Pushing The "Pull" Door or Stop the Carnival

Toward the end of the first semester when attending a PTA meeting, a distraught mother stood up and told of her dilemma: It seemed that several of the English teachers had left in midyear for various reasons, and her son’s English teacher had joined the National Guard and was called to go. English--a required subject for graduation! His mother almost cried. If he missed English that year, he was not allowed to take two years of English simultaneously, so he would have to miss graduation and have it afterward.

Lori was presented at that P.T.A. meeting and couldn’t help but take pity on her. Mrs. Artley would be "free" the following term since Driver Ed had been dropped. Even though she was not certified to teach English, it was her native language and she was certified in teaching. She firmly believed that if you learned how to teach one subject, the same principles could easily be applied to other subjects.

The next day, Lori went to the principal and offered her services. Soon she was assigned a new room and English classes. Two were regular English classes and one was called Creative Writing. She was also teaching two art classes already, in order to free up Ms Lash, who then became the head of the Art Department. Chairpersons have a lighter teaching load due to their departmental duties.

Then Mrs. Artley discovered that one of the English classes was an Advanced English class and the other Standard. That meant that while one was concentrating on "poetry" for example, the other learned "grammar". The Creative Writing course was not supposed to be creative as much as it was supposed to be remedial. This gave her three different lesson plans to prepare each evening, beside the one she was already doing for the art classes. The norm is TWO. She was VERY bush that Spring and not even certified in English.

One day in the advanced English class, one bright student piped up, "How can you teach English when you weren’t trained to do it?" At the beginning they had been told that she was not certified to teach English, but that was doing it so that they would not "miss" a semester and thereby could graduate on schedule. There was no certified English teacher available at that time.

Mrs. Artley answered his question, "When I was in high school, I listened".

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Meanwhile, Mrs. Artley had to get chairs to that her students could atleast sit down when they came in the room. Although the English students used the chairs also, there was never any effort put forth by Ms. Feelbad to bring any chairs into the room or any recognition of Lori’s efforts.

After school each day Lori took her hatch back around the campus and put whatever chairs had been left outside rooms into the back. Then she drove them back and carried them in. In the meantime, she would also bring in whatever folding chairs she had at home to be used until enough chairs for the students were retrieved from outside the classrooms. She also raided the broken chair store room which filled up a teacher’s lounge so the teachers couldn’t even get through. Lori marked all the chairs with her room number on the back, so that no one could come and claim them after all her hard work. Some other rooms must have been left "short" but Mrs. Artley was desperate. Students deserved at least a seat in the classroom!

Then there was the matter of desks. A student couldn’t draw very well without tables or desks, unless they had sketch pads (which they didn’t). Since the administration failed to take notice of the fact that artwork could not be carried on with no desks the iniative of obtaining tables was left up to the teacher. At home, Lori had three sheets of plywood. She hired a man with a truck to meet her at lunch time and carry the plywood down to the school where she had her students unload it as they came to class. They were placed on saw horses, and covered them with some large picnic table cloths which she had from the past. In order to do all this in the one-hour lunch period, they all had to synchronize their watches and meet at exact times. It all worked out just as bell wrang. They put the chairs around the make-shift tables and the art class finally was in business !

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In the fall of 1989, Central High School and the island experienced fifteen hours of Hurricane Hugo, stopping its 215 mph winds, plus tornadoes, right over St. Ursula Island, rampaging roofs, whole houses and everything in its path. It was said to have been the most violent storm of the century. After Hugo finally moved along the next morning, they experienced an aftermath of rain and winds for over a week. If houses hadn’t completely blown away, 95% of the roofs went, the glass broke and everything got soaked.

Many of the classrooms at Central lost their roofs. Some of the classrooms and the main office also lost their walls leaving anything that was still left inside vulnerable. Even the school gymnasium, which was a "designated shelter" for people needing a "haven" from the storm, collapsed and those insides had to crawl on their hands and knees in the dark of night with the storm raging around to find some place to wait out the hurricane. Those who crawled to the main office found it was also demolished, but right across the street, a church was still standing and untouched. The minister of that church was a master-builder and had constructed that church, with the help of his congregation, to withstand the winds. The people who weathered out the storm inside were safe. All over the island there were "pockets" where the buildings were unaltered, while in most other places, everything blew away. If Hugo wanted some house, he got it!

Hugo also touched the other islands in its path: Guadelupe, Montserat, Antigua, St. Martin, Dominique, St. Kitts, Nevis, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and finally on to the states. He left crippling and crushing in his wake; all plants disappeared. The landscape looked like no-man’s land.