“I was completely unprepared
for what I encountered on the first day of school. Led to go
where the need was greatest, I took a job as a 2nd grade teacher in the
inner city. What I found was shocking! The 7 and 8
year olds lived in the most impoverished +neighborhood in the
city. Because the school was nonintegrated, there
were no computers or copiers that worked. Doing my job was a
daily exercise in frustration. The children were already resigned
to their futures. They were walking “clones” of their parents’
conversations, prejudices, transience, and drugs. Violence broke out in
the classroom on a daily basis. It was common behavior for the
children to shove desks into other children or jump from their desks to
fist fight, or scream, “That’s my pencil”. Winning these children
over to the idea that they could be successful people in an environment
different from the one they were in was a formable task. I
asked myself, “How do I do this?”
In comes Eva from San Antonio, a retired teacher who developed the
MELAND concept. In MeLand there is a Me language and
everyone has the same name – “Me.” We have an Invisible Me and a
Visible Me. Each of us Me’s has a space – My Space. Each Me
is the boss of Me. This was it! The first activity was showing
that every person has a space – “My Space”. I asked each child to
step into a hula-hoop. With this fun toy each child
experienced for the first time, “MY SPACE”. They learned
that in their space they have rights. They learned to
respect their own space and the space of others. Suddenly
fighting STOPPED, and instead I heard: “You can’t fight with
me. You are invading my space.” Soon the children
were asserting their rights through talking to each other. I saw
respect and compassion emerge in these little “Me’s” and for the first
time all school year, I looked forward with enthusiasm for the next day
of school.”