Special days

Today and tomorrow are overlayed not only with some professinally busy calendars, but with a number of important passages.

Tonight is swan's final graduation of her beloved wolf cubs.....her pack of eighth graders who came to her first in the fifth grade when she and took them to our state's capital and empowered them to testify before the House of Representatives Finance Committe regarding the state's budget for people with disabilities (Now that was a social studies project:)!! Then they became "hers" for the last three years. They arrived with a reputation. They were unteachable, incorridgeable: a whole class of "bad boys" and "bad girls." She would not hear of it. Childern are not in control in her world, and not learning and not growing and becoming well is simply forbidden. She began her magic where she always does. She taught them "Basic German Sheppard." Once they mastered, "come, go, sit, stay, stop, listen, be quiet, etc." the basics of life with her, she began to weave her web. Not only did everyone else seem to "know" these were bad kids, they too had internalizwed this "knowledge." Much of their first year together was spent unlearning that. She told them they were good, they were valuable, that she knew it and she would prove it to them. She told them they were good to each other........and insisted it would be true. She told them they could be civilized and they were. They were feral children. Children who had been failed by the adults in their lives. Children who had not had adults who would make them secure. Adults who let them be in control. There is nothing more frightening for a child than to not have adults in their life who control them and lead them to growth. Sue, for the last three years, has given them this gift. They are children who behave. They are children who have replaced horrible behavior with appropriate fun and learning. They are a class that has come to include some students who are going onto prestigious private high schools on full ride scholarships, having blown the top off of admissions tests. They are children who have become normal eighth graders. Thus, they are not children who are gushingly demonstrative of their affection for their adults. But they are graduating and they are so remarkably unlike what everyone expected of them four years ago. Everyone except my swan. They were anticipated to be a disaster. They are one of the most accomplished classes ever to leave that school.....the final graduating class to ever leave that school.

You, my beautiful swan, have given them back their youth. You are, for most of them, the only adult who has not failed them. When you tear up, as I know you will when they graduate tonight, feel the pride you so richly deserve for the gift you've given them, and know how wildly proud t and I are of you and of your huge gift for creating growth and health in children.

I love you so much:)

Mine always and all ways:)

Tom

Go confidently n the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.