Karen Glasenapp interview, 2003

Abstract

The oral history interview with Karen Glasenapp provides an account of her experiences teaching kindergarten at Tremont Elementary School in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1983 to 1990. Glasenapp discusses the differences in resources and student demographics between Tremont and her previous position at Riverside. She outlines the challenges of teaching in a high-poverty environment, including issues such as parental neglect, substance abuse, and violence. The interview includes anecdotes that highlight the social and emotional struggles faced by children in the community, as well as the lack of parental involvement and the transient nature of the student population. Glasenapp also recognizes the resilience of her students and the dedication of her colleagues. She reflects on the introduction of a Lao program that contributed to the school's cultural diversity and notes the positive changes in the Tremont neighborhood and school since her departure.

Interviewee

Glasenapp, Karen (interviewee)

Project

Tremont History Project

Date

2003

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

45 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Karen Glasenapp interview, 2003" (2003). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 223062.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1393

Related Resources

Tremont History Project @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Karen Glasenapp [00:00:01] Glasenapp. G-L-A-S-E-N-A-P-P.

Interviewer [00:00:08] Could you just give me a brief history of where you grew up, your education prior to teaching at Tremont?

Karen Glasenapp [00:00:14] Alright. I went to college at Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan, and I got a bachelor’s degree. Then I started teaching at Riverside in Cleveland. And then I, after my first year teaching, I went to John Carroll for a graduate school and then I finished my master’s in ’76 from John Carroll and I taught at Riverside, which is almost as close to a suburban school in Cleveland as you can get. It’s one of the highest- We have like the highest scores on the proficiency tests. This is elementary school. And at any rate, we do better than most of the suburbs even. Anyway, I was there for seven years. It was a very nice place. Then I had taken off for five years and when I came back I started teaching full-day kindergarten in Cleveland and my assignment was at Tremont from about 1983 to 1990, I think I was there about seven years. And that’s where my experience came from. And now I’m- Then I transferred back to Riverside because I knew there was an opening, it was closer to my home. And now I’ve been at Riverside since that time. To present.

Interviewer [00:01:32] Prior to teaching at Tremont, what was your initial thoughts going from, I guess like you said, that such a great school at Riverside and then going to Tremont. I mean, just explain a little bit of the feeling.

Karen Glasenapp [00:01:46] The feeling? Well, I knew there was some trepidation. I mean, I knew that it was going to be a whole lot harder. I knew that the people that I would be working with were going to be- These are going to be a much more difficult, complex type of children. It’s not a- These children are not two families. These are two-parent families, almost all of them. It was very seldom that you got someone who had two parents that were living there. And I remember when I first got there and I remember looking at the registrations and almost everyone where it said it was father, it said unknown. I had very, very young parents. I had parents that were 23 with three children, 27 with. I had one lady, 27 with seven children and she only had a fourth grade education. And she said that because she could never read or write, she decided that she was going to dedicate her life to having children. So she had seven of them and I had about, I think I had about her fifth son. Anyway, he ended up having to be referred for being a DH child and pretty neglected. That lady didn’t have any- There Was no husband involved there either. And it seemed to be that. It seemed to be what they did was there would be like a guy who lived in the neighborhood that would be, I’m afraid to say. But any rate, he would be the father of multiple children at the school from different women. So he was like the neighborhood gigolo. And we found, that was interesting for me because I would have a child with a totally different name. And sometimes we’d have children in kindergarten. There were three kindergartens. And I would have a half brother, sister in the other class, but they went by the mother’s maiden name. They all used mother’s maiden name. But then the father would say, oh, that’s my child. And that’s my child too in the other kindergarten. So it was just a whole different mindset almost, you know, and a different kind of morality there. We had two 12 year olds have babies when I was there. A lot of them lived in projects, those projects that were there. And they were pretty bad, they were really bad things. We had- I’ve seen things that I’d never. I’d said we had fetal alcohol syndrome there. I had a child with like, she had no cover to her head, no brain, a lot of congenital things. The first time I had a child that actually died, first and only time I’ve had a student that died. And that was a real tough thing, but that was also- It was a heart problem. But I think a lot of these kids, the parents, the mothers would come in for- This was a whole new interesting thing to me. When you would have- First of all, the parents were very, very young. And then the other thing that couldn’t. It wouldn’t be unusual to get a 20 year old mother, you know, but what was really interesting is when you’d come in, they’d come in for a conference, you’d ask them to come in for a conference and they would come in with shorts on, no socks or shoes, bottle of pop in their hand and potato chip, and a bag of potato chips. And they just sit with you if you could get them in at all. But most of our problem was when we had an open house. If we had like one person come in, we were really excited because you’d have an open house with 30 students and you barely ever got anyone that came in. It was, it was a, it was very different. One of my first experiences there was- This was a funny one. Well, it wasn’t funny at the time. It was rather awe-striking. I had taken my kindergarten class outside to watch them getting picked up and there was a mother on the ground with another mother on top of her, beating her up. And I had never seen that. Riverside. I had never seen that in my whole life. I went to St. Joseph Academy. I went to Marygrove, John Carroll. I never thought of seeing a parent beat up another parent on the street when you were, I mean, where you were letting the kids out. And, you know, unfortunately, I saw that more than once going on there. We had people that we had to not allow into our school because we had another mother who was changed, decided to change in the hallway with no underwear. And so we- You know what they were, though. She was a mentally ill woman. She had children, but she was mentally ill. So we had to watch because some of these parents were from- Were mentally ill. And a lot of the parents were from. They had come from DH classes. The parents were actually technically, what they call. Again, they’re calling it again, retarded. They call it developmentally handicapped for a while. Now they’re back to the word retarded. Well, many of your parents were from those slow classes. And they, in turn have more children who are also slow and they don’t make much of an income. So they live there. And I would say, I don’t remember ever having anybody who had, who wasn’t in the poverty level at that point. Every single child I had was under the poverty level. They were all in- [crosstalk]

