Karen Osarenkhoe, East Boston
All it took was one teacher. One teacher to convince Karen Osarenkhoe she was not a failure, that she could push past her dyslexia, and off she went- to college, to graduate school, to working as an educator at her neighborhood YMCA in East Boston for the past 20 years.
This summer, Karen started as an early childhood Mentor/Coach with ABCD. She brought the memories of her most challenging students with her, to guide her and inspire her and remind her what caring day in and day out can do.
Here, in her own words, is the story of one student.
“(There was) a three year old, a little boy who, before I came over, was the scapegoat for everything. Whenever anything happened in the classroom, the kids were like: “Stanley did it, Stanley did it, Stanley did it!”
One day, all the blocks are out in the block area, and it was a disaster. And I walked over just to see what happened. They’re like: “Stanley did it.” I’m like: “Stanley’s not even in school today.” That’s how much of a scapegoat this kid was.
And he had a speech impairment, so he didn’t communicate well. So if something happened, fists were flying, his feet were kicking, something became projectile.
His mother would make no contact with us. We had a gate so the kids couldn’t walk out of the room, and she would plop him over and run.
So (one day), Stanley had made like this elaborate structure with Legos, and I had taken a picture of it. So when I got the picture developed, I literally chase mom down the hall to show her. And she’s like: ‘Nobody’s ever said anything positive about my son.’
Because she would get incident reports every day, ‘cause he kicked somebody, hit somebody. I can’t imagine not hearing a good thing about your child. I’d be running, too.
So I made it my intent to pull those good things out whenever I could find them for her.
I also saw that the teachers were feeding into the ‘Stanley’s guilty for everything’. So my favorite memory: We had 30 kids in the classroom, and it was lunchtime, and we’re sitting family style, and I’m sitting between Stanley and this little girl, because the girl was a biter and Stanley was a hitter.
The girl threw a napkin onto his plate and Stanley was just like ‘It’s not mine,’ in his grumbled language that you couldn’t really understand. (And) he throws it back.
And I’m like, (to the girl): ‘Hey, are you listening to Stanley’s words? He’s saying it’s not his.’
And she throws it back. And he throws it back. Now he’s getting upset again. Meanwhile I’m mediating it, trying to teach them skills.
The last time, he swipes it back and the whole pitcher of milk falls over and spills all over the table.
The other two teachers that were working there, I called them frick and frack, (they were) like: ‘Look what Stanley did!’ And I turned to the little girl. I’m like: ‘You can go get paper towels and clean that up because Stanley wouldn’t have spilled the milk if you listened to his words.’
And that was my turning point with Stanley. He realized: ‘Oh, wait a minute, I’m not in trouble for this?’
So he still did get in trouble, but he knew that I wasn’t automatically going to say it was him. And then mom and dad started seeing that, too.
So I met with them to do a behavior chart with him to earn (rewards). I said: ‘Don’t have the reward be something you have to buy in the store, because if you do that, by the time he’s 16, you’ll have to buy him a car. Have it be something like he gets to watch a TV show, or you’re going to read an extra book with him tonight.’
And every day when they dropped him off, they would tell me what he was trying to earn. And then if he started to get upset during the day, I would remind him: ‘Remember you have to get 15 stickers, right? You just lost two, but we have this many chances to earn them back.’
And mom and dad followed through to a T- like, if he didn’t earn the stickers, he didn’t get whatever it was, and he got that message very quickly.
And I always felt bad if he didn’t earn it on Friday, because Friday’s reward was a kid’s meal at Burger King. And I knew it was more for mom than for Stanley, so she didn’t have to cook. But he learned ‘If I don’t get those stickers, I’m not getting the reward’. And his behavior started to turn.
When we first started doing it, I checked in every 15 minutes- every 15 minutes for 10 hours, taking a minute to go over and be like, ‘So we just need to check in: Have you kept your teeth in your mouth, your hands on your body and your feet on the floor?’ ‘Cause those encompass all the behaviors that he had.
And if he did, he was able to put a sticker on his chart.
And then we went to every half hour, and then we went to every hour, and then we went to just transitions during the school day. And by the time he left kindergarten, he wasn’t on the behavior chart anymore.
His mom came back when I think he was in third grade, and they were moving out of the city, and she’s just like: ‘I just remember that you cared enough to work with him and nobody else had done that before.’
So I use that with teachers when I’m running conferences and stuff with them. At the end of the day, you can tell parents their child hit somebody, and they start screaming at you, but you don’t know what baggage they’re bringing through the door.
It’s not okay that they’re yelling, but take it with a grain of salt because nine times out of 10, they come back and they’re like, ‘I didn’t mean to be yelling; it was x, y, z.’ But that’s why you have to have relationship with families before (that point).
I still have on my desk at home a picture of Stanley in, like, an Army outfit, and he’s looking in the dress up mirror. It’s there every day to remind me why I do what I do, ’cause he’s my biggest success story.
I love that kid. I don’t even want to think about how old he is now ‘cause he is probably in college. I hope he’s in college. I hope he’s doing great things.”
Karen was interviewed by story ambassador Collin Heath and photographed at the East Boston YMCA by David Greenfield. We met Karen when she worked as a program administrator there; for two summers straight, she and her staff took our youth curriculum to a new level (pics here). She has since joined Everyday Boston’s advisory board.