Word: stalveys
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Dates: during 1974-1974
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LOIS MARK STALVEY...
Belligerent Porcupine. Of the many poor black children whom Lois Stalvey came to know and tried to help, none was more pitiful than Almira Stampp. When Noah and Almira were in the second grade, their white teacher made Almira stand in a wastebasket all afternoon-because, Noah explained, "she wouldn't say 'Yes, ma'am.'" Refused permission to go to the bathroom, Almira wet her pants. "See the pig in the pigpen," said the teacher to the class. Treatment like this inevitably had its effect on Almira (whose mother was a drug addict and whose father...
Noah sought his mother's help when he was assigned to write a report with his classmate Josh Pitt, the tough neighborhood bully. Lois Stalvey got to know Josh too, and soon realized that his aggression was simply a cover-up for his embarrassment; although he was clearly intelligent, Josh could not read. "I've always felt guilty about Josh," confessed the black teacher who had taught him in second grade. "When I had him in my class, 17 out of the 30 children had reading problems, and I was allowed only one hour a day for reading...
...Lois Stalvey met other nonreaders, all of them poor and black, when she did a once-a-week hourly stint as a volunteer teacher. Described to their faces by the principal as "the worst class the school's ever had," her eighth-graders had been virtually abandoned by their regular teacher, a white Peace Corps dropout who thought he would find urban education "more meaningful." When he failed to reach the students, he had become bitter and turned against them. "Some of those teachers could make kids feel dumb without saying anything," another Stalvey son, "Spike," explained...
...Stalvey children-Spike, 18, Noah, 15, and Sarah, 14-are still in Philadelphia's public schools (Spike, in fact, the only white student in all but one of his classes), and Lois Stalvey still clings to hope for the inner-city schools. Like a militant black mother with whom she sided years ago, she believes that the schools need "white hostages" to keep from going under completely. But she is far from confident that even that can save the black students. "Why bother moving children's bodies around to achieve integrated education," she asks, "if like the black...