Interviewer [00:06:50] This was in the mid ’80s? From the whole time?

Karen Glasenapp [00:06:53] Yeah, the whole time was there.

Interviewer [00:06:55] Was there- I’m not familiar with Tremont. Was there a nicer area? Were there nice families and they sent their kids- Where would they send their kids? Or there wasn’t-

Karen Glasenapp [00:07:02] You know what? St. John- Some people would probably. I’m sure there were. And in fact, I did have. I remember one family that was really nice, that was a mother and a father who had four children. But there’s only one that I remember that I really remember where the mother was involved. And they were a really, really a great family. But there weren’t very many of them. And I mean, sometimes you get some really a good pair. A single parent. I remember another mother, very sharp and a very nice lady. And she had, of course, one child, never married, but she took really good care of that child. We had a mix of- There was black, there was white, mostly Appalachian whites. I mean, almost everybody was Appalachian white. And if they were white, most of them that we got were from the projects. I think the people around there that had a little more money probably went to St. John Cantius at that time. Or there was a Cleveland Central Catholic, but Most of the people that we had were very, very impoverished. But we did have some bright- Every once in a while we got some bright kids, but very neglected children. And then I remember having going on a field trip once and- Well, actually wasn’t even going on a field trip. I was just coming to school. And this one kindergartner came to school - it was winter - with no coat on. And, I mean, this was going on and on. And I thought, well, he forgot it or he left it in the car or something. So anyway, I talked to the mother, and she goes. And I said, you know, your son isn’t dressed properly. He should be wearing a coat. It’s cold outside. And she goes, well, you know, it’s up to him. He’s five years old. He should know. You know, I tell him to get himself dressed, and if he doesn’t do that, then he’ll just learn. And she didn’t think it was her, it was her job to make sure her child at 5 years old was properly dressed. Okay, I was just trying to remember snippets there. This is funny, too. My very first year there, the other teachers told me, be careful who you get for your room mother, because some of these people are mentally ill. And so there was one mother who seemed pretty sharp. So I asked her to be my room mother, and she was. And after a while, her son became a real behavior problem. And I was telling her that this was the case, and she said, well, that’s because I’ve been a while- His father was raising him, and his father was really permissive. And now I’m back, and it turns out I found out she was at the women’s reformatory for beating her social worker up. So I made sure her child passed. [laughs] Only kidding. But I got very used to hearing a whole different lingo of the Ohio Pen. I remember one kid telling me, one little boy telling me that his dad was. Wasn’t getting out of jail because they found a woman in his trunk, that he hit her with a crowbar. And so his dad wasn’t coming home anymore. I had a mother show me the bullet hole that her boyfriend put in her arm. People look really old. I mean, they’re 23 and you think they’re 43. I’m not sure if it’s diet or the stress that they live under, but it’s a really different culture there, and education is not important to a lot of the people. I mean, like I said, you got some very bright children, but they were fewer and far between than you would see in other places. But it wasn’t as nurturing of a mindset there for some reason. It was a cultural difference.

