Tennessee Taylor

There is an opening on Maggie’s social calendar. It seems a party planned for next week has been cancelled. The honoree left town in a hurry.  We are both happy and sad about that.

The party was for Ms. Taylor, Maggie’s former teacher. Even though she stopped being Maggie’s teacher, she was a frequent visitor to the class and volunteered to do a science project with the kids every week. Ms. Taylor left at the end of the last school year. She decided not to sign a contract to teach this year because she and her husband were going to leave San Francisco.  This City is a great place to live and it draws young people from all over the place, but when it is time to settle down and think about buying a place or having a family, many decide to go back home or somewhere where they have family.  In addition, it is just too expensive here for most.  It is unfortunate because we lose some great folks.  Ms. Taylor and her husband are two of them.

 They planned to head to Nashville where her sister lives.  Good news. Then this nasty job market interfered with their plans, neither of them could find work in Nashville. Bad news. They stayed here even though she had given up her job. Good news (for us.) Then she discovered she was pregnant. Great news!    If they got too close to June, when the baby was due, they would wait to continue the job search in Nashville.  Suddenly things started happening on the job front and her husband found the job he wanted in Nashville. Wow! Great news again.

The plan was to leave in a few weeks and get everything together. That allowed time for the kids to give her a baby shower next week. Everybody was very excited, except her doctor.  Doctor’s orders: She has to go Nashville now, get herself settled, and leave the moving to her husband.   The baby shower is off, but that's a small price to pay for a healthy baby. 

So Ms. Taylor is gone. She left yesterday and she will not be back. We will miss her. We are sorry we will not get to see her beautiful little girl who will have the beautiful name Elisabetta. However, there is facebook and blogs and we will meet her online, which is so 2011.

San Francisco, Mission High, Maggie, and her classmates say thank you and goodbye to Nikki Taylor Guerrini and her husband Richard. We wish you nothing but happiness in Nashville with your little girl.    

Changes in Latitudes

Today is Maggie’s last day of Summer School. Her first full year of high school is behind her. That is hard to believe. Even though it was a transition year, it’s been another great year for Maggie school wise. Many special ed parents are frustrated by the programs and services their kids get from school districts. Not me. The program she is in fits Maggie like a glove. She is thriving and excelling because of that.


Of course it’s more than the “program” it’s the people who make it work. Maggie has always had excellent teachers who are committed to Maggie and her peers. This is not an easy population to teach. Often the physical disabilities make it more difficult to figure out the intellectual level of the child. If Student X is not hitting a switch to make the talker work it could be that s/he doesn’t understand why s/he should hit the switch or it could mean that s/he cannot move the right arm to reach it. There is a lot of trial and error, starting and stopping. Yet the engine chugs and everyone moves forward.

A friend who has a child in the same program a couple of years behind Maggie was lamenting an unexpected change in teachers and I told her I believe the success is a combination of the teacher, the program and the student. I said that to make her feel better and maybe to reassure myself as well. Maggie, too, is facing a change in personnel.

Maggie’s teacher, Ms. Taylor is moving away. San Francisco is a place where many young people come to stay for a while, but when it is really time to settle, they leave because it’s so expensive here. A teacher’s salary will go a lot farther in other parts of the country. We already know who the new teacher will be. She is already at Mission, everybody likes her and she already knows all the kids, so I am hopeful things will continue to chug forward. I have no doubt that it will, and even though Maggie will have another transition, it will be relatively smooth.

Maggie will miss Ms. Taylor. They really hit it off. Ms. Taylor’s energy and talent are great. the kids were happy and engaged in the class and with one another.  She also managed the classroom like an old pro and there is a lot of management involved. There are classroom aides, nurses, in the class and therapists, teachers and others in and out of that classroom all day long. Ms. Taylor had to juggle all the needs of all the kids and all the personalities of all the adults. She did it all with a smile.

Thank you for everything Ms. Taylor. We wish you well as you leave California. I hope the kids and the parents in Nashville realize how lucky they are to have you.