THE SANCTUARY OF SCHOOL
my brother and me invisible. We were children with the sound turned off. And for
us, as for the steadily increasing number of neglected children in this country, the
only place where we could count on being noticed was at school.
“Hey there, young lady. Did you forget to go home last night?” It was Mr.
Gunderson, our janitor, whom we all loved. He was nice and he was funny and he
was old with white hair, thick glasses and an unbelievable number of keys. I could
hear them jingling as he walked across the playfield. I felt incredibly happy to see
him.
He let me push his wheeled garbage can between the different portables as he
unlocked each room. He let me turn on the lights and raise the window shades and
I saw my school slowly come to life. I saw Mrs. Holman, our school secretary,
walk into the office without her orange lipstick on yet. She waved.
I saw the fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Cunningham, walking under the breezeway
eating a hard roll. He waved.
And I saw my teacher, Mrs. Claire LeSane, walking toward us in a red coat and
calling my name in a very happy and surprised way, and suddenly my throat got
tight and my eyes stung and I ran toward her crying. It was something that
surprised us both.
It’s only thinking about it now, 28 years later, that I realize I was crying from
relief. I was with my teacher, and in a while I was going to sit at my desk, with my
crayons and pencils and books and classmates all around me, and for the next six
hours I was going to enjoy a thoroughly secure, warm and stable world. It was a
world I absolutely relied on. Without it, I don’t know where I would have gone
that morning.
Mrs. LeSane asked me what was wrong and when I said “Nothing,” she
seemingly left it at that. But she asked me if I would carry her purse for her, an
honor above all honors, and she asked if I wanted to come into Room 2 early and
paint.
She believed in the natural healing power of painting and drawing for troubled
children. In the back of her room there was always a drawing table and an easel
with plenty of supplies, and sometimes during the day she would come up to you
for what seemed like no good reason and quietly ask if you wanted to go to the
back table and “make some pictures for Mrs. LeSane.” We all had a chance at it—
to sit apart from the class for a while to paint, draw and silently work out
impossible problems on 11 x 17 sheets of newsprint.
Drawing came to mean everything to me. At the back table in Room 2, I learned
to build myself a life preserver that I could carry into my home.
We all know that a good education system saves lives, but the people of this
country are still told that cutting the budget for public schools is necessary, that
poor salaries for teachers are all we can manage and that art, music and all creative
activities must be the first to go when times are lean.
Before-and after-school programs are cut and we are told that public schools are
not made for baby-sitting children. If parents are neglectful temporarily or
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