Easy Street - Part II

In my last post, I was busy counting the blessings of holding a job that many people, at the mention of, may run and cower 

Looks can be deceiving.

So far, I've hit up 3 of 5 very good ways my job can be easier than the typical middle school teacher:

1) The evils of Inclusion: 2) Academic freedom:
3) Isolation--the good kind

Onward!

4) A good excuse for bad behavior
Any given day at my job promises some sort of behavior abnormality and/or dysfunction amongst the students.  A day free of that would be, frankly, a little bit scary.  But I signed up for my fair share of bad behavior when I signed my name on the line to an ED position.  Though I'm not saying I'm always going to handle the run-of-the-mill outburst, shut down, or work refusal with total grace, my tolerance runs quite high for it because these kids are coming in the door with a piece of paper (the IEP) that's a license for deviance. 

What really tests my limits?  The kids who act much the same way but without the piece of paper that says their behavior is medically/psychologically/intellectually proven.  They're just plain old bad boys and girls. Degenerates, menaces to society, what is this world coming to? When I was their age....!  Yeah, regular education kids quickly turn me into stubborn, crotchety old man convinced the world is going down the drain with every new generation of kids.  They're the future of America, for crying out loud!

And my kids?  The ED population?  Well, they get a free pass.

And finally, the ultimate reason my job is better than other teachers'...

5) Blondes (from a bottle) have more fun--particularly when they're special ed. teachers
With all the freedom and isolation and good excuse for bad behavior, Annie and I really make those lemons into lemonade as often as we can. 

I ask of those in the mainstream teaching profession:  When was the last time you helped out a student too nervous to present in front of the class by giving him a pink handle bar mustache to wear while he did it?Or how about required everyone to end all of their sentences with "Meow".  Taught a lesson on how to express emotions using finger eyebrows and mustaches? ( Mustaches are a pretty big deal in Room 501).

While using humor in the classroom is sort of an afterthought in the good teacher textbook of your undergrad years, it's pretty much a prerequisite to developing solid relationships with students and getting things accomplished.  I don't know about you, but a job where inciting laughter is mandatory and you actually get a decent salary and benefits to do it (sorry, stand-up comedians), sounds like a sweet deal to me.

Easy Street--Part I

"You are an absolute saint for what you do."
"God bless you, Miss T., because I don't know how you do it."

It's not uncommon to hear such praise and lauding from friends and family who learn of the population with which I work, or a neighboring teacher who catches me giving a run-of-the-mill discipline lecture outside of my classroom in my most patient but firm tone of voice.  The sentiments come much appreciated, particuarly when I become so entrenched in my job that I forget that it is outside the realm of normalcy for a public school teacher (yes, I've actually forgotten that my students are considered "weird" by most standards).

But, lately, I've begun to ponder if such kind words are undeserved. What's more, should I be the one bestowing them on others--namely the teachers with the normal population?

I just may be inclined to believe that when you put my job side-by-side with that of a typical middle school regular education teacher, I've got it infinitely easier.  Here's just 5 of the reasons why...

1) The evils of Inclusion:
Whoever masterminded the idea of Least Restrictive Environment for students with disabilities, clearly never experienced the joy of teaching a science class of 30 students, 5 of whom are diagnosed with some form of emotional disorder or pervasive ADHD disorder.  My personal instructional classes can get a bit batty when Joe Schmo has shut down and Sally Sue is crying and Billy Bob has forgotten to take his medication.  But, I have the luxury of bringing my class to a halt until I've got functioning students again.  For a regular education teacher with no aide, there's still obligation to 25 other little brains.  Oh, yeah, and you still may have to answer for that "F" you gave Joe Schmo even though he didn't do a darn thing in class. 