Interviewer [00:10:46] Was the turnover from teachers, was that pretty? I mean, was that- [inaudible]

Karen Glasenapp [00:10:52] It was exhausting. You know what a lot of teachers did. There were teachers there that stayed a long time. And we got a wonderful principal there, Mr. Larrabee, who ended up being a super, an area superintendent because he was so very, very sharp. But I’ll tell you, I was in the room next to the principal’s office and I remember Mr. Pimp. Was it him? I mean, him. I remember where he had a parent in there. He had called a parent in, and then he had left the room for a minute. And we heard big banging, knocking around, and the mother and the kid were beating each other up in the principal’s office. And I mean, I know we called police there. I knew we called police for different things like that. But parents would beat their kids if they were called in for something. They beat each other kids up. Sometimes it could be a little bit frustrating because you were an island. You weren’t getting very much support. And what you taught, you knew that what you taught them was the only thing that they were going to learn. And I remember also we used to get Mondays. Once a month, on a Friday, the kindergarten teachers had meetings because they were the first time that they were starting the full day kindergartens. So they would have meetings for us. So we would send notes home after notes home saying that there would be no school for kindergarten and Friday teachers are going to meeting. And every single month, this one little kid kept showing up and showing up. And I said to him, why do you come to school when, you know, does your mom know that we’re not going to be here? She goes, yeah, but my mom says some other teacher will watch me, so I’m coming anyway. So it was just like you were babysitting. She didn’t want her child, so she was sending them there for, you know, for babysitting. That’s what we were doing. We were babysitting and we really didn’t need to ask them to do anything. But the kids did- There were kids that had really, really great potential. And there were kids that were. I had a lot of kids that didn’t. That for some reason just had learning problems. And we’re not- I mean, there could have been a lot of reasons for it. I know that the parents, mothers, there’s no prenatal. I know that the mothers don’t eat right. I’ve said pop and potato chips seems to be sustenance for new mothers even down there. So whatever is causing these children to be. To come in with a lower potential. I don’t even know if it’s a lower potential. But you know that they cannot catch up. They’re not learning at an average rate. And you don’t know why, if it’s premature, if it’s because- And a lot of times there were families that parents and families of DH- The parents were slow. But even then I remember having one little kindergarten, he was reading and his father came in and said he couldn’t read. He could never read. The father. And he said, I’m so glad that his son could read and he couldn’t. The father, and this was a kindergartner. So I mean, you have to take each kid, you know from where they’re at and move them. But some of them were like at nowhere. I remember one and then I had a twin and I remember the twins name. One was like Betty and one was Mary. And I would say, what is your name? And she never knew which one she was. And I said, were you Patty? And she goes, I’m Mary. And then the other teacher goes, no, this one’s Mary. And I said, who are you? They both said they were Mary. And it turns out the one or the other Mary really knew who she was. But the one I had had no idea who she was and so she couldn’t- Which is unusual for five year olds. Usually they know their own name. So we were taking kids from who knew pretty much zip. No color, no number. They don’t watch when they watch television. This was another interesting thing. You know, kids watch Sesame street and Walt Disney nursery rhymes. Never heard of any of those. But they all knew Friday the 13th and they all knew all the R-rated movies, that’s what they saw. But nobody knew a nursery rhyme. And so I actually, I got a grant for that because I said, you know, these little kids should be exposed to little kid things. And they were exposed to old people things. And it was kind of a sad thing. I remember. And one little boy that I’ll always remember and I remember his name, so I won’t say it, but he was like one of the most difficult children I ever had. And he would walk in with F this and F that as a five year old and he did have a father. And I said something about, how’s your dad? And he goes, they walk so that people won’t- My mom won’t get off her ass, is what he said, to get him out of jail so he’s just sitting there. And this little kid also, when he was walking down the hall, and I had a student teacher with me, but he went in the back of the line. He was in the back of the line, and he took another little sweet little child, knocked him down and started kicking him in the face and head. And we filed a report on that. And it’s the first time in the kindergarten, first and only time that I’ve ever had to file a behavior report on a kindergartner. And then I was trying to get him help. So there’s a program called PEP that we were trying to get him into to help. And the parent, the mother said, oh, sure, she’ll get him in there. She’ll get him in there. So the psychologists, all working to get him in, we did all this paperwork. And that’s a program to help. It’s called Positive Education Program. And it was to help the mother because obviously the mother did not know how to raise this child and was going to try and help her to raise him because she said he was starting fires and she couldn’t control him. And he was pretty bad. He was really awful. I can go on and on about this one little kid, but it’s just kind of a, you know, spice of life, you know, just as a case study on this one little kid. So anyway, we tried to get him to the PEP program, and then the psychologist went to his house to pick her up, the mother up every time. And every single month, she stood us up. Next thing we know, she moved. They moved. And so I called the house and the lady said, you’re trying to get him in classes for the retarded. And I said, I am not. I said, he’s not retired. I’m not trying, I’m just trying to get him into classes for her to help him with his mother and him with behavior and behavior modification techniques. And he goes, well, that’s what she said. She said, you’re trying to get him in retarded class. And so what she did was she moved him out of the district. And as I was talking to other teachers, they say what they’re going to do is they want to avoid this, so what they’ll do is they’ll come back later and put them in somewhere else, hoping that the paperwork is all gone on this child and then start them over again. But obviously this lady, as much as we were willing and trying to help, you couldn’t. And that’s kind of frustrating. And there’s another thing about this little boy, he, this is how he was. The principal had him sitting. Oh, he was referred out of another classroom. He was misbehaving and it was another class. And so the principal had him sit in the hall as a five year old in winter. And he just up and left the school in the winter, no coat, anything. And so we had to go chasing, finding him on the streets of Tremont. And then there was something else that he did that I thought was- Oh, I remember now. This is another scenario with the same child. I had the mother in for conference and she sat with- Oh, so she was in the back of the room and I was with another parent. And this was big, long rooms, by the way. And my teacher’s aide was sitting there with this mother. Anyway, [the student] was using some profanity, so. So [the student]’s mother. Oh, I shouldn’t say his name. Take that name off. Anyway, the mother said, [student], get over here because ain’t getting over there because you’re going to hit me. And she goes, no, I’m not gonna hit you, [student], get over here. He goes, no, I know you are, you’re gonna hit me. He goes, [the student], I promise I will not hit you. Just come over here. [The student] went over, man smacked him in the face. So there was no trust. So this is, this mother really needed some help with this child. But it was kind of a frustration because you could do nothing, nothing for him.

