Page 67 - She's One Crazy Lady!

I love design and I love display; my artwork is very precise, but drawing? No. God did not give me that gift. Thank goodness I know some very talented artists who have contributed to this book so well! In the classroom it was wonderful to witness children using their imagination, observational skills and practical skills, improving as each term went by – and achieving!
I strongly believed in the classroom
being very colourful and visual,
with artefacts everywhere to
stimulate the children and make
life interesting and unusual. For
a while I wrote many articles for
Teachers magazines about different aspects of
teaching art – the children loved to see examples of their work in print.
I have so many fond memories of the children, the Staff, the Governors and the Parents at Whitefriars. One child who I remember so well was ‘Trevor’. Trevor was autistic and had such an amazing visual memory when it came to drawing. You could show him a photo of a building for just a few seconds and half an hour later he would have drawn it exactly, in minute detail – in pen and without a rubber! Trevor, aged about eight at the time, liked routine and would always have to sit at my feet in assembly to keep his attention. One day, with Dennis reading one of his memorable stories that always had a moral, Trevor whispered that he loved me.
“Yes, Trevor. Shhh!”
“I love you, Miss Hooper!” he repeated in a louder voice, his arms entwined around my legs.
“Yes, Trevor, I know. Please be quiet.”
“I LOVE YOU MISS HOOPER!” he shouted.
Everyone was looking to see what I would do. Dennis picked up on
what could have been a potential air of disruption and brought the assembly to an end, with Trevor, quite calmly, following me and his classmates back to the classroom.
We hoped this would be a one-off, but the scenario was repeated many times, so much so that, although the children ignored him, I couldn’t. We knew we had to find a strategy to control this behaviour.
We came up with the idea of a totem pole! A hugging pole. ‘We’, being Trevor and the rest of the class who willingly gave ideas and wanted to help him. At the top of the totem pole Trevor wanted to have my photograph on and said that if we could do it, he promised not to shout out anymore. He designed and made the pole, together with a group of selected friends – it was huge and quite complex – and, day
“I love you, Miss Hooper!” he repeated
in a louder voice, his
arms entwined around my legs.
”
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