2) Academic freedom:
While collaboration and team work and all that stuff valued by the Professional Learning Community is fantastic, it often gets taken to the extreme when teacher teams feel bound to teach the material in an identical manner, at an identical pace, with an identical test taken on an identical day.  Then, there's the recent roll out of the Common Core teaching standards which will soon become the material of standardized testing, and is so specific and rigorous in nature that it is bound to quickly fill every teaching moment of the school year with non-negotiable and requirec content.  Whatever happened to the days when Mr. Jones could throw an extra day into the Tom Sawyer unit to come to class in the character of Mark Twain and let the kids interview him?

Now, it's not to say that my little island of students is immune to school and federal policy, but as an instructional special education class, it's sort of a given that we are going to take our own routes to the same destination.  We'll stay on the same lesson 5 days in a row if we have to, and if yoga or a dance off or spending the whole class speaking in different accents seems a necessity, well by golly...My room is where Academic Freedom comes to party.

3) Isolation--the good kind
There's nothing like the delightful solitude that comes when you are left alone by administrators, fellow teachers, other students--pretty much everyone.  Remember your school days when the BD kids were banished to the basement or the untraversed wing of the building--a mystery and enigma to the masses?  Well, that's not us exactly.  Sure we've adoringly nicknamed our windowless room-formerly-known-as-a-closet "The Cave" or "The Dungeon" or "Hell".  But, it's got a rightful spot in the same hall as the normal classes and, by all appearances, is just a mini-me version of the other classrooms (minus any glimpse of daylight). 

Still, at times, I wonder if it is only visible to those who need it (a la the Room of Requirement from Harry Potter), and I have to say I like it.  It's a little bit of a terrifying realization that I could be alternating my days playing "Twister" and reciting Mother Goose rhymes to the kids without anyone ever knowing the better (and it sounds like a whole lot of that was going on in here prior to my hiring), but since I'm actually working my butt off, being left alone makes me feel very confident, self-assured, and self-sufficient. 

Recently, Annie inquired with our principal how some of the sweeping changes in the school would affect our classroom and program next year.  Mr. Principal responded, with arms open and shaking head, "We just want you and Ms. T. to keep doing what you're doing."

If ever words were music to my ears...

[Stay tuned for Part 2 of the List]

Made It

I'm pretty stoked.

Two Fridays from now, after my work day is done, I'll be getting all gussied up, heading over to the local country club and enjoying a $50 meal at no expense to me, and schmoozing with both the big wigs and my induction "class" in honor of my impending tenure. It feels equally awesome and surreal.

[We'll omit, for the time being, the fact that tenure is about to lose much of its significance in the state of Illinois and will probably be eradicated all together within the next five years. Let me have my moment of glory, gosh darn it.]

There were plenty of moments in the first two years at my current job that I feared my every move held the potential to get me fired. It's just common knowledge in the teaching community that you lay low and don't make any mistakes those first four years, because schools are within their right to let you go if you so much as look at an administrator the wrong way. No justification is needed for employee release prior to tenure.

But, I gained boatloads of confidence and reassurance heading into my 3rd year that I was wanted and proficient in my role, and for the past year or so, as life has roller-coastered a bit around me, the job has become sort of a given--an assumed part of my every day existence.

I fear I've started to take it for granted. Can it be that, amidst financial turmoil and economic chaos, with unemployment rates soaring and hardly any teaching positions open for my newly graduated/graduating friends, that I have forgotten just how blessed I am to wake up to a job each and every day? And what's more, a job that I actually enjoy? It wasn't so long ago I absolutely dreaded the morning alarm and another unpredictable day in the school from hell. Though I promised myself 4 years ago I never would, have I lost sight of how good I've got it here?

That little "T" next to my name on the evaluation list will make it less likely that this privilege will be taken from me (not that it has been all that likely up until now, anyways), but more importantly I think it will be a good reminder that I'm right where I'm supposed to be with little thanks to me. Sure I've put in the hard work and passion to get this far, but in many ways I feel like I don't deserve much credit at all.