Interviewer [00:19:14] Did you see any improvement from the first years you were there in the early ’80s up until-

Karen Glasenapp [00:19:18] Yes, we had another prin-

Interviewer [00:19:20] I mean financially, financial wise or-

Karen Glasenapp [00:19:21] No, nothing.

Interviewer [00:19:22] It was just-

Karen Glasenapp [00:19:23] Well, you know what, we did get- We ended up, we were called a Lao school. We were getting children- A Lao school is a school for children with different languages. And Tremont was the center for children of different languages. So we got children from Russia, got children from, a lot of kids from Ukraine. Yeah, they were busing, wherever they were in Cleveland. Some of them were in the neighborhood, some of them weren’t. And if it was English as a second language, we had a lot of Hispanics too. Last year there I taught the Hispanic kids. But anyway, those kids were very, they came in being very bright for some reason. We came in and we all said, wow, every time we got these kids from Turkey, no matter where it was. I had a kid from Kenya, really bright kids that we were getting from other countries. But it seems to be the kids that we got- And a lot of them came from those projects and a lot of. I’ll tell you, those kids saw dead bodies coming to school. I Remember somebody said that they saw a dead body, and sure enough, there was the police out, somebody would kill- They saw all kinds of things. These little kids probably had some trauma. I know of a case where there was some trauma where a little girl in my room’s father, it was actually her uncle, committed suicide in front of her. And she came to school and she was pretty shook. But, you know, we still have to teach them anyway. [laughs] That day, and I’m not talking about tomorrow. They walk in, see grandpa die, uncle get shot. They come to school in the morning and they have to learn. And I mean, you do your best, but you find that you’re more than just teaching. You’re doing a lot more than just teaching.

Interviewer [00:20:56] What kind of social services did you have? I mean, was it not enough?

Karen Glasenapp [00:21:00] You know what? I’m not gonna say it wasn’t enough. It would have been enough if we would have parents who wanted them instead of leaving town every time their child was, you know, we were trying to give them help. That PEP program was an excellent program to help children. And usually we could get kids into that. But we- Every once in a while, parents didn’t want to hear about it. They didn’t want to do anything special. They had these children. This is the other thing they do. It was like they would have the kids. The kids would go outside for the day and the parents would be gone and the kids would just come home for dinner. That was it. They really didn’t have much contact. It seemed like they didn’t have much contact with parents. And another thing I had to get used to is everybody, let’s say my stepdad. The stepdad is mother’s boyfriend for that particular week or month or whatever it was- But stepdads would come and go and come and go. And a stepdad didn’t really mean that there was any kind of arrangement. It just meant the boyfriend that was living there. And I had to get used to that terminology because to me, stepdad actually meant something. So I had to get used to the fact that that really meant nothing. That was just mom’s boyfriend that was there. I’ll have to think of some more situations.

Interviewer [00:22:14] That’s alright. So like back to the teachers. None of the teachers lived in Tremont.

Karen Glasenapp [00:22:22] I don’t think they did.

Interviewer [00:22:23] Or they all just came from outside?

