Teacher views her ALS as a lesson to share with pupils
HER SCRAPBOOKS are spread across the restaurant table as we share lunch in Willow Glen, and Doris Dillon fills me in on each.
It's obvious she's had a pretty good year -- more than 30 pretty good years, in fact.
She's just been named teacher of the year at Williams Elementary School, where she runs its media center. Graystone Elementary School, where she also keeps the library program going, previously named her its teacher of the year and last month renamed its media center in her honor. She's a gifted teacher and communicator, who has headed San Jose Unified School District's mentor teacher program. She's helped set teaching standards nationally. She serves on the advisory boards for both Time-Warner's Time for Kids and Scholastic Inc.'s magazine programs. Her résumé, letters of commendation and notes of thanks from students and teachers she's helped are dazzling.
But as much as Dillon would like to tell me about her love of education -- especially her love of getting kids to read -- it's easier for her to point at the items in her scrapbooks.
She's losing one of the things a teacher values most: her voice. There's concern she'll lose even more.
Dillon has been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), for which there is no known cure. Thus, as her school year comes to a close, a June where she should be savoring her accomplishments and looking forward to a summer of energy renewal, Dillon is looking at entirely new challenges.
Typically, she's trying to be upbeat about it all.
``I write more notes now,'' she says, laboring to form each word as she speaks. ``I'm using more e-mail. I get down sometimes, but every time I come back strong.''
Dillon tells me she first suspected more than a year and a half ago that something odd was going on with her body. ``I noticed that I sounded different to myself, which is often the case when you are congested. I also noted that even though I knew my diction usually was clear and precise, it appeared to me to be slower than usual. My kids excused it, saying I'd been reading stories and talking to young students for so long that it was natural for me to say things slowly for the benefit of my 1,500 students.''
But it wasn't congestion or allergies. Doctors put Dillon through a full battery of tests -- ``They don't want to label you right away,'' she explains -- hoping that something else was behind her increasing inability to control the movements of her tongue, something else to explain the awkwardness of her lips and jaw. Sorry, they finally had to tell her: It's ALS, it's a neuromuscular disorder and it's irreversible.
It was a shock for the vivacious 56-year-old, for whom life previously was a relatively uninterrupted series of successes. She still draws comfort and confidence from those days.
``I was born in the San Fernando Valley, where my parents owned restaurants,'' she says, ``so I grew up working in the business. I'm an only child. We're Norwegian, hard-working.
``When I got older,'' she continues, ``I went from peeling potatoes to waiting on tables, and when I was in junior college, to doing a bit of chefing. And when I went on to San Jose State, in the summer I dealt blackjack at Lake Tahoe to earn enough money to continue college.''
She pauses. Tears of frustration well up in her eyes. She wants to speak more rapidly, as easily as she once did, but the ALS won't let her. Determinedly, she pushes on, not letting it dim her enthusiasm.
``When I first was teaching and the subject of math came up, I remember saying that I was never good at math until I was a blackjack dealer,'' she recalls. ``I figured if it helped me, it would help the kids. So I brought them all decks of cards and we learned math by playing games.''
Dillon laughs. Innovation, using anything and everything available to stimulate her students to learn, always has been one of her strong points.
Gains honors, husband at SJSU
Her teaching skills were honed at San Jose State University, where she won departmental honors. She also met her husband, Stan, there, when he was working as a hasher, waiting on the table at her sorority house. They left the area when he was drafted into military service during the Vietnam War, but returned after his discharge so that he, too, could get a teaching credential.
``We'd been happy in San Jose,'' Dillon explains, ``so we came back here.''
She immediately went to work as a reading clinician, classroom and resource teacher, eventually further developing her skills in language arts and going on to become a library media specialist.
All along the way, her enthusiasm and eagerness to teach and to share her knowledge were noticed and cited. She was made a mentor teacher, first locally and then for the state's mentor program. She was named to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' English/language arts committee. She began to advise education programs at Stanford University and San Jose State. Her input was sought in the selection of school library materials nationwide.
``She is an extraordinary person who has inspired me ever since the day I met her,'' e-mails Leanna Landsmann of Time-Warner. ``I was introduced to her by Ray Cortines, then-superintendent of schools in San Jose. Ray was on the advisory board of a magazine I edited at the time: Instructor, a magazine for teachers. I would call Ray with very specific questions about this and that, and one day he said, `You know, you can cut out the middle man if you just call Doris Dillon, one of the best teachers we have in San Jose, directly,' and I did. I've been calling Doris just about every week since, and that was nearly 20 years ago.
``She is insightful,'' Landsmann continues, ``knowledgeable about every aspect of education, can size up a kid just by listening to the child read a paragraph, can size up a teacher, a principal; she has a nose for quality. One of the most extraordinary things about her is her ability to get others to buy into what I call the passion and pageantry of the elementary classroom experience. There is no `beige-wall' thinking in Doris' world. If you walk into her media center, you see all the things that she does to stimulate kids' sensory perception. Themes change with every season. When the tulips disappear, the sunflowers pop up. Her surroundings are very much an expression of her energy. Kids love being in the media centers that she creates because there's so much there to prompt the imagination.''
Dillon's energy seems little diminished by ALS thus far. The disease usually affects its victims' extremities first, but she still moves easily and fluidly. ``If I keep my mouth shut, nobody can tell a thing,'' she jokes.
More writing, less talking
But keeping her mouth shut isn't Dillon's style, even though sharing her ideas and advice now requires more writing on her part. ``I may not be able to read to the students anymore,'' she acknowledges, ``but I can recommend good books to them, books they'll enjoy.''
She's especially proud that publisher Scholastic Inc. next year will introduce ``Doris Dillon Read-Aloud Collections'' nationwide and already has donated three of each to San Jose Unified's 39 elementary schools. She's also proud that Time-Warner has donated copies of ``Tuesdays With Morrie,'' Mitch Albom's bestseller about his relationship with a teacher with ALS, in her honor.
But most importantly, Dillon looks at the end of this school year as the start of something new. She writes about it in the May/June issue of Creative Classroom magazine:
``Yes, I've been handed a whole grove of lemons -- but I am resolved to make from them a super-vitamin-packed lemonade. At a time when we as educators have worked hard to communicate to students that having a physical challenge doesn't mean you are not `normal' in every other way, I have a golden opportunity to demonstrate that truth, firsthand, every single day I'm at school. . . .
``It is my goal to become a voice of hope and understanding for others like me, adult and child, who want to remain in the mainstream, to be considered valuable contributors to the common good, even when a disability slows us down. I fully intend that my personal journal and professional portfolio will continue to grow. . . .
``I can't wait for the new students I'll meet, for new themes to explore, and for the lessons -- about books and life -- that, more than ever, I want to teach.''
"You cannot teach a person anything, you can only help them find it within themselves." Galileo
