Miss: Teacher Interrupted

By Michele Sansone-Gall

This is a book about my experiences as a special ed teacher for twenty years. my ten years as a president of Streetfilms, an arts program for at-risk Chicago youth, and my 12 years as a college adjunct professor. MISS Teacher Interrupted describes those years that were energizing, creative and inspiring and what happened that made me opt out of the high school.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Mar 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665717076

Michele Sansone-Gall

I was born in Lockport, New York, a small factory town outside Buffalo. My parents were hippies who hooked me on Bob Dylan, Chuck Mangione, and Ike and Tina Turner. I was a kid who had some very early weird experiences in school. Kindergarten was not a good experience; I would have my “backwards” days, when I walked into the classroom backwards, saying the Pledge of Allegiance backwards, and writing my name backwards on my papers. I would be sent to see the principal, who called my mother and complained about me. My mother came in and said, “Can’t you see Michele is bored and being creative?” My kindergarten teacher didn’t buy it and made me sit under her desk. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Wilbur, worked hard to get me into the top reading group. Mrs. Johnson, my fourth-grade teacher, would stand outside her door and ask me how I was every single day. She hooked me on reading when she read us A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle. My worst teacher was Mr. Luff, who took us to the library in Lockport He told us not to chew gum in the library. When we returned, he yelled at me, accusing me of chewing gum. He told me to open my mouth and show him. He grabbed me, threw me over his knee, lifted my dress up, and spanked me in front of the whole class. Then he threw me into my desk and flung it against the wall. I ran away from school and went home, which was across the street. The next day I was again called into the principal’s office and was spanked again for misbehaving. I enjoyed going to St. John’s Catholic Middle School and DeSales Catholic High School. My undergrad college was Sarah Lawrence, where I majored in cinema and anthropology, also poetry and French. I was the editor of the school’s poetry magazine. For grad school I went to New York University, where I combined my interests in cinema and anthropology into ethnographic film, film history, and film production. On graduation, I worked at Mt. St. Vincent in the South Bronx, a Jesuit school, where I taught cinema studies and communication, as well as film production. I also taught several semesters at The New School for Social Research. After five years I was tired of living in Manhattan because it was expensive and filthy. I moved to Chicago, where I lived downtown. I was hired by Columbia College, where I taught film history and film production.

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Copyright © 2022 Michele Sansone-Gall.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

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author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author

and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of

the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of

people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1706-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1707-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021925847

Archway Publishing rev. date: 03/01/2022

CONTENTS

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Introduction and Dedication

How I Came to Teach at East Menora High School

What Is a Tomcat?

Student Teaching American History/World Cultures

Teacher’s Tips to Starting School Off Right

Fear and Anxiety over the First Day of School

East Menora Team Makes Sure No Student Is Left Behind

Committed Teens Can Make a Real Change

The Difficulty of Being a Special Ed Teacher

Student Teaches the Educator

Time Flies When You’re on a Tomcat Watch

A Year of Giving Thanks for Wonderful Students

Stay in School: Is That Such a Scary Message?

Freedom Writer Moves East Students to Tears

The Problem with Cell Phones

The Problem with Data Collection

Grading and Paperwork

Rudi

Is Summer a Real Vacation for Teachers?

Guidelines for Dealing with Parents

The March against Violence 2004

Helen Wright

Teaching Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors

Mold and Asbestos at East Menora High

Be Yourself

My Background Working with Kids

Hard Lockdown

Red and Black Assembly

PLCs

Michele Sansone-Gall, Freelance Reporter for Aurora newspaper

My Remedial Reading Program

Krissie and the Troll Man

The Therapeutic Use of Video in Education

My Greatest Lesson Plans and Biggest Contributions

My Participation in East Menora Programs

Antibullying in Schools

The Best Administrator

Missy Jackson, the Best Teacher at East Menora High School

Retiring during a Pandemic

The End of My Career

Appendix

About the Author

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INTRODUCTION AND

DEDICATION

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I dedicate this book to my husband, Tom, who supported my return to teaching high school students instead of college students. He drove me from the Fox Valley back to Chicago, where we had previously lived, to Daley College to finish much of my coursework. The title Miss refers to what all the kids at East Menora High School called the female teachers instead of their actual last names.

I hope this book inspires teachers to utilize their true creative selves in teaching and in after-school programs. These chapters demonstrate how not to let others overpower you, demoralize you, or rescind your talents. Throughout the book I walk you through the programs I created that made teaching a wonderful job for the first twelve years.

It’s important to be who you are and to utilize your talents and creative self during teaching. It is also important that you let your students know that you are there for them, and that if they need extra help, you will stay after school and help them. It is also important to have enough supplies for them to use, especially in districts where at-risk young people live.

Humor is an important element in a classroom full of special education kids, many with behavioral issues. Humor relaxes students as well as teachers and helps with transitions through your lessons.

It is also important to modify and differentiate learning materials for the many levels of learning that you may have in your classroom. Students who are given reading materials at a higher level than their Lexiles often feel frustrated and depressed by their inabilities to do the work successfully. You are not changing the content of the material just the stylistics of the paperwork.

It is also important to celebrate your students’ increases in ability and perseverance.

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HOW I CAME TO

TEACH AT EAST MENORA

HIGH SCHOOL

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E ach time I write a column, a friend of mine asks, Why don’t you toot your own horn?

Because that is boring, I retort, or self-serving. But since my interviewee is unavailable, you’re stuck with, well, me.

I started out as a university teacher in New York, and after seven years there, I was offered a job at Columbia College in Chicago in the film and video department. Along the way, I had a couple of inspirational experiences with teens that forced me to reevaluate my future.

In 1995, the Chicago Film Festival called me and wanted to know if I could give a documentary workshop to area teens attending Randy Holland’s documentary The Fire This Time, about the riots in California after the Rodney King trial verdicts. I also brought along camera equipment. I figured no teenager wanted to hear a teacher lecture about the finer points of documentary production.

I had the group come up with a subject for our documentary, and they chose homelessness. The question they were to ask people on the street was, Do you think our city is doing enough to combat homelessness?

I had them go outside because the intersection of North and Clark, right outside the building that housed our workshop, has an interesting confluence of extreme poverty and affluence that could make for lively proceedings. The kids were so engaged! They brought so much more to the project than I’d originally imagined they would that I was hooked. I needed to work with this age group. They were energized and energizing.

Toward the end of my presentation, an art teacher came in with a student—a shy older boy with dark, wavy hair. His name was Alexis, and his teacher explained that he wanted to make a documentary about himself. I met with Alexis and his teacher at his house, and we began to prepare a script and storyboard for his film. As he explained, he had been physically abused by his father while he was just a toddler. His father had thrown him against a pipe heater, fracturing his skull and paralyzing him. His life was a series of seizures and placements of shunts

Reviews for Miss

[hrodman1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Unclear who this book is for—random advice for students, some mentions of systemic problems with the education system, mostly personal rants and strange anecdotes filled with typos