The kindergartners didn’t hesitate.
When their teacher said her arms didn’t work right, they eagerly volunteered to turn the “big book†pages as it sat on the easel. They handed out the papers she put on the table in front of them.
Unprompted, Karen Langan would feel a small pair of arms on her back helping her pull on her jacket before they went outside.
“Early on, they knew I needed help with my jacket,†she said. “They didn’t ask.â€
They just helped.
That is one of the big reasons Langan spent 24 of her 30 years as a teacher in the Cavett Elementary School kindergarten classroom, a never-boring place full of kids excited to be in school.
People are also reading…
“They just have so much energy and they’re just so ready to learn,†she said.
She loved those moments when things clicked, loved reading the most, helping guide her students into worlds created from words.
It’s hard to pick a favorite — she has so many — but Pete the Cat books are among them, because that cat has such a positive attitude, no matter what happens.
Like Langan and her husband, Pat, whose positive attitudes have survived some big challenges.
“Both of them, their attitudes are out of this world,†said Amanda Williams, who has taught kindergarten with Langan for 24 years.
Williams was there in the beginning — after her friend had graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, switching from social work to early childhood education after a stint teaching a parks and rec class, then teaching early childhood education in Fremont and at Lincoln Public Schools before switching to kindergarten.
And she was there to say goodbye last year, to the colleague everybody loved, to the friend who took early retirement, a change that unfolded gradually, like the disease attacking Langan’s nervous system.
The clues came in fits and starts at first: When Langan found she couldn’t lift a box of photos into the closet after her youngest daughter’s graduation five years ago. When she and her husband were on vacation celebrating their 20th anniversary, and she couldn’t lift a 5-pound exercise weight.
It wasn’t constant — one day she’d be fine, the next, the weakness. She went to a doctor, who started the long process of elimination that ended with this: ALS — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — and a prognosis that she would live two to five years with the disease, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's.
That was 2017, and so the problem-solver, the organized teacher who color-coded everything, adapted.
She traded a bag full of supplies for a rolling backpack, used digital documents as much as possible, enlisted help from students and parents and co-workers.
That’s the part of all this that’s been amazing, she said, the support of her co-workers, her principal, the parents, her students.
“I was just really, really blessed to have an amazing team of co-workers that just really helped out,†she said.
She had parents, too, who’d volunteer and help with the tasks that were hard for Langan to do — decorating her boards, assembling papers, painting small hands for handprint pictures.
She had a group of fifth graders come to her room before “specials†and lunch to help tie shoes, or run through spelling words if all the shoes were tied.
A retired teacher friend came in one day a week to help. Last year, Langan had enough leave to take each Wednesday off. The same sub came each week, and Langan had a chance to recharge, regain some energy. That really helped.
Then, in the spring of 2019, another challenge: Pat, her husband, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in his parotid gland. Doctors removed the tumor, but the cancer had metastasized to his lungs. He did chemotherapy and immunotherapy and the tumors are growing more slowly. He’s taking a break to regain his strength before starting more treatment.
But the strain made him decide he could no longer drive a school bus for LPS, a job he’d had since he decided to set aside the economic development work he’d been doing for years.
And it helped Karen decide in January that it was time she retire — a decision she made before the pandemic hit.
Her arms were getting weaker. It was getting harder to write, to hold up her hands to model math problems — three fingers plus two fingers equals five fingers.
“I just knew it wasn’t going to be as good as it should be with the kids,†she said. “It wasn’t fair to them.â€
She misses her colleagues, and the kids, but when the pandemic hit, she was thankful to be home. There’s no way, she said, that she could have done it, could have handled the masks, not been allowed to have volunteers to help.
Her colleagues threw her a drive-by retirement party. On Thursday, the Cavett PTO planned a costume drive-by fundraiser to help the Langans with medical bills, a chance for families and staff to dress up and wave from their cars and show their support in a socially distanced world.
These are the people who’ve helped them keep a positive attitude, Langan said, along with their church family, both of whom have pitched in to help them move from their home of 27 years to a one-level condo with a nice green space and no yard work.
Mostly, though, staying positive comes down to faith.
“It really goes back to having a lot of faith and trusting in God’s control. Because, otherwise, it would be overwhelming,†she said. “We just have a lot of faith and peace, that things will work out. Whatever that means.â€
They’ve had blessings, too: She figures God put all those supportive people in her life. And since her diagnosis she watched her youngest daughter graduate from college, and attended both their girls' weddings. She didn’t know, when she learned she had ALS, if she’d experience any of those life events.
So she finds the joy in each day, figures she and Pat are, by nature, optimists. That’s a blessing, although sometimes she thinks maybe she should be more ... pragmatic, maybe? Or maybe not.
“Sometimes I think I need to take off the rose-colored glasses,†she said, then paused.
“But, why?â€