Classroom on Wheels a safe haven for kids at risk

Rachael Levy

Saturday, June 14, 1997 | 3:18 a.m.

Homer darted to the bus door and tugged at the handle. Behind him, children painted, threaded wooden beads on string and sprawled on the floor solving puzzles.

The makeshift classroom was filled with playful sounds of giggles and curiosity and calls for the teacher to look at this artwork or that tower of blocks.

Homer yanked harder.

A classroom volunteer pulled the 3 1/2-year-old boy away from the door and scooped him into his arms. Homer struggled to free fists and feet.

"I'm gonna get my gun!"

Earlier he threatened the teacher, shouting he would "kick her ass!" She told Homer his behavior was not acceptable and pulled him into her lap, crossed her arms over his flailing body and concentrated on the other children.

The volunteer saw Homer struggle and cuss, and disapproval flashed across his face. Now he turned to the teacher.

Sandra Verniel studied the child and the tenseness around his eyes that would not disappear when he smiled. His face was hard like the neighborhood.

It was the boy's first day on a Classroom on Wheels bus and she knew little about him other than his name: Homer Reed. He lived in Weeks Plaza, a low-income housing project also home to gang-bangers and drug dealers.

Strangers sped up when they passed the apartment complex and Sandra warily walked the neighborhood, like the outsider she was.

Her bus was a refuge for children who lived with the constant threat of danger, a haven where it was safe to play. Her preschool students witnessed cocaine sales, shootings and gang recruitment. They dreamed of death. Sandra was required to stage fire and gunfire drills.

Now she looked for clues into Homer's problem. Child-care experts say behavior is a language that can be read, and misbehavior is a sign of a discouraged child, one who feels abandoned, belittled or whose creativity is stifled.

Wherever Homer walked, a path cleared. The slow children, the ones who did not quickly hand over the demanded snack, toy or place in line, learned to avoid him. Those attracted to his brashness called him Mac Daddy and mimicked his moves.

When he hit, destroyed games and ruined artwork, Sandra would take Homer gently by the arms and explain that the rules of the bus made his behavior unacceptable and gave him the choices of finding a new attitude or sitting in the library.

The classroom aide would glance over disapprovingly. The volunteer, Mario Muncey, searched for reasons to not return to the bus.

Homer was getting away with too much, the aide warned Sandra. If she wasn't tougher, his behavior would land him in remedial classes like special ed. The aide knew this because her niece had a similar behavior problem.

Sandra remained silent. Her gentle and patient approach had been successful with dozens of children and she was confident it would work with Homer. But the aide would need proof.

Sandra set limits and told Homer his freedoms would grow as he grew, but improvements were measured in baby steps.

No matter how often she pulled Homer aside and explained the rules, he broke them. He climbed into the driver's seat and played with the steering wheel. He opened the refrigerator and took out Sandra's lunch. He made it halfway out the bus window, determined to walk home alone, before Sandra grabbed him.

Sandra believed Homer acted too much like an adult, robbed of his childhood, burdened with the responsibility of caring for himself. When Homer didn't get his way, he threatened.

She showed Homer the picture of Martin Luther King Jr. that hung in the classroom and told him about King's message of nonviolence.

"He said use words," she told him.

Homer appeared interested, asking where the man lived and if he was still alive. But then he would lash out and the COW bus would fill with cries and chaos.

A group of children sat in a circle playing Connect Four. Around and around they went, dropping plastic chips into the slots in the top of the stand-up checker board. Chips the size of quarters went click, click.

Homer squeezed into the circle. Around and around they went, but when it was Homer's turn he dropped two, three chips through the slot. Click! Click! Click!

But the children kept playing, passing the bucket of chips and waiting for their turn. Sandra permitted herself the small hope that Homer could join the game without disrupting it.

Click ... click ... click, click, click!

Hey, Mac Daddy was taking too many turns!

Click ... click ... click, click.

No fair!

Click! Click!

Chips scattered across the floor.

The aide looked at Sandra. "See?" she said. Homer had hit two students and he ruined the game. Sandra stepped in, defeated.

Homer had the run of the housing project, riding around on a small bike equipped with training wheels. He'd chat with apartment maintenance workers and drop by the manager's office for candy. Apartment security knew him by necessity: If someone was throwing rocks, it was probably Homer.

Beat cops called him Homer the Roamer, but he wouldn't return their waves. On the COW bus, Homer painted pictures of guns and played a make-believe game of handcuffing children and taking them to jail.

