School Daze At Buddy’s funeral, Martha, the former manager of his group home, walked up to me with righteous indignation pouring from her small stature and said. “I hope you burn in hell.” She had no way of knowing I was in midst of exactly that. My soul was in a torturous state, caused by a lifetime practice of denial, suppression of anger, calloused over rage and a mild case of PTSD. I attributed her statement to the odd things people say at funerals, or from jealousy of an unknown reason, however, it took a long time, months, or years for me to discover the most likely reason she said that. She thought I had killed Buddy. It has taken over ten years for me to realize my part in his death. The boy had been born into the most miserable of circumstances with a body that only complicated all other factors. Client confidentiality kept information about his immediate family closely guarded. There was speculation that his parents were in prison, or in mental institutions, which at this time, would mean they were extremely dangerous people. There was also speculation that some if not all of his disabilities were caused by his caregivers as an infant from abuse and or neglect. When he came to my classroom, he was fifteen, blind, had severe pica—a craving for large metal objects, which put him in the hospital at least a dozen times in his life already for surgeries on his digestive tract. He had a limited vocabulary, liked to laugh, loved to walk, and could find his way through obstacles by using his stick. To test his skill, I set up an obstacle course made of the outdoor lunch tables and sent an assistant to walk with him. Our room had one whole wall of windows looking out on the quad and I observed him from there. He slowly and calmly tapped his way to a safe bench and sat down. Buddy had temper tantrums, but I am told, so do turtles and with the exception that Buddy could scream at you, his tantrums hurt mostly himself. He was slow moving under all conditions, even when angry. His stomach had been mangled enough, that the only food he could have was Ensure. Even so, he didn’t have a gastronomy tube. Mainly because he would never have left it alone. When in the hospital, he couldn’t have sheets or blankets on him, because he would ingest them. However, after I transferred, a new ‘button’ was invented that he couldn’t open or dislodge and he was then tube fed. Buddy was for the most part, gentle, quiet, and a favorite of our reg. ed. student friends. We found ways of getting him to giggle several times a day—it always lightened the mood. Even though he was verrrrry sloooowww, he would request to walk when he was bored. It was good for him, but not always practical. The other high school students would speak to him and touch him so he could feel their presence when he went out, although it was safer to have him walk when there wasn’t an explosion of people on the sidewalks. Upon writing this, the part I played in Buddy’s death has come clear to me and Martha’s statement was properly aimed. Before I left that classroom, Buddy had ingested a five inch bolt. That surgery was the cause of his tube feeding. I heard him ‘gulp’ it down and had no idea he could actually swallow anything that large and thought nothing more of it. He was in the hospital several weeks, and I transferred in the meantime. How did he die? His teacher over-fed him and his stomach burst. It wasn’t me and I don’t think Martha knew that. Martha transferred from the group home where several of our students lived. And I had transferred to a younger classroom in a different town, since I had seen her last. These changes took place in a fairly tight timeframe. I was aware of her change—I don’t think she was aware of mine. I was acting out in my classroom and my life, and so burned out already, not much teaching got done. I had found a way to ‘keep the peace’ and that was all I aimed for. Hence, I went back to my high school classroom the following fall. (A chapter dedicated to the pre-school class can be found within this publication) Gary, the teacher, Buddy’s teacher at the time, was even more mentally and emotionally unqualified to be in the classroom than I had ever been at any time. His contract was bought out at the end of that school year. There were many ‘red flags’ put up about him and before I was fully informed about his true nature, I defended some of his actions that crossed the lines. ‘He is new to the entire field.’ ‘We all know how x assistant tries to control the classroom and makes it hard for the teacher’. These statements were in response to his actions of throwing video cassettes—not DVD’s—video cases, the equivalent of a large shoe, with corners, at assistant x. (I remind you I was not in my best frame of mind either at the time.) He transferred from that classroom in the winter break to the class I left. We each claimed needing a ‘change’. I went to a pre-school, he came to my high school. My former assistants kept me apprised of his behavior and as time went on, I could see my knee-jerk defense of him had been very wrong. The day he over-fed Buddy, was during summer school. My former assistant had stayed with the students after I left and she kept telling him what he was doing was wrong and he didn’t stop. She finally called 911 and Buddy died shortly after getting to the hospital. Buddy loved music, loved to throw a ball, say the alphabet, and swallow large foreign objects. He was developmentally two or three—and we buried him on his seventeenth birthday.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:48:12 +0000
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