Page 186 - From the Outhouse 4 -21

F R O M T H E O U T H O U S E T O T H E L I T T L E R E D S C H O O L H O U S E : | 186

“BUT GOD”

My success began at Rosenwald Exceptional Student Center in Altamonte Springs, Florida. My assignment was to teach the

profoundly mentally-handicapped – a population that was new to me. Thank God, I had a gifted assistant, named Mrs. Sally Saunders
(née Gordon). She was very experienced and taught me how to design and teach a well-organized curriculum. During the school year,

I developed a love for these non-verbal, as well as, physically, mentally, and visually impaired students. Let me say here that my teaching

success has been because I never had a bad assistant – ever. One reason why I believe this is true is because I didn’t treat assistants as
subordinates, but as peers working alongside me. I readily accepted their creativity in the classroom, and we always had fun! My

principal at Rosenwald, Dr. Ruby Hendrix, made a difference, too. She made sure that her teachers were made aware of new

techniques, skills, conferences, and various classroom designs. Plus, we were given expert technicians and the proper equipment to
accompany our lesson plans. I greatly appreciated Dr. Hendrix because this kind of support was not the case with all principals.

At Rosenwald, I was given the opportunity to put my creative gifts to work. My idea to combine special students with regular students
in performances ran into opposition. When people witnessed these miraculous performances, in which all levels of students

participated, the teachers, parents, and students were proud! We even invited Mrs. Sandra Petty’s Greenwood Lakes Middle School
Choir, composed of students from their regular population, and Duana Glover, a high school and featured soloist, to perform with

us. (Duana is the daughter of my classroom assistant.) My other Rosenwald performances included: the Wheel-Chair Square Dance,

which included peers from a trainable class that wheeled profoundly mentally handicapped students who were not ambulatory;
Dancing Christmas Trees in which student performers wore decorated cardboard trees that lit up as they moved to the music; and

Broadway Portraits, featuring young gentlemen wearing white tuxedos! These performances were marvelous! Although I may have
come up with the ideas, it took a fantastic team to bring these productions to stage.

The population of exceptional students that I taught during my teaching career were: the learning disabled, emotionally disturbed,
autistic, profoundly mentally handicapped and physically handicapped, the trainable, and educable mentally-handicapped. The terms