There are 2 questions that follow my response of "I'm a teacher" when people ask me what 'I do'. They are: 1. What do you teach? and 2. What grade? Both of my answers yield overwhelmingingly sympathetic responses which can be interpreted in numerous ways. But who care what anyone else thinks! My interpretation is that people have now deduced that I am a patient individual with a penchant for the underdog (true) and slightly nuts (false. I am a lot nuts).
While it takes a certain kind of person to be a special education teacher (whatever that means), it definately takes a certain kind of person to teach middle school. That, my 6 followers, is a topic for later, but I assure you, a very entertaining one as major hormones are involved. But as for special ed, I have learned to be patient, to stand my ground, and to set my expecations based on the child I am working with. And I learned all of that just yesterday! No, seriously, yesterday was MLK's birthday and though I have been teaching for 11 years, those are skills that are still be refined. The toughest lesson for me to learn is that my students, past, present and future, are not always going to be successful during the 180 school days that they are my charge. It's so frustrating when you know that someowhere, deep inside, a child has the potential to be so much more than what they think they are, whether it be due to laziness or fear that they will fail or worse, fear that they will succeed. How terrible does it feel to fail after you have succeeded? How much higher is the bar raised when you show the world you can do it? There are times when I see less than lackluster performance amongst my students. Beyond the obvious reasons of the average day to day activities in school being more of a challenge (imagine being a regular kid in all advanced classes), the emotional aspects of the middle school years and a tweens personal life (home life) really play into their performance. Top that off with MEGA IMMATURITY.
So when a kid walks across the stage at their 8th grade "moving up"ceremony, I hope that they will figure IT out. The IT is different for each one of them, just as it is for us. Then, I see one of my old students who we used to refer to as 'Meatball' (he was pudgy and Italian....mean of us I suppose) waiting in his car for his sister to get out of school. I cannot recognize him because he looks like a man but he recognizes me despite my radical hair color change and tells me excitedly that he will be going to college and that he has options. "See, I started to do my work! I'm going to college, but I'm still short!" "Oh, and you were right...I could do it all along." Then as I am leaving work on Friday afternoon, another former student is walking towards me in the hall, dangling car keys in her hand.
Me: "Hey, Britt!"
Britt: "You remember me?"
Me: "Of course I do...you are taller, clearly drive now, but you have the same face."
Britt: "Guess what? I am doing well in school now. I want to be a speech pathologist. I applied to x,y,z college. I AM GOING TO COLLEGE!"
And so, in the end, my kids figure it out. With a tear in my eye, I cannot help but feel proud and confident that the ones we know can make it, will make it. That in the end, the pieces will fall into place for them. And I would like to think that somewhere along they way, they will remember me or something that I said, that helped get them to where they are, in the same way that I remember them.
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