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Now and Then in Multicultural Education

I was the only child in my class to make it into school. By noon it was clear that this was turning into the biggest snowstorm to hit New York City in my ten years of life. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Heymann said, "Go home, Michele. Go home." But I didn't want to. All morning Mrs. Heymann had been mine. Together we had worked on building up a papier-mache version ofthe Rocky Mountains for the class's three-dimensional map of Our American West. The snow could keep coming down until dark, for all I cared. I loved Mrs. Heymann for a number of reasons. Like the three-dimensional map, all her social studies units were active and project oriented. When we read about Our Latin American Neighbors we also learned their songs, danced their dances and made tacos for Mexico, hot chocolate for Bolivia. She told us stories about her travels which included delicate insertions of her own inner processes. In this she was one of the few adults I had known who shared something of her interior life. In general, I usually found adults to be mysterious and dangerous, their motives mostly obscure. In my moments of childhood miseries which were many, I would promise myself that I'd always remember what it was like to be ten years old, which, of course, I have not been able to do. In any case, Mrs. Heymann seemed knowable. For example, once when she was in France she overheard two Frenchmen talking about the marvels of the Grand Canyon. Why didn't she join the conversation? She usually loved to talk with strangers in French. She was embarrassed. Here she was an American who had never been to the Grand Canyon. And so she vowed she would go there the following summer, and she did. The story of her donkey trip to the bottom followed because after all we were studying Our American West. On the day of the big storm I was starting to mix up a particularly satisfying version of seagreen paint in order to start work on the Pacific Ocean when somewhere far away on Livingstone Street the Board of Education finally decided to close all the schools. Mrs. Heymann insisted I leave. At the time I thought she had to follow the rules even though she was as sorry about it as I was. Later, perhaps later that day or maybe years later, I'm not sure which, it occurred to me that it wasn't just because of what the Board of Education had said; it was because she was eager to go home herself..