A Special Gift

I got a very special Christmas gift from a co-worker on Monday. It was quite unexpected and very thoughtful. We have a school psychology intern working with our regular psychologist this year. We share them with another school, of course, probably a couple of other schools. They have a busy schedule observing, and testing children and, of course, piles of paperwork for documentation. They do home visits and consultations. In addition, we have three regular weekly meetings that they attend and one of those is a committee on which I serve. So that is how I became acquainted with the intern.

She is soft-spoken, very young, really gentle in appearance and manner. And she has an unusual name. One day, after an extra long IEP meeting with a family (where we present the individual education plan that has been labored over by many well-trained people for several weeks, after weeks of recommendations, observations, testing) and explain the extra help that will be given to their child, as well as the official diagnosis of the problem. Frankly, this process is unbelievably elaborate, and burdened by decades of legislation and protocols and layers of bureaucracy--it keeps me out of special education--very intimidating environment. But as the classroom teacher, I participate in the process as just one of the many.

Anyway, after a meeting one day, she and I were walking down the hall and I asked about her first name. She explained that it was Israeli. Her mother is Israeli and they've lived back and forth between the US and Israel. So naturally we ended up talking about CoolGuy's trips there and his fascination with the country and desire to go back there to work or even just visit and how he really wants me to come too. I'd love to go. Then, we laughed about how her parents had decided to spell her name a particular way so it would be pronounced correctly and how that backfired because everyone has to hear it spoken and then see it spelled and then they still mess it up.

But then, I suddenly looked again at her name tag at her surname -- Auel-- (which I guess I hadn't paid attention to much since we adults in schools usually go by first names with one another). I looked again at it and said, "There is a terrific series of books I read years ago written by a woman named "Jean Auel" -- is she a relative?" Yup, her grandmother!! And she is still alive and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Well, after I returned to school on Monday from our winter vacation during which I went to Portland, Oregon, to visit some of our children, Ms. Auel met me in the hallway and presented me with a gift: an autographed copy of The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel. She'd been to visit Grandmother in Portland, Oregon, for Christmas and asked her for a favor for a friend. COOL!

(PS) If you've only seen the horrible movie made from this book, then you should also read the book. It was first published in 1980 and was one of those books I stayed up late to finish.