Brett Begins Working as a Homebound Teacher

Brett Bohlinger’s move into homebound teaching turns an uncertain job search into a defining test of her purpose as an educator. Assigned to teach sick students in their homes or in hospital, she encounters radically different households: Amina Adawe’s eager family, Sanquita Bell’s determination to earn a diploma while pregnant and seriously ill, and Peter Madison’s hostility. The work is not an uncomplicated dream, but its one-to-one lessons bring Brett closer to the kind of teacher she wants to be and draw her into obligations that outlast the school day.

From a Teaching Goal to a New Position

Brett’s homebound job grows out of her attempt to pursue teaching as one of the goals on her life list. In an earlier encounter with a long-term substitute opportunity at Douglas J. Keyes, she had measured the six-week assignment against the list’s twenty-ninth? No: she understood it as a chance to complete goal number twenty, and accepted despite wanting to flee. That substitute commitment belongs to the same larger effort to make herself try teaching, but it is distinct from the later homebound position.

At a meal with Brad Midar, Brett explains that Mrs. Bailey, the principal she had told him about from Douglas Keyes, recommended her for homebound work. She describes its basic arrangement: teaching sick children at their houses or in hospital, one student at a time. Brad responds with enthusiasm and a high-five; Brett tempers his confidence, saying that she has an interview the next morning and doubts she will get the job. Mrs. Bailey’s recommendation nevertheless gives the possibility a different weight: someone who has seen her in a school setting thinks the work may suit her.

Brett is offered the position the following morning. She later tells Shelley and Megan that she was the only applicant, and that the personnel director described “two ninety-nine” as a difficult zone in Chicago Public Schools where a teacher needed to be a risk taker. The assignment therefore carries both opportunity and apprehension. Brett is not stepping into a well-defined classroom, but into students’ private homes, including neighborhoods she finds frightening.

A First Lesson That Feels Like Teaching

On her first Monday, Brett dresses carefully in navy wool slacks and a gray cashmere sweater her mother had given her the previous Christmas. She hopes to make a good impression on her new students, but the morning brings an immediate change in the plan: Eve, who was supposed to help her, has a family emergency and will not return. Her supervisor, Mr. Jackson, gives Brett a terse good-luck and tells her to track her mileage for reimbursement. Brett is preoccupied instead by whether she can manage the work alone.

Before setting out, she raises a specific concern with Mr. Jackson: Peter Madison sounds as if he might be trouble, and she does not think she should visit him alone. Mr. Jackson tells her that the budget cannot provide a personal bodyguard, then leaves her without further reassurance. The exchange makes the practical limits of the job plain. Brett has to enter students’ homes without the support she had hoped for, and her fear accompanies her from assignment to assignment.

Her visit to Amina offers a strikingly different first experience. Brett descends to a basement apartment, where a flickering bulb and shouting behind another door intensify her fear. At the correct apartment, however, Amina’s mother welcomes her into a tidy home that smells of baked chicken and spices. Amina is resting with her plastered leg raised on pillows. She tells Brett, in broken English, that her family moved from Somalia the previous winter, that a doctor corrected the problem of one leg being too short, and that she is sad to miss school.

Brett reassures Amina that they will work together so she can keep up with her class, then brings out a reading text. Amina’s younger brother, Abdulkadir, appears and shyly gives his name. Brett repeats it; he responds with dimples, and Amina and her mother share the moment with evident pride. With Amina propped on the bed and Abdulkadir sitting on their mother’s lap, the family listens to a story about a princess who cannot cry. They examine the pictures, ask questions, giggle, and clap. The concentrated attention of these listeners gives Brett something she had lacked in her earlier teaching experience: a small, welcoming classroom in which the students are eager to learn. She recognizes the scene as the teaching she wants for herself.

Sanquita’s Lessons and a Growing Commitment

Brett’s next homebound assignment introduces a more demanding bond. Sanquita Bell is a senior, three months pregnant, and living with kidney disease. She is physically slight, but Brett notices signs of illness, including swollen hands and puffy eyelids. In the bedroom where they work, twin beds sit beneath faded blue covers, and a weathered bedside table separates them. Sanquita says they can study there while Chardonay is at work.

