Kathy Michael:  

night and while Mr. Chambers was talking to me at the beginning of a class I went to sleep in the middle of his sentence while still sitting straight up and holding a stupid stuffed duck. I was too embarrassed! Listening to our favorite music while painting in Mr, Hubbard's oil classes and the time THAT girl attacked THAT guy behind a canvas and Greg G yelled "Get a room!" Graduated with honors and started grad school right away while working at my first job teaching high school art WAY out in the country of Tangipahoa Parish. WORKPLACE My first job was a part time one as a student worker at Southern. I worked in the library in Black Studies, then I was transferred to the education department. After college I was hired immediately by Tangipahoa Parish Schools. I was a high school art teacher at Ponchatoula High School for three years. I had never heard of this place or this town until I was offered a job there. It was total culture shock with the color issues and just being in a rural area. It was an experience I needed but I was glad to move on. Next I worked nine years at the Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired. There were racial issues there as well but the experience was a good one for what I learned from the kids. We had an excellent art club as the kids could come together there where once they were separated by "regular ed" kids versus "non-graded" or developmentally delayed kids. They came to be known all over the state as my kids were the only special school kids involved in the state art club. They really worked hard. I still hear from several of them all the time. After that I moved to Florida where I had a deaf-blind class and then I taught art to elementary-age children in the new program for elementary arts there. My then husband and I were separated for most of the time I was there so it was financially feasible for me to move back to Baton Rouge. As my daughter started kindergarten, I began to teach a preschool visually impaired class for children with multiple disabilities. All of my babies were born premature. That was my favorite class ever! I would be so tired when I came home but it was joyful stress for sure! I did that for about three years. After that I was transferred to where I was needed to be an itinerant teacher/specialist for visually impaired students all over the parish. I did that until I retired. It is full of paper work and sometimes I had to stop and do the paper which kept me from actually seeing some of the kids. I definitely did not like that part--yet we were supposed to do it all and there is no way possible that anyone can! My super once told me that all the things I do with my kids doesn't matter but that the paper does--so that is what it boils down to these days! I'd still prefer to make a difference with the kids face-to-face rather than on the overwhelming paper work--especially with the pay we DO NOT get and some of the conditions we have to suffer for all the education that is required for what we do. But still I am proud of my kids and sad to leave but I saw more paper frenzy and obstacles coming from the state that would make the job intolerable and impossible with edicts from the state. There were several students who were testimonies to God's glory: one was taken from his natural parents who abused him and put with Christian parents after suffering traumatic brain injury at six months old. With me he typed journals on his own web site, emails and notes to his family in MSWord sometimes using a screen reader for the blind and most times using the 200% view with 36 point font. This is a child whom doctors said would never walk, talk or see. God is good! MILITARY I've never served in the armed forces but I am married to a Vietnam War Vet Marine--and once a Marine, always a Marine! OOORAH! David was wounded--earning a purple heart--- and served from 1968-1970--the last year of which he was hospitalized for his wounds. God is good because he was not supposed to ever walk again!