At one time in my life, I taught Spanish to middle school kids in a private school in Vero Beach, Florida. I also taught English to Cuban refugees after the Mariel boat lift in 1980-81.
The middle school kids were interesting. Open to anything. Everything. We didn’t have a Gov DeSantis then, censoring textbooks and passing laws against even uttering the word “gay,” in a classroom. Back then, at least for awhile, what a teacher taught in class was subject only to a vague outline curriculum. So I decided that every Friday we would have a psychic day IF the students committed to learning Spanish the other four days of the week.
My ploy worked for several months. The kids were great from Monday through Thursday and came prepared for our psychic Fridays. I heard all kinds of experiences – precognition, OBEs, telepathy, clairvoyance. We came up with psychic activities in which everyone participated. I discovered that these middle schoolers – 12 to 14- experienced things and had no one to talk to about it all.
Then, a couple of months into my experiment, I got called into the principal’s office for a meeting with him and his assistant principal, a woman whose name I don’t recall. Let’s call her Amy. At he meeting, she did most of the talking. She wanted to know what we did on these psychic Fridays.When I told her, she looked, well, kind of horrified.
“We’ve gotten complaints from parents.” Then she named the complaints.
One boy’s parents said their son claimed to travel out of body at night. A girl’s parents said she claimed to recall a traumatic past life. Another kid’s parents didn’t like that I talked about astrology. In a climate like this, who needed a DeSantis and his book banning? His don’t say gay laws? The parents were the censors.
I was told to stop psychic Fridays. So I did. But at the end of that year – my last at that private school – one of my students – Brian – stopped by my apartment with a gift. “I had a precognition that you would love this book, Ms. Trish.”
The book was Stephen King’s The Stand. And Brian was right. I loved the book. I went out and bought his earlier books. “You stopped doing psychic Fridays because of the administration, right?” he asked.
“Yeah. Parents complained.”
He grinned. “You opened up my world.”
I don’t know where Brian is now, what he has done with his life. But he was my confirmation that kids are hungry for these insights.
Sorry, DeSantis. You’re going to lose big time on your attempts to limit what goes on in a classroom. Keep on censoring and passing silly bills. Eventually, it will all blow up in your stupid, arrogant face.
