Not adieu, but au revoir

When I last posted, I ended it with "adieu."  When the members of the von Trapp family were singing their farewell song prior to leaving Austria, they sang "adieu, adieu to you and you and you."  They knew that they were not returning once they left the festival that evening.  When I went to Florida for the reunion of the school staff, I certainly did not go with the thought that I would never see any of my friends there again.

I flew down to Florida on Thursday prior to the celebration on Saturday. My friend, Lorette, has a lovely home and welcomed me to stay there.  It was so relaxing.  On Friday I spent some time with my father-in-law and enjoyed dinner with him and his lady friend that evening.  Earlier in the day I had lunch with Janice, my roommate from my trip to the Canadian Rockies last year about this time.

Saturday was the day of the reunion.  Around 150 people came...former teachers, aides, principals, office staff, custodial staff, lunchroom staff, and former students.  There were a few there who are actually older than I am.  Can you believe it!  The committee who organized the party had photos from different eras of the school displayed around the room.  It was fun to look through old yearbooks that were there.

Barbie and Skipper...grown a little older

Ana, on the left, was one of my aides when I had the ESOL children.  She had been a teacher in Mexico, but there was so much red tape involved to get her credentials here that she worked as an aide.  She is teaching now, though.  She was wonderful to work with in my classroom and added so much to our day.

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Sue Gore and her husband, Wendell.  Sue and I taught together for many years at Orange Ridge.

I was standing looking at pictures when this young lady said to me, "You were my teacher in first grade in 1991."  I was so glad she was wearing a name tag.  When she told me here first name and I saw her last name, I remembered her.  She's 31 now and is a buyer for a company out of St. Petersburg.

Jeanette Kelly, one of the best fifth grade teachers we had and one of the best singers around.  

Miss Viola was the cashier in the lunch line who always greeted the children and staff with a sweet smile whenever we came through the lunch line.

Fran Padgett, on the left, started out as principal of the Bullock school.  She later became principal of the combined Orange Ridge Bullock school.  It was she who got the reunion started. Behind her is my friend, Lorette.  We worked together with the ESOL children for four years until I retired, and she continued on for a while after that until she retired.  On the right is Rick, our music teacher.  We loved Friday afternoons because Rick had a singalong for the primary grades.  It was a perfect way to end our week.

Sharon, the lady on the right, used to come to my classroom to volunteer when her children attended our school.  She told her daughter that I showed her how to turn on a computer.  She later became a secretary at our school.

Orange Ridge Bullock School
1958-2016

Farewell...Part 3

When I started to write these posts, I intended to write memories about the school.  Instead, I wrote more about my own personal experiences. To those reading this, who are not former or current employees at Orange Ridge Bullock School, the school is being closed after being open since 1958.  Children are being placed in schools around the county, as are members of the staff.  This Saturday there is to be a gathering of those who worked at the school over the years in one capacity or another.  Because I had just been in Florida for a week, I had thought I would not return, but I really wanted to be there, so I'm going.  I look forward to seeing Barbie and Skipper again.  Yes, they taught at our school.  Some of you will know to whom I am referring.

Looking back over the years, there are some times that one would probably like to do over again or wipe out completely, but hopefully learn from.  Some of us who worked there stayed for many, many years.  Others stayed for a while and then moved on.  We used to say that if anyone wanted to be a principal in the county, he or she must, first of all, have taught at ORB.  

We were a family.  We celebrated babies being born.  We mourned with those who lost a child, a spouse or a parent.  We laughed and cried together.  And, like a family, sometimes we disagreed with each other or got really mad.

I'm so happy this reunion is taking place, to give everyone a chance to see each other one last time in the setting where we spent so much of our adult lives.  Adieu.

So long, farewell....Part 2

I was talking with a teacher at church today, and I was telling her about the school closing and the get-together that was planned.  We were talking about the funny things that kids say and how we should have written them down.  Back in the day when we had readers with controlled vocabulary, the characters in the pre-primers were Bill, Jill, and Lad the dog.  One day, during reading group we were going over a workbook page that had a picture of children at the park.  There were four sentences to choose from that fit the picture.  When I called on one boy for his answer, he said, "Lad is at the park."  Lad was nowhere to be seen in the picture.  When I said the Lad was not in the picture, the boy said, "He's hiding."  I had to think about the one.

