the downtown area had become drab and rundown and the population was predominantly lower middle class.
Inside the Logan Building, shabbiness was more evident. Water stains marked the ceilings, walls needed painting, floors were bare, furniture was folding metal. But there was a lot of space, a large waiting room, several secretarial offices, and a half-dozen rooms for therapists to meet with clients. Some rooms were furnished with chairs, table, and couch; another had low furniture and toys for children. We met in the children’s room.
The other two tutors were both seniors, Shirley Hayes and John Hudson. Shirley was quiet, with a soft sure voice and dark smooth skin. Hud was tall, slender, red-haired, filled with vitality. Shirley was going on to graduate school next year, and was working now as a clerk in a department store after her college classes to earn tuition. Hud was job-hunting, hoping to teach teenagers with emotional problems. I liked them both. Hud had worked with multiply handicapped children at summer camp. Shirley with disadvantaged children at a day care center.
Jerry Cotter had been put in charge of the program and conducted our training sessions. He was small, with a brown-gray beard and a gentle handshake. His official title at the clinic was psychiatric social worker.
At our first meeting Jerry said, “This program could be the beginning of a revolutionary change in the treatment of emotional problems in children. The central idea is to expand and intensify mental health services in the schools themselves, instead of letting kids vegetate on waiting lists. We are going to try to do this through therapeutic counseling and tutoring at the school – and you are the ones who are going to do it.”
At later sessions Jerry stressed again that help would go to the child in a familiar place, his school, rather than the child going, or waiting to go, to a clinic. He also said we would not be asked to work with psychotic children, the ones who were so disturbed that they would be considered autistic or schizophrenic. He smiled at me. “These children are not as out of touch with reality as the children you’ve worked with, Mary. Instead, they take their anger out on society, stealing, burning, destroying, and earn the label of ‘socially maladjusted’ or ‘juvenile delinquent.’”
I smiled back but didn’t reply. Labels meant little to me. In fact, as far as I could see, their only use was to give a name to a program so it could be funded. Nobody funded anything without a name.
The next four sessions focused on diagnostic tests and teaching procedures. Jerry demonstrated the administration and scoring of various tests given to screen for emotional or neurologically based impairments. We, of course, did not have the skill to score the tests ourselves, but we were all amazed at how much information he was able to obtain from such seemingly simple devices.
Our last session was on observing and charting behavior. Jerry gave us stopwatches and taught us how to use observation charts, marking down the number of incidents of a child’s disruptive behavior during short intervals carefully timed by the stopwatch.
At the end of this session, Jerry said, “That’s it. I, of course, will be at the school scoring tests and supervising from time to time. The grant covers the rest of this year and I’ll get over as much as I can, but we’re short-handed here and you’re going to be more on your own than originally planned.
“Anyway, good luck. I’ve enjoyed our sessions together and I’ll see you all at School Twenty-three on Wednesday.”
How could I wait till Wednesday?
School 23 was a half-hour drive from the college, just off one of the main streets of Falls City. It was old, like most of the city’s buildings, its dark red brick packed with city grime. The gray cement steps, worn smoothly by thousands of children’s feet, dragging in, rushing out, descended directly to the sidewalk of the small street. There was no front yard or back yard, only a macadam side lot that evidently served as teacher parking lot and play yard.
Small, rundown houses surrounded by yards consisting of brown dirt and cracked cement lined the rest of the short block.
I parked across from the school and started across the street. A large white dog came off the steps of one of the houses, snarling and hurling himself against the chain-link fence that surrounded the house. I shivered involuntarily and then ran back and locked the car doors before I climbed the steps to School 23, not realizing I was holding my breath until I reached the door.
“Remember,” Jerry Cotter had warned us at the beginning of the training sessions, “the kids you’ll be working with are different than most. We call them ‘socially maladjusted with an overlay of emotional disturbance.’ What we mean is – they are tough, street-wise, and don’t give a damn.”
The warmth inside the school was unexpected. Steam radiators clanked cheerily. Mrs. Karras, the principal, was waiting in the hall. Her handshake was strong, her smile warm, and I liked her immediately.
Jerry arrived next and then within minutes of each other John Hudson and Shirley.
Mrs. Karras poured us mugs of steaming coffee and we carried them across the hall to the music room and sat down around a long folding table that had been set up in the back of the room.
“This will be your room,” Mrs. Karras said cordially. “Fortunately, or unfortunately, we don’t seem to have a music teacher this year, so the room is all yours. I’ve had those file cabinets over there cleaned out for you. I know you said you needed room for some materials.”
Jerry nodded his thanks and then we all listened intently as Mrs. Karras described her school, kindergarten through fifth grade, twenty-eight to thirty children in each room. Many of the teachers were on the far side of fifty and tired of teaching unruly kids, but money was short and jobs hard to come by. Tenure assured these teachers their jobs at School 23, though they longed to be elsewhere.
Mrs. Karras again added her welcome and delight we were there and then said, “Let’s not waste any more time.”
She turned toward Jerry. “I understand you feel it’s best for each tutor to begin working with just one child at first and then gradually take on two more. Right?”
Jerry nodded, and Mrs. Karras continued. “Here’s a list of the youngsters we’ve selected for the program. They’ve been given an intelligence test by the district psychologist. The tests are in the file in my office. Just ask the secretary for the key, their records are open to you. That’s been made clear to their families. You do understand that in ninety percent of the cases, family means a mother and, of course, other brothers and sisters. Almost all of the kids live in the low-income project, and the reason they live there is that there’s no father around to provide adequate income.
“Norm Foster called and asked me to pick three youngsters for you to start with. I don’t know if it’s fair to you, but I picked the three worst. Seemed to me they needed help the most. Of course, it’s up to you to decide who gets who.
“So here are my three candidates. Vernon Schofield, Lucas Brauer, and Milton Green. Vernon’s in fifth grade, Mrs. Jacobson’s class – eleven years old. He’s black, disruptive, been in several knife fights, picked up by the police for shoplifting. Has a younger brother who’s on the list as well, but Anthony isn’t as bad yet.
“Lucas Brauer’s in second grade. German background. Luke’s hard core. Nobody gets through to him. He’s got a list of arrests as long as your arm. Been picked up twenty-four times. He’s set over a dozen major fires, stolen over fifty dollars’ worth of goods from the stores on Main Street. He’s got a hundred and two average IQ, but he’s a truant and even when he does come to school he doesn’t do any work. Just sits at his desk drawing pictures. Actually, he’s one of the lucky ones that made it off the waiting list into the clinic last year. They worked with him for six months and then discontinued, said