Karen Glasenapp [00:22:24] But you know what? We had- Well, not that far, because we had the Hispanic- We had the second language classes. And some of the Hispanic teachers were from that area too. And then you know what else we had? We had other children that died And I’m hearing that in Cleveland, in the lower section that happened, we had kids die from fires. We had to get used to that. Now, in a suburb, you rarely get a child that dies from other than the natural cause. But there we had a child in a head start that was all of a sudden was gone. And then they found out he was beat to death. You know, you find the names in the paper, because you know what, right next to Tremont is, there is a park. Lincoln Park? Well, one of the summers, one summer, I remember reading about a rape, a group rape. And I recognize the names of some of the parent, fathers or the fathers of the kids that I, you know, knew. So I recognized some of the names of the group rapist as being their kids. A lot of the parents, mothers and fathers, had been, were in jail and they came out and this is where they lived because there’s that welfare area down there. And we get a lot of kids from. We were getting a lot. A lot of kids from that poor neighborhood. Then the other thing we had, and this was awful, we had a teacher that was accused of sexually abusing one of her class, one of their class. And she-

Interviewer [00:23:52] Was she at Tremont? At your school?

Karen Glasenapp [00:23:53] Yes. She was the sweetest, nicest lady. Had a husband and kids. And I knew nothing happened, but they came in and they were accusing her of doing this because this little girl went home and said, my teacher made me take off my clothes and was beating me and all of this stuff. Well, anyway, and she came and she was so shook, she said, can you believe that someone would accuse me of doing that? I have no idea. Well, and she was horrified. And they wrote, had to write this up. So it turns out when the story came out, it ended up that the mother’s boyfriend at the time was sexually abusing her. But she was afraid to tell mom because mom didn’t want to hear that her boyfriend was doing it. So she said it was the teacher. So anyway, it did come out and they found out that happened. But then this teacher said, I want that off my record that that was even on there. That should never even show. But it was on the records that she was accused of it. Yeah, the accusation was left on her record because somebody said that, but it was really the- It was the mother’s boyfriend. And then you know what else? We used to have mothers- I had to get used to this too. When a mother would babysit for another mother, she’d leave her kid off at a friend’s house, and then they’d never Come back. I mean, we’re talking months, sometimes years. And I’d have these mothers who were bringing kids to school. But I said, where’s the mother? I don’t know. She left me- She left her with me and she never came back and I don’t know where she is. And we used to get things like that where the mothers would just take off. But these were young people. And then they’d come back, you know, a month or two later and then have their kid. I had one- A lot of drug parents, A lot of people, like I told you out of the psychiatric, a lot of parents that had drug problems there. And then I remember another situation where we had- There was a- This was really sad. There was a family of like four kids or maybe five kids. And there was one in a Head Start program and she didn’t come to school. So the Head Start teacher kept calling me, this child’s not coming to school. We don’t know where she is. And then one of the older kids said, well, she’s babysitting. We said, what? She’s four. This was Head Start. Sent the police over there. They found out that, they came in and there was a baby like a year old, maybe between nine months and a year old. And the four year old was taking care of her mother, had gone off and left all these little kids together. And so when the two little ones went to- I think one was in first grade, maybe third, those two took themselves to school and they left the little 4 year old taking care of the baby. And they walked in and they said that she was trying to feed this baby. And they took, the welfare took the kids then. But then we couldn’t understand. Five months later they’re back with a mother. So you know how they try to keep them with their mother. So yeah, we had a few issues with social services, but because they do that, eventually, somehow they were ending up with their parents. And though we don’t know all the circumstances from it, where they’re just the teachers, we’re wondering, we’re all questioning why is this happening, you know? So it was, it was so different. And then the other thing we had to get used to is how these kids, some of these kids were trained, I learned after teaching there seven years, five, some five year olds were trained to steal. They were trained robbers. They would go into us, you know, when they, a parent would go into a store and steal food, they would, they could call the police and they were out. So they would tell their little kids to go in and steal stuff for them. And then, you know, if the kid got caught, what are they gonna do to a five year old? You know, nothing. So I could tell that my kids. So I had to. I learned that that was happening. I could tell that was happening. So I have to tell the children when they came in, I said, you know, stealing is a bad thing. We shouldn’t do that. Because I was noticing that we were losing all of our equipment. Kids were grabbing, taking anything they wanted to do. But then these were 5 year olds that didn’t really know that was bad because they were- They were told to take this, take that, take this. And so they were doing it. And so we- I had to try to stop them from stealing things, everything that they could get their hands on. And we were all still losing things as they went. But it was. I’ll tell you, it was a very. It was a very, very tough place to teach. And then when I went to Riverside, it was like so much quieter because you’re-

Interviewer [00:28:17] Where is Riverside?

