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I was a 1st year teacher with 5 classes of 10th grade English. That
particular day was the day of the football game with our most intense
rival. We were Raytown South--the new school in the district. They were
just Raytown, the school which had been there forever. That day was
supposed to be silent day. The idea was that no one would say a word all
day. All teaching and communicating would be done visually or with hand
and body language.
My 5th hour class was a handful--kind of the rebels without a cause.
When two of them burst in to the room with the news, I thought they were
trying to pull a fast one, because they had already told me they would
talk if they wanted.
All too soon, I found that it was indeed the truth.
Most of my students were anti-Kennedy. Their parents had moved to the
suburbs to try to escape desegregation. I remember wanting to be able to
find the right words to make them understand the awfulness of this event,
regardless of their political opinion.
And I remember feeling very frustrated because I didn't think I succeeded
very well.
At the end of that year I moved out-of-state. I often wondered during
the later years of the 60's what happened to those very conservative
children. Did any of them become hippies and join the civil rights
movement or did they remain as they were in 1963.
Paula Neale
mohmie@coop.crn.gen.mo.us
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