Sanquita is tired and does not initially offer much explanation, but she is clear about what she wants from Brett: help earning her diploma, so her baby will know its mother was smart. The request gives their lessons a personal urgency. Brett agrees and takes out a chemistry book; although the subject is difficult for Sanquita, she listens closely, persists, and eventually solves what Brett has explained. Brett has to make herself leave after an hour because she could imagine spending the whole day teaching her.

The limits of the scheduled visits become part of their relationship. Sanquita reacts coldly when Brett asks whether homework will be finished by the next day, reminding her that she is supposed to visit only twice a week. Brett checks her calendar, gives up the noon hour she had reserved for lunch and paperwork, and offers to return the next day. Sanquita accepts without smiling or thanking her, yet Brett leaves feeling warmed by the exchange. Care here is expressed less through gratitude than through the decision to come back.

Peter, Risk, and the Consequences of Care

The third household makes Brett’s apprehension concrete without making her abandon the job. On the way to Peter’s house, she leaves Brad a message saying that the position feels made for her and asking him to wish her luck. Peter’s mother, Autumn, answers the door while talking on the telephone and smoking. Inside, the air is thick with cigarette smoke and cat urine; a black blanket covers the picture window, and a framed image of Jesus hangs on the wall. Peter passes Brett with a hostile remark, then spends the lesson refusing to look at her.

Their hour at the Madisons’ sticky kitchen table feels much longer to Brett. Autumn continues a loud phone conversation within earshot, and Brett raises her voice to compete as she gives instructions. Peter mostly grunts, offering only occasional one-word answers; by the end, Brett has learned more about the person Autumn is talking to than about the boy she came to teach. The contrast with Amina’s lesson is sharp: homebound teaching can create the intimacy Brett values, but it does not guarantee mutual engagement or a controlled learning environment.

Brett’s connection with Sanquita later reaches beyond instruction. At a meeting with Kirsten Schertzing, Brett recounts her relationship with Sanquita and Sanquita’s wish that Brett keep her baby. Kirsten says that the medical chart records Sanquita as unconscious after her C-section for the thirteen hours before her death, with no one reporting that she was conscious except Brett. Brett maintains that Sanquita woke that evening, the day she delivered the baby, and told her she wanted Brett to keep the child. The conversation shows the lasting consequence of the home visits: Brett’s promise to help Sanquita earn a diploma has become part of a relationship in which Sanquita entrusts her with a request about her child.

Work, Motherhood, and the Meaning of a Calling

Brett’s new position also sits beside a different account of work and family in her circle. Shelley, once a speech pathologist in Saint Francis Hospital’s rehabilitation unit, had taught adults with traumatic brain injuries to speak, reason, negotiate, and socialize. She had called the work her calling, yet left her job after deciding with Jay Bohlinger that one parent should stay home with their children, using the inheritance from Brett’s mother to make that possible. Shelley tries to present the transition as perfectly arranged, but Brett hears a catch in her voice; Shelley also admits that her child’s difficulty speaking makes the change emotionally complicated.

Shelley later decides to return to work. After a weekend in New Orleans brings her and Jay back into a relationship as a couple, she tells him that the unending days of children’s books and childcare have left her unhappy in the role of full-time mother. Jay responds without judgment and arranges a year away from his department after finishing the semester; Shelley plans to go back to work in May. Her experience does not duplicate Brett’s, but it places Brett’s vocation within a wider set of choices about paid work, caregiving, and what each woman can sustain.

For Brett, homebound teaching begins as a risky way to pursue a goal and becomes a practice of attention: matching a lesson to the child in front of her, returning when a student needs more time, and entering homes that unsettle her. Amina’s family gives her an image of teaching as shared delight; Sanquita makes educational help inseparable from trust and care; Peter reminds her that willingness cannot guarantee an easy connection. Together, the visits establish the job not simply as a position, but as the setting in which Brett’s professional aim becomes bound up with her relationships and responsibilities.