Karen Glasenapp [00:28:18] Oh, it’s on- Actually, it’s by Montrose in Cleveland, by Warren Road Shopping Center. It’s almost at the corner of Lakewood- We’re real close to Lakewood, and we’re right across from Fairview and Rocky River. [crosstalk] It’s considered an urban school because it’s a Cleveland city school. But it’s really not. I mean, we have people who went to college there. Almost everybody graduated from high school. Most of the kids have both parents.

Interviewer [00:28:45] It’s not that far, maybe three or four miles from Tremont?

Karen Glasenapp [00:28:48] Oh, no. Oh no. It’s far from Tremont.

Interviewer [00:28:50] Is it farther than that?

Karen Glasenapp [00:28:51] Yeah, we’re at West 150th and they’re West 14th. [crosstalk] Yes. Yeah. And the homes there are very much- They’re expensive homes, and we get a lot of fire and police there. Whereas over there, if we rare- In Tremont, if we got somebody who finished eighth grade, that was pretty good because most of the parents didn’t. And I don’t remember ever having any parent who finished high school. I don’t ever think I had any parent there.

Interviewer [00:29:22] Wow. What was the neighborhood like?

Karen Glasenapp [00:29:24] It was a dangerous neighborhood. And I remember right across from there, we had to really be very careful at night. And we had to have security there. If we were. If we had a night open house, it was dangerous. And right across there was a- Right across from the school, we used to go to this little deli and there was an Arabic family that ran it. A very nice family that used to run it. We used to go back and forth. And after I left Tremont, I found out she was- She Was murdered. The lady that we used to be, she was murdered from robbery. Yeah, there was a lot of robberies there. There was a lot of things that went on there that these poor kids, they’ve seen, these little kids have seen more in their little four, few, you know, years of life. And we used- I was always calling- I remember we were calling kids a lot, I think almost every day, for child abuse. I had a kid who came in once. His face was way, way up, and I said, oh, my gosh, what happened to you? And he said, my mom threw a coffee cup at me this morning. So, of course, we went to the principal and we called kid’s, and it was investigated. And this was another mom who was 21 years old with three kids. And she said, actually, she was not- She was one of the better mothers. I mean, she was the one who would communicate with the school and come up and actually cared about her child. And so she came up and they, you know, they let her. They let her go with this. But these kinds of things were not unusual, but these poor parents were the mothers. So many of these mothers were abused women too. And they would be- And then, this is a funny story, too. My last year there, I had a mother that I learned not to be intimidated by these people, because a lot of them would come in drunk, and, you know, you’d be talking to them, and you knew that you’d smell the alcohol in the parents. I’m talking. But anyway, I remember this one mother coming in, and she said to me, and her face was kind of swollen. I said, oh, my goodness, you had a rough night. And she said, yeah, well, that other lady’s still in the hospital. She said, I got her good. [laughs] But that’s kind of different than. It’s a whole different scenario than you would probably see at the other schools, you know. And you know what? Kids would never get picked up. You’d be sitting. Here’s another little game they used to play. After school, we would always, as a kindergarten teacher, we would make sure that every child was picked up. Well, then we found out that some of these kids, we thought they were picked up, you know, by brother, sister, or they go home with this friend or something. Well, what they did was they used to drop ’em off at the library that’s down there. And the library became the babysitter until mom decided to come or someone came to pick that child up. So we got an- I think we got a note from the library that we had to send out telling the parents, do not, you know, we are not babysitting children. Children are not supposed to be here unless they’re accompanied by a parent. But when the school went out, they would just- They would just all go to the library. And that was unsupervised. So it was a very- That also made it a little bit a different circumstance. It was like the parents weren’t responsible. We were supposed to feed them, we were supposed to give them supper, clothe them. And some of the parents would say- I remember one father had a little speech with me, because the child was having trouble with numbers. And I said, you know, your daughter’s having a little trouble with these numbers. Could you please, you know, reinforce this at home? And she goes- He goes, to me, I’m not enforcing anything. That’s your job. You’re the teacher. I’m not a teacher. I’m not a teacher. You’re the teacher. So I’m not doing anything. And he didn’t. And that child did end up in a special class for something. But here’s a parent who never took it as a responsibility to teach. It was always- I mean, I thought, well, who teaches you to brush your teeth or use a bathroom? But they did not feel that that was their job. And so they didn’t. And they didn’t alter their lifestyle for the children, very many of them. But like I said, we would get- We would get some. They were basically kids. They were just- Had a really tough life walking in. [recording stops and resumes]