"Give Homer another year or two and he will be a little adult," said Metro Police Officer Eric Fricker, community policing coordinator. "I expect to see him later in life, if you know what I mean, given his family structure and his attitude."

Homer's mother is in jail and she won't be released until July. No one talks about his father.

Homer and his three sisters -- Markesha, Havasha and Maliyha -- live with their grandmother, Samantha Simmons, in a small, two-story apartment in the rear of the housing project.

Officer Fricker met Homer on the COW bus, picking him out of a lineup of kids because the boy's nickname troubled him. He asked Sandra if she understood its meaning.

A Mac Daddy is the street name for a MAC-10 semiautomatic, Officer Fricker said. It's a bad, ugly weapon with a big clip, and it wears out fast. It's the kind of gun Arnold Schwarzenegger would fire from both hands as he walked, the kind of gun carried by a gang-banger.

Grandma Simmons shakes her head no. Her grandson was a bright little boy, a leader, a Mac Daddy. His smile melted women's hearts and when he danced ... he had soul.

On the COW bus Sandra used music as a signal it was time to clean up. She played it loud and the children would sing along as they picked up toys.

Homer wouldn't clean, he would toss back his head, close his eyes, grin and move. He grabbed his crotch and humped the air and the floor in time to the rhythm. Then he'd look to see if he was being watched.

Sandra told Homer his behavior was inappropriate for children and it made her sick to see him dance that way, but Homer didn't see how the rules applied to him.

This kid may be a real problem, Sandra thought, and she felt anxious. There were too many things Homer had to learn.

Child-care experts say it takes 21 days for a child to form a habit. The child-development books left over from Sandra's training as a Montessori teacher contained pithy advice: "Misbehavior stems from discouragement. ... Look at the results of behavior because it reveals purpose, rather than at the behavior."

Sandra dwelled on her students' small problems, waking in the middle of the night with an idea, searching for solutions during the day.

She was headed to another student's house on a school errand when she passed a Dumpster and heard Homer. His voice crashed against two other young voices and Sandra stepped into the shadow, curious.

She moved closer.

Homer struggled with two boys for control of a Big Wheel, all shoving and pushing each other until one boy forced himself down on the seat.

Sandra inched closer. The boys were intent on the bike and didn't notice her.

Homer pushed the third boy away and tried to squeeze on the seat. But the boy was just as determined to ride the Big Wheel.

A small, hard fist shot out of nowhere.

Homer stepped back, stunned by the punch.

"Dd ... dd ... don't hit. Use words!" he yelled.

Sandra caught her breath.

Homer's change -- small, almost imperceptible -- was noticed and not only by Sandra. Children were not pushed from line quite so often and sometimes they could eat their snacks in peace.

It wasn't long after the Big Wheel fight that Homer grabbed the cuff of a boy who was fighting with another student and pulled him aside.

"Do you know who that is?" Homer asked the boy, pointing to a picture. "That's Martin ... L .. Lee ... L .. Luu ... He says don't hit."

The words were a step, but the body wasn't following through. Homer tried to hit Sandra and other children and was kicked off the bus at least three times, although he begged not to go. Hand-in-hand, teacher and student walked to Grandma Simmons' apartment in silence.

At school, Sandra urged Homer to pause before he clenched his fist. "Count to 10," she said. "Think." She sent home small notes that highlighted his good behavior and Homer would return to school with a better attitude.

Little improvements built upon each other. The aide noticed the change and stopped talking about her niece in special ed. The volunteer's days on the bus became the highlight of his week.

Sandra still walked Homer home sometimes. Not always for bad behavior, but because Grandma Simmons couldn't pick him up. On one of their walks, she lifted his hand above his head and slowly spun him around. Homer smiled and twirled.

Then he told his teacher it was her turn.

"Homer, I've done this before. Now it's your turn to be a child," Sandra said.

By the time summer rolled around, Homer had a new bike, a sleek, silver BMX bike twice his size. The 4-year-old stretched arm and leg to meet bar and pedal and chased down the ice-cream truck for snow cones. He chatted with security and asked the beat cops if he could talk on their squad car radios.

Sandra spent her summer planning the next school year and thinking of new ways the children could learn. In September, she drove her black-and-white COW bus to Weeks Plaza, opened the door and watched the children climb aboard.

She looked and then looked again.

No Homer.

His little sister Havasha, who at 3 was old enough to join the COW bus, was there with her grandmother.