I taught third grade for a year when the enrollment for the grade increased.  I really did enjoy that year.  I had taught third grade when I started teaching and always enjoyed how the personalities of those children really began to emerge.  One day in class, I had the children doing some dictionary work at their seats while I worked with a group.  The room was so quiet as the children were working when one boy with his eyes open wide, excitedly, or embarrassed, said, "Mrs. Whitcomb, I found do-do in the dictionary."  What he had seen was dodo.  Some things you just don't forget.

For a while, off and on, I found that after lunch, back in the room when I was reading a story to the children, I found that I was having difficulty pronouncing certain words.  I didn't think too much about it.  I always drank my tea with lots of ice in it.  I figured that perhaps my tongue was just a little numb from all the ice. To make a long story short, I began to have more symptoms and was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis.  I sought treatment, had some surgery, and ended up on various medications.  I felt like I was on a roller coaster for the next four or five years.

Some major construction took place on campus.  The original classrooms were remodeled, and a new wing was added.  In 1995 the construction was finished, and we were able to move into our new or renovated classrooms.  I was fortunate to have one of the new rooms.  Our school was one of the first to have technology in place.  As  technology advanced so fast, we were soon behind times, but we were first!  I often told friends, who were afraid of touching a computer, that there was no need to be afraid of a computer.  If a first grader could turn it on, navigate the desktop, and then shut it down properly, they they could too.

The last four years of my time at Orange Ridge were spent with ESOL children.  I cannot think of a better way to have spent this time.  Most of these children were Mexican, and there were some Haitian children in the class.  Our goal was to have these children learn English well enough to be able to function well in a regular classroom.  We never had to wonder whether the parents would be present for parent-teacher conferences.  I was so thankful for the aides who spoke Spanish so that they could interpret when needed.

In the first ESOL class that I had, there was a young boy named Juan.  During National Education week we were talking about the importance of an education, and I asked the children if they knew why an education was important.  Juan raised his hand and said that his father said he wanted him to get a good education so that he wouldn't have to look for food to eat in the garbage heat as he had done in Mexico.

I recently saw a former first grader from the ESOL class.  She is Cambodian.  I was so glad to see her.  I asked her how old she is now and what she is doing.  She's twenty-six, working in an oncologist's lab or office.  She then said she's getting her Master's degree and plans to continue studying.  She added that her two younger brothers are getting their B.S. and Associate of Arts degree this year.  Their mother deserves so much credit for seeing to it that her children have achieved so much.

At the end of those four years, I took advantage of an early retirement offer and stopped teaching in 1999.

End of part 2...I'm going to do one more short post, with some odds and ends of incidents over the years.

So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye (Part 1)

It all started out forty-three years ago.  I had returned to Florida from teaching in Haiti in 1972.  I spent some time visiting friends and churches who had supported me during my time in Haiti, and then I traveled to France for an intense course in French in order to return to Haiti and continue working there.  Before I left for Europe, I had met Don, and we corresponded all the time while I was in France, and we ended up marrying that spring.  Settling in Bradenton, I looked for a teaching position and was hired to teach first grade at Orange Ridge Elementary School.y  I had been teaching junior high students in Haiti, so moving down to first grade was quite an adjustment.

Back in the day, we had no air conditioning in our school.  We had fans that sounded like airplane engines when they were running.  There were no screens on our windows, so in the afternoon, when the children came in from recess, they were sweaty and sandy, and gnats became part of our classroom setting.  I thought that if we could just get air conditioning, all would be well.

During those early years that I taught there, we had children come to our school from Cambodia and Vietnam.  These children were so dear.  One year I was given two brothers who were older than first grade age.  Since they did not know English, the other children were eager to help them learn English.  They brought so much joy to our class.

In 1979 while I was on maternity leave with my son, David, it happened.  Air conditioning was installed in our school.  I was one happy person.  No more noisy fans, no more gnats.  Then I began to say, if we just had carpet on the floors to cut down on the noise of children sitting down and pulling their desks in place, instead of scooting their chairs up to the desk.

Our campus was centrally located in the county, and we had a big campus.  There were two separate playgrounds.  We referred to them as the little playground and the big playground.  My classroom was on the end of the wing, and I could look out at the little playground.  I remember one day, looking out and there was a red-tailed hawk in the pine tree.  Another day, when we had had a lot of rain and there was water standing, there was a great blue heron outside my window.