Ten years ago, when I first decided I wanted to go into special education, the LAST sub-group I imagined I'd want to teach was these kiddos. Yet, here I am, feeling like the perfect job was dropped into my lap, constantly waving off exclamations of others to the effect of, "It takes a special person to do this job. God bless you!" Yeah, I honestly don't see it that way. I'm not really sure what else I'd be doing at this point.

So, did I earn the accolades? I suppose. But I'm of the mind that nothing that ever happens to us is truly in our control. So, there's nothing else that I can choose to be but grateful.

Lasers Make me Sad

There aren't many 4 letter words that scare a teacher, particularly one in the BD/ED population. But, there's one in particular I think my colleagues and I agree can cause us to recoil in dread:

ISAT.

No one in their right mind enjoys standardized testing season, but it's been especially offputting this year as our school scrambles to recover from some deficits in test scores from the past couple years. Instead of lumping the test sessions into a couple days as usual, they were spread out over two whole weeks just one hour a day, making teaching any normal lessons the rest of the day very painful for all involved. Then, there were the highlighter yellow "Rah rah for ISAT" (well, that's not EXACTLY what they said) t-shirts that we had to wear 7 days, nearly consecutively. By the time the make-ups were over, test booklets were turned in, and t-shirts ripped to shreds (oh yes, there were teachers that tore them to shreds) everyone--adults and kids alike--was ready to be locked in the looney bin.

The natural progression from this point was to begin an intensive one week poetry unit with my 7th graders, squeezed between gruelling ISATS and a long overdue spring break, and complete with an extended writing assignment, right? NO! Of course not! Worst teaching practices ever!

But I really didn't have a choice. Due to the quite exceptional needs of this group of students, we've been trailing behind the rest of the 7th grade English classes the entire year, and right now it's imperative that they catch up because their next writing unit is tied into another class's project.

Amidst the madness, I had to miss my English class one day this week and I was forced to assign a 20 line poem with a sad mood and several other required elements (figurative language, sound devices, and so on) that day in my absence. When my meeting got out right at the end of 8th period, I caught Alejandro walking out of the media center where he was to be working on the poem.

"How did your poem writing turn out?"

"Good [trademark Beavis/Butthead laugh]."

Alejandro skipped town before I could inquire any further into the progress he had made while I was gone. But I gathered a better understanding once I returned to my room and found a typed, finished first draft of his poem on my desk.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, an Alejandro original:

LASERS MAKE ME SAD

Not a lot of things make me sad

People dying is one

It is sad

In movies they die dramtic deaths

In some movies, when people die they make people bbreathe heavy

It is like they just jogged

It is sad when I lose at a video game

When I lose I practice more so I can own and p'wn (gaming term)

And then I eat a scone and break a bone

It sounds like a crunch

It is sad when people get cramps

When they keep eating beets

They want to cry

When they cry they go boo hoo!

Instead of swimming they should ride their bike

It is sad when I get in trouble and get bad grades

When I get bad grades the school building gets mad at me

The school throws pencils and carpeting at me

It is sad, and I feel awkard because schools should not do this

There are the things that make me sad

There you have it ladies and gentleman: the tried and true cure for standardized teaching exhaustion and general teacher burn out. Thank you, Alejandro. Thank you.

Bad Teacher

We all have that person in our life... An acquaintance, or friend of a friend's friend, or perhaps a virtual stranger who keeps popping up at the most random of times in the most random of places. It's a person who appears as a blip on your life radar every few years seemingly by happenstance.

That person for me first came on my radar my senior year of high school when a lunch buddy of mine become engaged to that person, who was six years her senior. The relationship dissolved quickly, but I continued to see that person randomly every couple of years around the local gym.

Then, fast forward to my fortuitous interview opportunity at my current school of employment. I'll never forget the shock I received when I logged onto the website and found that person occupying the position I was vying for. I reserve no right to pass judgment on that person's character or mistakes or shortcomings while employed at the school, but all I know is that for the first several months in that person's previous position, I had co-workers approaching me regularly to remark how surprised they were to hear actual teaching going on in my classroom.

