A Teacher's Last Lesson

By Megan Rutherford/San Jose

Doris Dillon knew she wanted to be a teacher from the moment she was named library monitor in third grade. For years she practiced on every doll, stuffed animal and family pet. When she graduated to real elementary school students, so deftly did she zero in on each child's learning style that it was said she could "teach a rock to read." Parents pleaded to have their children placed in her classes. Colleagues copied her methods. For hundreds of schoolkids in San Jose, Calif., Mrs. Dillon embodied some of their favorite fictional characters--Miss Rumphius, Ms. Frizzle and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, all rolled into one. She was a wizard with a delicious sense of fun who turned everything she touched into a teaching tool. So it seemed entirely in character that when she was struck with a catastrophic neuromuscular disease, she would use her tragedy as yet another lesson.

Dillon had shifted from classroom teaching to running the libraries at the Graystone and Williams elementary schools in San Jose when, in 1997, her speech began to slow. Doctors found she had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, after the baseball great who succumbed to it. There is no cure for ALS; 80% of its victims die within five years of diagnosis. Yet once the diagnosis was confirmed in 1998, Dillon's first response was to write to the staff and the students' families, explaining her illness and her determination to continue working. Their support has been unequivocal. Last year Williams Elementary named her Teacher of the Year, and Graystone dedicated its library to her.

Against the odds, Dillon, 56, still exhibits much of the stamina that earned her the sobriquet Energizer Bunny as she arranges author visits, runs writing contests and helps kids find books they will like. But since June 1998, she has had to give up the greatest joy of her job--reading aloud to children--because ALS has damaged the neurons that control speaking, chewing and swallowing. Read-alouds are now handled by volunteers. Eating will soon have to be handled through a feeding tube.

Dillon communicates via e-mail; several computers, including one that can "speak" her written words; and a paper pad on which she writes exquisite script. She can still walk, and everywhere she goes, kids rush up to squeeze her hand or hug her. They know that she remains the same Mrs. Dillon, beloved for dressing up in costumes--not just for Halloween--and for putting sunflowers in every nook of the library.

Her colleagues talk frankly with their classes about her illness, emphasizing that even though Mrs. Dillon now has a disability, she is the same person inside that she has always been. On a recent Monday, teacher Shelly Bancroft read David Adler's Lou Gehrig, the Luckiest Man to her fourth-graders, then led a group discussion. Katha Edwards' class, which had read E.B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan, about a bird without a voice, talked about Dillon's muteness. Said a student: "Mrs. Dillon is brave. She has a disease, but she works and works and never gives up."

The teachers at Williams and Graystone believe that such exercises are helping students empathize with handicapped people, including those with learning disabilities who sit alongside them in class. But Dillon is also a role model for dealing with adversity. Says Barbara Schroeder, mother of a Williams third-grader: "They've learned that if something like this happened to them, they wouldn't have to hide. They could go on." But are these kids too young for the likely next lesson? Denise Aitken, mother of a Graystone student, doesn't think so. "Death is a part of life. They'll look back all their lives and remember her as someone who loved books and loved kids, and showed them that a disability is not an excuse."

Dillon does not want to cry in front of the children, so she tries not to think about the end of life. She finds work the best distraction. After all, there's a reading celebration to run, summer-activity packets to prepare, a children's book on disabilities she wants to write. "I love what I do," she says. "With less time before me, I have to live even faster now. I'm like the little engine that could." The little girl who wanted to be a teacher got her wish, and her greatest lesson is her last.