Small animals were always at home in my classroom.  Either a hamster or a gerbil.  The children loved them so much.  One day after the bus riders had left, I let the children take the gerbil out to hold and play with him.  One little boy was holding him, and the gerbil got loose and scooted across the floor.  The little boy said, "Come here, you little b*stard."  I wanted to laugh out loud so much, but I put my head down and stifled the laugh.  I don't know if it was the same gerbil or not, but after a while the animal died.  The children were so sad, and they wanted him to have a proper burial.  So we put him in a small box and went outside and buried him by the room.  At the children's insistence, not mine, we read Psalm 23.

Later on, I had a guinea pig in my class.  The children really loved him.  There was more to hold, and he wasn't as wiggly as a hamster or a gerbil.  On the weekends, I would take him home, and when my husband came home and the gerbil heard him walk in the door, he would whistle and jump all around his cage.  One day, I asked Don to stop by my classroom and hang some strings down from the ceiling (the ceilings were high.)  I said to my aide, "Just watch when Mr. Whitcomb comes into the room, that guinea pig will whistle and jump up and down."  He didn't disappoint.

I once said to one of my friends that I was thinking about getting a snake for my classroom.  My children had for a pre-K teacher at Palma Sola Preschool, who was the daughter of Ross Allen, who was quite the herpetologist.  He worked in his early days at Silver Springs and later on at Sarasota Jungle Gardens.  So snakes and other reptiles were quite commonplace in her classroom.   Boys especially like them.  She let me know in no uncertain terms that if I introduced a snake into my room, she would never again enter my classroom.  And, no, I didn't get a snake.

In 1984, the Bullock school was added to our campus.  This school was for children who were physically and mentally handicapped.  Our campus was centrally located in the county, and with the school there, the children didn't have to travel so far or so long on the buses to get to school.  We teachers in regular ed received quite an education during those first years.  I remember saying to some of the teachers once that I didn't know how they did their jobs, even though there may have been five students in a class with a full-time aide.  They, in turn, said to me that they didn't know how we did what we did with twenty-five students at one time.

The Bullock school had been named for Jo Berta Bullock, a journalism teacher at Manatee High.  She was teaching there before I started high school and was there for some time after until she retired.  She was physically handicapped, dependent on crutches to get around.  After the school was opened, she would visit from time to time.  Even though I had not taken any journalism classes, she knew who I was and always spoke to me whenever she saw me at the school.
(End of part one)

Mother's Day and other stuff

For having said that I was going to blog more, I certainly have not done it.  I love keeping up with people on Facebook, but I find myself passing over a lot of stuff and "unfollowing" pages, especially during these days, and I think you know what I mean.

I drove down to Florida a couple of weeks ago.  I was really wanting to visit with my long-time friends, and I wanted to see one couple before they left for the north for the summer.  I have so many people who question my driving to Florida all by myself.  I've done it during the past nine years since Ella was born, and so I did again this time and didn't feel any worse for the wear.  I spent the week visiting and eating.  On Tuesday the girls from the class of '59 had lunch together.  There were three of us there from out of town, so it was a grand time, catching up with each other's news.

On Thursday morning, I met some ladies for breakfast at Cracker Barrel.  I visited with them, and then another friend came and we ate and chatted for a long time.  While there, I was visiting with a gentleman whom I've known for a while, and sitting opposite us was a girl I had in first grade twenty years ago.  She was in one of my ESOL classes.  Her family was from Cambodia, and her English was limited, so I had the joy of helping her learn English and learn to read.  I asked her what she is doing now, and she told me that she was working in an oncologist's office, that she's working on her master's degree and she plans to go further in her studies.  That makes me smile a lot.

This past weekend, I enjoyed Mother's Day with Sarah and David.  Sarah came over on Saturday to be with Ella for a bit, and then we enjoyed lunch together at a local restaurant.  Yesterday, David cooked lunch for me.  He went online and looked for some Haitian recipes.  He made red beans and rice and Haitian chicken for me.  I did enjoy it so much.

I appreciate so much being close to my children.  Sarah and David both do so much for me.  Of course, it is wonderful being close to Ella and being able to spend time with her almost any time I want.

Maybe it won't be so long before I post again.  When I repost some of my posts on Facebook and read some of the comments that people make, I realize how much I miss hearing from some of them.