A Close- Up Look At People Who Matter : Teacher, Aide Left a Special Mark on Teens

Room H16 at Calabasas High School has been known to draw former students back, sometimes years later.

“You look and look, and finally see the child in there you once knew,” said Marlene Schwartz-Ehrens, who has trouble recognizing these adult visitors as once being in the special education class here.

Students in the class have either learning disabilities or serious emotional problems. Ted McKay, the teacher, and Schwartz-Ehrens, the instructional aide, work together to help them find ways to cope.

“I came to visit because Mr. McKay and Mrs. Ehrens have been almost family to me,” said one former student who is now in college. He graduated in June and gave McKay a note that began, “I owe you one.”

A note from another student reads, “Without your help, I wouldn’t be where I am today.” McKay also keeps a program of the 1995 Calabasas High School graduation on the wall with names of his students highlighted.

This has been a room of anger. Students, frustrated because of emotional problems, have thrown chairs and overturned tables. But it is also a room of forgiveness, in which McKay and Schwartz-Ehrens work together to disarm that anger with humor, firm resolve and a simple message that, “You had a right to your anger, but you did not have a right to act that way,” McKay said.

“It takes time to chip away at all of that anger,” said Schwartz-Ehrens, who has worked here for 10 years, six of them with McKay. “And it takes chipping away to get to that diamond underneath.”

“This room, since I’ve been here, has had good and bad, but most of it’s been constructive,” McKay said.

Last week’s visitor wasn’t one of the angry ones. He had an attention deficit disorder plus a dyslexic condition that affects the way he perceives numbers. Until he came to that room, he had been considered lazy. “I don’t think lazy fits at all,” McKay told him. “You know you’re banging your head against the wall and frustrating yourself trying.”

McKay understands that frustration. All his life he has immediately forgotten what he reads.

“Studying has always been very difficult for me,” said McKay, who learned to take extensive notes and study harder to compensate. He can share that experience with his students. “I know how to work hard now,” the visitor said.

“You don’t expect their problems to go away,” McKay said. “When they come here, they have had 15 or 16 years making them who they are.”

But the two work as a team. When McKay’s explanations for the students get too complicated, it is usually Schwartz-Ehrens who points it out for him. A car accident several years ago that caused some damage to her brain ended her career as a dental hygienist and forced her to relearn basic skills.

She knows from experience where a student can get lost.

“We all teach one another,” she said. “I’ve learned more from them than they have learned from me.”

“I love my job,” McKay said. “I love these kids.”

And their students come back, Schwartz-Ehrens said, because “somewhere along the line they remember there were two people who invested themselves in me.”

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