Fast forward to a text message I received this week from friend and fellow teacher informing me that that person was observing her classroom, likely because he wasn't cutting it in his own position and needed good models. Also, through friendly conversation with my friend, that person revealed that he never even made it through the teacher program at his college the first time round due to its level of difficulty. Teacher programs...difficult...ahem.

Add to this rap sheet the knowledge that that person has been in some trouble with the police as well, and I find myself even now having to slap myself over the wrist at my propensity to judge someone's mistakes (however many and frequent they be) without ever reserving the right.

BUT beyond my sinful desires to belittle someone, I think there is an ounce of rightful anger at the injustice being done, here. From a sort of bird's eye view, I've seen that person make mistake after mistake: hurting others and neglecting responsibilities and making life difficult for others. I have to wonder, at what point does "BAD TEACHER" get stamped on his forehead to prevent any more people and districts to be fooled by a charming facade, thus allowing children's lives to be mismanaged and co-workers to shoulder the weight of someone's ineptness.


STILL, I have to wonder if that's any concern of mine. People grow and, with God's grace, sometimes they do a complete 180 in life. Should that person run out of chances and be kicked to the curb, never to step foot in a school again? Or should he be allowed the opportunity to be mentored and refined time and time again until he gets it right?

I guess either way, it's not my call to make. Lord knows I've been offered a second chance, and sometimes a third, fourth, and fifth one before I finally got it together. It takes a lot of wisdom and strength to acknowledge someone like that person deserves it just as much.

Got My Goat

Most people are familiar with the old expression, "got my goat". It is used to express how someone has caused annoyance to one's self on such an extreme level that reasonableness and logic begin to go out the window. If I were to share with one of my co-workers right now that one of my students, Alejandro, has really got my goat, they would probably flash me a sympathetically exasperated look and await tales of relentlessly repulsive behavior that is steering my class towards disaster.

But, I've found a new definition for this timeless saying. While I'm experiencing the same loss in reason, and my classroom is not running as smoothly as a result, I guess you could say I'm dealing with a different kind of goat...

A Hilarious Goat

There was a time that Alejandro didn't have me constantly in stitches--in fact, quite the opposite. The most impulsive case of ADHD I've ever seen with a nice dose of Aspergers to dull his social awareness, it was quite the challenge to transmit any knowledge of English with the spontaneous pacing of the classroom and endless string of jungle sounds emitting from his mouth. I suppose the saving grace that prevented me from secretly begrudging his very presence in my classroom was that, despite his never-rending disruptions, he truly wanted to succeed and much of his impulsiveness was just plain out of his control.

I think the day the day Alejandro started to get my hilarious goat was when he was working in my room, but I was on plan period and, free from supervision duty, I was free to sit back and just watch the show. One of his most winning qualities is his insanely infectious laugh. A perfect cross between Beavis and Butthead in pitch and cadence, it is just as easy to get one out of him as the famous MTV teenagers. As he worked on his laptop, Annie and I--feeling a bit squirrelly--attempted to replicate his laugh. Without missing a beat, he responded with his own laugh as if it were a triggered reflex. I have found other triggers to be the mention of any food or animal, and the conjuring of random, bizarre mental images--particularly mental images involving animals and food. (Example: A cat eating a hotdog. That would have him in hysterics instantly.) With time, I find the tables are turning to where Alejandro's laughter automatically triggers my own, and I'm powerless to stop it.

As I began to appreciate Alejandro a bit more for his quirks, I one day stopped my normal frantic bustle preparing for English class to soak in his trademark entrance to the classroom. I promise there has not been one day this year Alejandro has simply opened the door, walked through the threshold and headed straight for his desk in the normal fashion. Some of his many variations on the expected behavior include jiggling the door handle wildly before opening the door, thrusting the door open and then disappearing from the doorway to feign the appearance of a ghost, bursting through the door screaming indecipherable absurdities, and/or walking in and throwing himself across his desk or chair that requires a greeting of: "Alejandro, get down." The most "normal" arrival in recent memory was sitting down at his desk after several requests to do so, folding his hands in front of him and saying in a perfectly neutral tone, "Shall we proceed?"