Where is Homer? Sandra asked.

"We'll bring him next time," Grandma Simmons said.

Class after class, the grandmother came only with Havasha.

Homer would ride by on his bike, waving at the children through the window. Sometimes he would drop in during Sandra's lunch period and check out the toys on the bus. But she couldn't get him to return to school.

Eventually she learned that during the summer Homer had been tested for the federally funded preschool, Title One, offered at Bracken Elementary School across the street from the housing project.

Teacher Cora Lou Baker had tested Homer's knowledge of colors, numbers and social skills. She said Homer tested "very high" and other 4-year-olds had greater educational needs.

The words went straight to Homer's head: He was too smart for school.

Children forget hard-earned skills when they miss large amounts of school and Sandra thought about the progress Homer had made the year before. Classroom on Wheels officials say kindergartners who don't attend preschool are easy to pick out. They don't know their colors, how to write their names or even the proper way to hold a pair of scissors.

Sandra wouldn't give up easily and after school she brought homework suitable for a preschooler, ditto sheets of easy mazes and blank paper to draw on. But she also brought a sheet of paper with the name "Homer" written in dotted lines.

"If you think you're too smart to go to school, then you're not very smart because you're not learning," she told Homer, giving him the homework.

Homer liked to sit at the kitchen table while his big sister, Markesha, did her first-grade homework. He sat down and solved the mazes and drew pictures.

But the paper with the name "Homer" ... that was another thing. The boy tried and tried, growling in frustration when his letters did not resemble his teacher's.

Days passed and Sandra brought more homework and another page to practice writing "Homer." Sometimes she walked Havasha home from school and she would hold out her hand so the girl, her face a tiny, chubby version of her brother's, could spin underneath.

The bus came and went and then came back again. Sandra slid the bus parallel to the curb and cut the engine.

She was early and she climbed out of the driver's seat and looked into the rear. Everything appeared intact. Collapsible tables hung from the walls and two stacks of small chairs sat in a corner.

She walked to the rear of the bus, past shelves neatly separating colored pencils, tubes of glue, paper, scissors, hole punchers and ink pens.

She pulled the lid off a large plastic box filled with wet sand, inside lay buried beach shovels and a pail. When she got to the back, she organized pots of paint that had shifted during the drive. She set out paintbrushes and filled a cup with water.

Behind her was a small bucket filled with water and doll clothes waiting to be hung on the short clothesline.

Children climbed aboard and the tiny classroom filled with laughter.

More kids piled on.

Sandra looked up.

Standing on the white line separating the classroom from the driver's seat stood Homer, arms spread in welcome, grinning.

"I'm back!"

Sandra didn't waste any time. Two days of laboring over letters ended with a perfectly written "Homer." Sandra had never seen a student who learned so fast.

The skills and good habits that Sandra feared were forgotten returned quickly. But Homer remained cocky, still sneaking into the refrigerator to take out her lunch and crossing the white line separating the classroom from the driver's seat.

Sandra enforced the rules, but gave him freedom within those boundaries. He could open the refrigerator and take out the water jug. And when Sandra caught him in the driver's seat, hands on the wheel, Homer voluntarily returned to the classroom.

"Don't do nothing. Just play," he said.

Homer graduated from the COW preschool May 23. During the ceremony, Sandra called each student to the stage and gave them a certificate. The 5-year-olds who were going to kindergarten received a cow-colored necktie with an elastic loop and Sandra slipped it over Homer's head and straightened the bow.

A week later at a parent-teacher conference, Grandma Simmons said she had taken Homer to Bracken Elementary to get a kindergarten application and when they returned to the apartment, Homer and his cousin sneaked back.

The head custodian spotted the boys swinging on a chain fence outside Ms. Baker's room. They had been wandering the halls, opening doors, searching for their teacher.

Sandra and Grandma Simmons chuckled, locked the school bus and walked over to the apartment. Sandra told the grandma that she wanted Homer to go to college and she gave him her home telephone number and invited him to call, anytime.

Not 10 minutes had passed and Sandra was back at the door. She had locked her keys on the bus. Would it be OK to borrow Homer, who was small enough to squeeze in the window?

The two left hand-in-hand. They walked past the pink and blue apartments stacked like building blocks. They passed broken glass, concrete and grass. Homer lifted his teacher's hand above his head and spun.

Sandra looked down and smiled, as Homer twirled his way back to the bus.

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