All posts by Dona

First Teaching Job: Bartlett Learning Center

Work,

After graduating from NIU with a bachelors degree in Elementary (K-8) and Special (K-12) Education I applied for a job in Elgin Public Schools (U46) and was told to go elsewhere first for experience and then apply back to U46. So I just kept working at the restaurant instead.

My cousin knew someone who worked at a private school that needed a long-term substitute teacher, so I applied and was hired by Bartlett Learning Center in Bartlett, Illinois to substitute for a middle grade class of students with special needs for a few months while the teacher recovered from breast cancer surgery.

I don’t remember much of the teaching during those two months but I do vividly remember taking the bus to the train station, riding to Bartlett, then walking the short distance from the train station to the school. I’d pretend I was a Victorian era governess arriving at my employer’s residence each morning, mostly because the train station and nearby general store (where I’d buy a green river in the afternoons while I waited for my train) was that old.

I also remember learning how to write an IEP.

I remember it more clearly after Sr. Jane came back — I was kept on as her assistant, and eventually was given my own classroom.

Each year in the spring the school put on a musical to raise funds. They were a lot of fun and the kids really seemed to enjoy them. They were also very well-done.

The school was run by the Sisters of St. Joseph, third order of St. Francis and for a while three of them were my best friends: Jane, Barbara and Margaret.

Here is a brochure that tells a little about the school. It is now called Clare Woods Academy and has moved to Woodstock, Illinois.

I taught the boy on the right in the back and the boy in the very front.
The teacher in the middle is Sr. Margaret, one of my good friends during and after my two years there
The woman in the right center photo and I were friends. The girl at the bottom right was named Susan and in my class the second year I taught there. The boy in the second photo on the left was named Matt and also in my class the second year I taught at BLC

Best Exotic Premier Vacation House Ever

Travel

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Original draft November 2015. Added photo.

Every November since Clare moved to Olympia, I have accompanied my husband to Seattle when he has his annual meeting at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Each year we’ve stayed a few days post meeting and done some traveling with Clare. The first year we mostly stuck around the area and stayed in a lovely Bed and Breakfast not too far away from Olympia. The second year we stayed there again, but also spent a few days on the Olympic Peninsula at Kalaloch Lodge. This year Clare wished to visit the San Juan Islands, so we did…

Andrew was with us this time (yay!) and after looking at lots of rental possibilities I settled on what was advertised on vacation rental sites as “Most Premier Whale Watching Vacation Home on San Juan Island.” I could not figure out the name of the actual house and assumed the owners were making a play on “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” movies. It turns out the house is actually called the San Juan Waterhouse.

You could say I obsessed a bit the in the weeks before the trip. So much so that I pretty much knew the drive from the ferry to the house by heart. We got there after dark so the drive was a little scary — no lights on the roads after you are out of the town of Friday Harbor. We picked up a pizza and salad at Van Go’s Pizza so we could eat when we got to the house.

The house has everything you could possibly need. We watched a little television after the pizza meal. Andrew found a video called “Terminal Velocity” and placed it in the DVD player just when I was chatting with the owner about our arrival. Andrew heard me mention the names of the owners of the house (Ken and Suzanne) and called to me, “Mom! We are watching them on TV!” It turned out that the owners were subjects of a couple videos (one National Geographic and one Disney) about peregrine falcons.

The house is amazing. We were impressed with it at night, but even moreso when we awoke in the morning. One thing I noted on Facebook that night was that I could see the lights of Canadians over the Haro Straight from my bed.

Reunited and it feels so good

Obsessions, People

Original draft 2016. No changes

I met him in 6th grade. I had a bit of an major on-and-off crush on him throughout the rest of my public school years. We were friends — probably the only real boy who was also a friend I had at that time. The last I remember seeing him was when we both attended the community college in our hometown. I was waiting for the bus (I didn’t get my driving license until I’d graduated college) and he was either waiting for the bus or walking to his car. We chatted for a while. It was, if I remember correctly, a nice chat. We reminisced then that was it. I never saw him again.

Over the years I’ve wondered how he was doing and tried to find him on the Internet. I never had luck — his was a common enough name. But I had a stroke of luck earlier this week when a mutual friend of ours (someone else I’d tried to find online and ended up bumping into at a mini-reunion for our high school class) said she wished she could find him. I searched “firstname+lastname” + Elgin Illinois and came up with an obituary of/newspaper article about his grandfather in which the person in question was quoted extensively. I tried again, but used his full first name and the rest of the search terms. That brought me to his father’s obituary which listed the person in question as living in a town in New York. Searching on that brought me to a website of a Yoga instructor who shared the name of my friend.

After looking though his site I was pretty sure it was him and called my other friend to tell her I think I’d found him. I sent off an brief, apologetic email asking if he was the “firstname lastname” who used to live in Elgin, Illinois.

The next morning I got a response. It was him and he seemed genuinely glad to hear from me. He asked for the contact info of our other friend and said to give her his.

Our friend was delighted and has reconnected.

My work here is done…

This actually leaves only one person I’d like to reconnect with left. George Phelps who used to live in Colombia, Maryland and spent some time in London in the late 1970’s, I am looking for you.