That leads me to Alejandro's notorious utterances. As previously mentioned, much that escapes his lips is pure nonsense. He is highly adept at combining random syllables into gibberish, then neatly inserting the gibberish into a grammatically correct sentence. His default gibberish is "Wombo Fish" and it may make an appearance at any time.

"A verb is a Wombo Fish."

"6 to the Wombo Fish equals 36."

"Miss T, I can't do my work, I don't have my Wombo Fish."

His impressively extensive vocabulary often aids in the hilarity of the nonsense. Just this past week, frantically in search of his pencil, Alejandro exclaimed: "Where is my babushka?!?"

I could go on for ages with little anecdotes like these, but the core issue here is that Alejandro has accomplished something that only one in about every 20 students is capable of. He has cracked my stoically professional facade and ruined my objective treatment of the students as far as classroom rules goes.

Lucky for me, Alejandro is marching to the beat of a drummer that bangs so loud he doesn't realize his opportunity to take advantage of his power over me. Even luckier for me, the others in my class have the maturity and intuition to understand the exception I have made for their classmate. The other day, after responding to Alejandro's disruptive exclamations with a helpless giggle, I sobered up and reminded everyone this was not a precedent for allowing silly antics from the rest of them. One of the others, Nick, reassured me, "We know, we know, Miss T. We probably couldn't pull it off the way Alejandro does if we tried."

Wise words from a student with major emotional difficulties. Perhaps we all have something to learn from Alejandro and his Wombo fish.

When Ms. T becomes Mother T(heresa)....

In my handful of years teaching my particular population of students, I've come to find they generally fall into one of three categories.

The first--and most rare--is the category of students with issues in isolation from the rest of their family. In other words, their parents are normal. Perhaps their child's perplexing behaviors have driven them a bit batty over the years, but who could blame them? They are totally cognizant of the problem and they do their best to care for him/her while handing the reigns trustfully over to the teacher during school hours. Again, this scenario comes along about once every 10 kids.

The second category of students--the most common--are those with emotional issues congruous with the rest of the family. They're the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree" kids, or better yet, the "apple is just a smaller version of the tree". These are the families, Annie and I joke, could all benefit from being placed in our ED program.

These first two categories of students I believe I was born to teach. Somehow, despite even the most ludicrous of situations, I'm generally able to approach teaching and managing these students with a great deal of objectivity and emotional detachment.




Now, I'm not saying there aren't some days when I think my head is going to burst into flames. I'm also not saying that ice water runs through my veins and I don't feel any sort of emotional connection to my students. I just believe that, in general, I've mastered the proper degrees of investment and detachment to ensure some longevity in my career.

But then comes the third category of students--the deal breaker. These are the students who lost the lottery. If born into any other family where they were loved and encouraged and provided for, they would be, for all intents and purposes, normal. But they haven't been so lucky. They've been broken. They're bright and seemingly so full of potential; you see glimpses of love and that child's innate desire to please, but it's clear that much of that was sucked out of them long ago, and by no fault of their own. It was this situation on a very large scale that drove me from my first job--a urban, impoverished community where ignorance and depravity beget more and more of the same in a never-ending cycle. It infuriated me and I knew I was not doing myself or the students there any favors.

Teaching in the context of a much healthier community, now, it's a less common scenario. But, it is still one that gets my goat every time. When tales of abuse and neglect emerge from a child's background, it's all I have not to take them home with me that very day and start showering them with the protection, love, and affection they so dearly need. I'm sure I wouldn't fix the kid overnight, and I'm no miracle worker; but I'd like to think some proper nurturing is all it would take to nurse these poor kids back to some semblance of normalcy.

Talk about your emotional investment. When I'm ready to bring home troubled 12-year-olds and become their surrogate mothers, I know I've gone off the deep end.