Aaron and the Remedial Teacher

When I was in my last year of elementary school, which going to this school was no better then the hardships I was having to endure at home.

For this school not only had Anti-Semantic segregation, but outright cruelty, which made one work twice as hard to even attempt at an education and one never knew from one minute to the next if someone was going to attack and try to hurt you.

Nevertheless, one day my teacher requested to speak to me privately to ask if I wished to be a remedial teacher, for students about two grades younger then me; which I was very happy to do.

The first teaching session, I found out that I was actually to only have one particular student and his name was Aaron. The reason I was chosen was because no one else wanted to teach or help Aaron learn, because he was Jewish.

While I do not remember or ever knew Aaron’s last name, but he always reminded me of his appearance and demeanor as coming from the Kohn family; which if he was, we where actually cousins.

Aaron’s actual learning difficulty was he was singled out from the rest of the students, as I was and had to suffer much of the same mistreatment in school as I was having to endure and it made not just learning difficult; but just the day by day being in school.

Aaron was actually a brilliant student, but because of the Anti-Semitic bullying hardships he just needed a little help to understand that while what was going on was not his fault anymore then it was mine; but the workbooks became easy to grasp. Both of us just had to learn to bear up against the bullying, to learn and he further learned through method’s that I had learned a few years earlier from a private teacher I had named, Mrs. Zook; who her and her terminally ill husband, I had grown to love dearly for the appreciation and respect we had for each other. Also she had a way to make learning not only easier, but enjoyable; which I still carry with me to this day.

One day, when I went for my usual teaching session for Aaron is when I actually learned why I was singled out to teach him and it was because the school thought we where alike with the same idea of appearance and background. It so happened this particular day for some reason Aaron was absent from school, which I was hoping was not due to illness and he later told me he was fine and not to worry.

That same day, I substituted for another remedial teacher that was also absent and begrudgingly by the monitoring teacher; I was given an American student.

Which as this turned out this American student actually liked my teaching methods and was learning better.

When it came time for me to finish elementary school, it was clear my teaching was having to come to an end, which actually I found was very sad; because Aaron was not only flying through his lesson’s by this time, but we had became good friends.

The very last day I was to be at school and I was going to be moved again during the summer and this time out of state; I went to say good-bye to Aaron and that we where both sad that we where not only going to get to see each other anymore nor was I going to get to be his teacher anymore.

While he is another one of those people I have never forgotten, I still remember his sad face reflecting my own as he stood in the classroom doorway when I was having to leave and still telling each other in a bit of a yell, how much we would miss each other.


To this day, I have wondered if he finally was able to grow up happy and how things did turn out for him.-HRM Deborah