The Long Cleanup, at School and at Home

Prekindergarten teacher Mary Green and her colleagues clean up toys as they prepare for school to reopen. (Photo by G.K. Photography)

Mary Green, a member of the Jefferson Federation of Teachers in Jefferson Parish, La., is rebounding from her fifth storm evacuation in the past 18 months. As September came to a close, the prekindergarten teacher was still dealing with the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which had dumped three feet of water in her living room. Green has been living with a friend and colleague, working long hours to ready her school for an Oct. 3 opening and stealing moments to visit her house, where friends and relatives are cutting away the bottom four feet of wallboard and ripping out rugs and carpets in an effort to stem the stubborn advance of mold.

Shaky cell phone service was all she had to keep tabs on her daughter, a transfer student at Louisiana State now that her freshman year at New Orleans' Tulane University had been washed away. Her husband also was a professor at Tulane and was on indefinite leave—a break of sorts, since it gave him time to help evacuate relatives living in Galveston, Texas, when Hurricane Rita hit the coast.

Despite her own personal losses, the prekindergarten teacher quickly began preparing her classroom for the re-start of school. "People have been working on lesson plans, doing grade-level meetings, calling the children and finding them any way we can," she says.

Even Hurricane Rita did not dampen her love for Jefferson Parish.  "These are people who would do anything for you. That did not go away. And that's why you stay." [Mike Rose]