Interviewer [00:33:46] -contact with any teachers that are there, or have you heard of- Is it getting better or-

Karen Glasenapp [00:33:51] Yes, I’m in contact with teachers that I taught with. Some of the same teachers that were with me are still there. And they told me that it’s a much, much nicer, nicer school now that the children- Because I guess they closed- Going down the hill, there is a housing project. Well, they closed up a lot of those housing projects. And so they said that they’re not getting as many of these really impoverished children. They’re getting some nicer children. They’re getting a lot of the loud kids, kids with different second languages. But they said that it is changing and that it’s a much nicer group of children and people more interested in education. So, yeah, they did say it changed. I think it was very- At those times, it was really, really very difficult. But they’re saying that it is- It’s a difference. It’s gotten so much better. So that people used to burn out down there. Teachers could just stay there so long. And it was really grueling. Like I said, you were the social worker. You were calling kids every day. I remember I called the police because one kid had thought he had a rock. He brought in some suspicious looking sugar from his mother’s closet drawers. They were bringing in things. We had to check everything. But that all goes in the way of making it difficult to teach when you have to run out and call 911, had to call out and call the police to investigate some suspicious looking substance on a child. That type of thing was difficult.

Interviewer [00:35:34] But they said-

Karen Glasenapp [00:35:35] But they said it’s much better now. Yes. That the children there are much easier to teach now.

Interviewer [00:35:45] And it that just the kind of people that are moving in there?

Karen Glasenapp [00:35:47] Yes, I think so. But I think, I also think that a lot- What I’m hearing from them is that a lot of the people that, that are there don’t have children. And if they do have children, they’re not going to treatment because it seems to be there’s more of buses from what I’m hearing. There’s more buses coming in and out which means that the kids are not from walking distance. So I’m hearing that there’s less. But see all those children were walking distance when they had- And they were in full swing when I was there. The housing project was in full swing and all kinds of things were going on there that were very difficult. And I know, I remember that one time when the kids came in and they said they saw a body and they reported it. But these poor kids saw things that we would probably, maybe never see in our lifetime. But no, I heard it was much nicer. And you know what else? We used to have leaks in the school. A lot of leaks. And I had to get used to roaches. I’d never seen a roach till I was there. But they were in the teachers’ desks, they were all over the place. And at that time Cleveland was in really bad shape with money and they were cutting services while they were- And so there wasn’t as many people coming in to service the schools, you know, for bugs. But then even when they did, the kids would be bringing ’em in. You’d see them, they put, they were in the kids coats and so the kids would take off their coat and then roaches would be crawling over it. So as much as you, even if you did try to try to get rid of them and have a monthly people coming in to kill them, you were still having kids bringing them in all the time. I learned all about roaches from the kids.

Interviewer [00:37:27] What did they- Your friends that are still there, I know that they were talking about closing the school at one point?

Karen Glasenapp [00:37:33] Yeah, but I guess it’s an old big school, but they’ve done a lot to fix it. They have all new windows in it. And they were saying, oh, they told me that you wouldn’t believe how different. How they spent a lot of money to fix the school up. And they said that it’s in really good shape now. Why now? Because years ago when I was there, it was in terrible shape. But since then, they have put in all these improvements and fixed it all up. And they said it’s pretty- Actually it’s pretty nice now. And it’s huge. It’s three floors. It’s a huge, huge school.

Interviewer [00:38:04] Do you think that helps with teaching the children the fact that they fixed it up? I mean, is that like a whole different type of attitude from the kids as well as-

Karen Glasenapp [00:38:14] Well, I remember having to take my kids out of my classroom once because mice were running around the room. I didn’t want the kids to get bitter, and I actually did that. I went to the principal, I said, there’s mice in my room. And then they called the custodian. He came in and got rid of them. Well, actually brought them into the hall, and then they got rid of them. But that was years ago when those, you know, when schools didn’t have money, we- There were cutbacks in those days. We got cut back, and we got cut back with things like that, you know, where there wouldn’t be as much maintenance. There wouldn’t maintenance. And we used to have little buckets of water all the way. So. So when you’re teaching, I mean, if it’s starting to rain in your room, you’re moving. And it does get in the way of education. Yes, yes, it would. If you were even in Cleveland State. You’re in a classroom, it starts to leak. You have to move. It’s disruptive. And then every time it rains, it’s disruptive. And in the hallways. But I’m hearing that the building is in really much, much better shape. And they were talking about closing, and they’re saying, why are you going to close it when you just put in, I guess, hundreds of thousands of dollars in, and it actually is in pretty nice shape?

