‘The children were so fascinated, could you possibly play that one more time?’

Harlene Krane is a resource specialist teacher at Telfair Avenue Elementary School in Pacoima. She and her husband, Irv, live in Woodland Hills.

I teach basic skills. Children come to me for one hour a day, some for two. These children have learning disabilities. It might be auditory or visual perception. I have youngsters who come to my class who are in the second or third grade who don’t know their alphabet and don’t know the sounds of the letters.

The first thing I work with is their self-esteem. They already know that they can’t do the work that the kid next to them does in the other classrooms.

The most important thing is a sense of humor. It does something to the atmosphere, to the environment. Knowing that there is laughter in the room, that there is joking, relaxes them.

I have a very structured classroom. They know exactly what to do when they come in. However, when I sit with them one-on-one, that’s when I might go in different directions depending upon the need of the moment. To me, a great deal of learning takes place when one thing is created from something else and you didn’t even plan on it.

We have an activity day on Friday. One day I turned the radio on to some semi-classical music, and it was lovely. Then the record changed, and all we heard was a female vocalist singing a cappella. For a moment you look around, because it sounds like somebody is in the room talking. One boy was standing there, he’s really a macho kid, and he looked at me and said, “Isn’t that beautiful? That’s beautiful.”

When it was over. they said, “You are listening to KCRW from the Community College of Santa Monica.” I said, “You know, Ricardo, I wonder, if we called the radio station, if they would play it again.” I called the station and got Anne Berkovitz. I said, “We just heard Susan Vega singing ‘Tom’s Diner.’ The children were so fascinated, could you possibly play that one more time?” She said, “Oh my goodness, we’ve never had a request like this, just a minute.” She came back and said, “Harlene, we could not possibly fit it in again, but would it be all right if we sent you a record?” I said to the children, “Would you like to have a record?” They got so excited. I said, “That would be wonderful.”

A week later, this record arrived. So I had all the children sit down and write Mrs. Berkovitz a thank-you letter. A week later, she calls again. She said, “You know, we just got the letters from the children, and we’re so excited. Tom Schnabel, the announcer, would like to play the record this morning for the children.” At about a quarter to 10, the announcer said, “Upcoming is Susan Vega,” and everybody was very nonchalant. And then he said, “I want to put this out personally for Arturo, Mario, Joey, Ricardo, Cesar, Jose, Claudia, Ernesto, Norma, Tito, Johnny, Eric, Marisol, Fernando, Octavio, Leopollo and all the other kids in Mrs. Krane’s class at Telfair Avenue Elementary School in Pacoima.”

I put my hand over my mouth in surprise. The children were really confused, because they couldn’t imagine that they were really hearing their names. We listened to the song, and then I shut off the radio and my tape recorder and said, “Do you know what just happened?” I said, “Now, let’s try it again, let’s play the tape.” And we played the tape, and then they began to comprehend. They said, “He must have read all of our letters and saw our names at the bottom of the letters.” They were so excited. One kid ran out of the room. He thought he was on television.

The next day, we took photographs of the children that we had on the wall and sent Tom the photographs along with our thank-you notes.

The next week, I got a call. “Harlene, this is Anne. How many children do you have in your class?” I said, “Twenty-three. Why?” She said, “Because Tom just spoke to A&M; records and they would like to send a record out to each of the children in the class.” I said, “I don’t believe it.” A week later, 23 records arrived.