Interviewer [00:39:27] So the kids feel they go to a school, they don’t care about the school, they don’t care about us. They don’t- I mean, look at how the rundown in school and now maybe with the money that they’re, you know, they’re starting to show. Like maybe, you know, they care about the school, maybe they care about us. Maybe you can-

Karen Glasenapp [00:39:46] Let’s bust edit if worse, nothing more, that it’s less disruptive to your education when you’re in a clean, warm building or when your heat goes- Oh, that didn’t happen here. But I mean when I’ve been in buildings where the electricity has gone off and you’re all sitting in coats and in the dark and the electricity goes, you know, things, little things happen. But you really, when you expect to learn, you really, you need to have optimum circumstances, especially with these kids, because they could learn. I mean they can all learn at their own rate. But you don’t want, you need as less disruption as possible to get the optimum results. You know, you want the optimum circumstances at all times because these are your at risk kids. These are the kids who really need the summer school. These are the kids that- And what’s amazing to me is how you can, how so many of them actually did have the potential to learn. How many not they all have the potential to learn, but I mean to learn at grade level. By the time they’re through with kindergarten, how many of those kids could actually read and read sight words and do things? It was amazing how many actually can do that with no help at all. But we did have a full-day program.

Interviewer [00:40:55] You said you’ve had some friends that have [crosstalk] been there for twenty years.

Karen Glasenapp [00:40:59] Twenty years, yeah.

Interviewer [00:41:01] I mean how do you think that gives them the resolve stay there that long? I mean, from-

Karen Glasenapp [00:41:08] Well, they said that it’s getting, it’s, they said it’s getting better. One of them is a friend of mine is the Head Start teacher and she’s been there since ’84. And the other one is a kindergarten teacher and she was there since ’85. And I saw both of them like last week, but they said, yeah, they said it’s definitely a nicer area. They do get a lot of kids from out of the area now. There’s more buses and things like that. But I don’t know how many little kids are actually raised there anymore.

Interviewer [00:41:35] And that’s from. You said from the language program that they have?

Karen Glasenapp [00:41:40] Yeah, we have a Lao program. We had the Hispanic- Yeah. English as a second language. And then we also had another ESL language. Another one we’d have what we did in the kindergarten. We had one class that was the Spanish and I did teach that one year, the Hispanic. And then we had another class that was, that would take- Had regular kids and also had other languages. Other languages like Russian, Romanian, Turkish. And we had one person try to service those other kids, but these kids would walk in. They knew mama and toilet. And it was amazing. I never worried. I used to worry, oh, how am I going to teach them anything? They just don’t know how to speak. But these little kids have a tremendous ability to learn language. By the time I was finished teaching their eight years, I never worried because I knew these kids by the time that they were out of here would know, would have a really good handle on language. And they did. And it wasn’t anything I did. I think it was just the fact that they were exposed to languages and that ability when they’re really young. They do say that the kids at very young ages have much stronger ability to learn and that after a certain year, the neurological pathways are a little bit more shut than they are when they’re younger. But yeah, it was amazing. But there were some wonderful teachers at that school. Excellent, excellent people at that school, too that I know that they did all they could. And if any, I mean, they would have been excellent at any school. These were teachers. And I remember talking to one teacher and she said to me, you know, we have some excellent teachers in Cleveland. And her own daughter went to one of, Hathaway Brown or one of the more elite schools, and she paid this huge tuition. And she said, there are teachers better here than her daughter had at over there. But it’s people like that that are really dedicated that really help those kids. And you know what? We had a child who was from the other kindergarten graduated and now a teacher in the Cleveland system, but she went through the Tremont system and was very poor and has been a teacher now for a while. So, I mean, you still get some good cases. But these kids are coming in from up with a real, real bear on their shoulder. And sometimes we can get it off, and sometimes you can’t, you know, but you try because we’re there with, you know, as a teacher, you’re there with them for nine months, but you can’t be with them the rest of their life. And some their parent is. And you know what else we had? I should say this very transient. These kids were here. They were in West Virginia. They were here, they were in West Virginia. It’s not like we had kids there from kindergarten. Most of them weren’t there again by sixth grade because there was so much transient activity there. So we’d have kids in three months they’re gone, and then three months they’re back again, and then three months they’re gone somewhere. And that’s just how it is. And we had grandmothers raising kids a lot because moms were doing drugs, so grandmas were sometimes having kids, and it was very difficult. Thanks.

Interviewer [00:44:51] I really appreciate you sharing your stories and your time with me. If there’s nothing else, I guess we can go ahead and wrap it up then.

Karen Glasenapp [00:44:58] Okay.

Interviewer [00:44:59] Thank you.

Karen Glasenapp [00:44:59] Okay.

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