After my first year of teaching, which was not glorious by any means, I struggled to find a permanent position. Here's how I ended episode 1 of my love story with teaching:
A phone call came in late August. Did I want to interview for a position in an EBD Day Treatment? Nope. I didn’t. But, I did anyway. And I got the job. It turned out to be one of the best things that I ever did.
I think the most important thing that I did during the three years I taught at the Day Treatment was that I showed up. Every day. I chose to come back and be part of my students' lives every day. It was hard, but I did it anyway.
I had no experience, other than my first year teaching a handful of challenging 3rd graders, with students with emotional or behavioral disorders. I had no experience with middle schoolers or high schoolers. I had had zero classes regarding special education, let alone special education in a setting 4 day treatment.
Scared and filled with trepidation, I started that job. I created a curriculum for kids in grades 5-12 that included physics and life science and language arts and social studies and even PE! The only things I didn't teach were math or health or art.
It was apparent on the first day of school that no one under the age of 18 wanted to be there. We had a point system and lots of rules and expectations. The students came from their separate school districts by van or car with a driver provided by their home district. They came from seven surrounding smaller school communities. And, they came with their hoods and their guards up and unwillingly did their pocket checks upon arrival.
Pocket checks? Yep, our students came and immediately turned their pockets inside out, patted themselves down, lifted up their sleeves and pant legs and then shuffled to my reading corner and waited for morning check-in. With those pocket checks, my assistant and I looked for weapons, cigarettes, drugs, or any other contraband. Did I ever find anything? Rarely. But we did see evidence of self-injurious behavior like cutting or piercings or drug use. Sometimes you could see that cuts had healed and that provided hope that what we were doing at the day treatment was working.
At morning check in, students would rate their mood based on a 1-10 scale. They could provide reasons or not, that was up to them. Teachers shared, too. Gaining trust and creating relationships was the most important part of what I did during my time there. Mondays were the hardest, especially after weekends away from foster homes and with biological families. Their homes and families of origin were often volatile and unpredictable, so students either withdrew or themselves became volatile and unpredictable. Sometimes when we had made great gains, students would come back after a weekend or school break at home and all gains would be lost. The boundaries were different and and maybe they were using drugs or alcohol again, or they had simply lacked care by a parent and regressed so that, yes, Mondays were rough.
We had no substitute teachers and very little prep time. Some days revolved around crisis management and not academic standards.
To say that I learned a lot is a complete understatement. One year, our staff went to Texas for a conference on reaching difficult kids. It was life changing. There were two impactful statements that I heard at that conference that I still think about almost every day of my teaching career.
1. "Every child, no matter what they do, deserves at least ONE significant adult that is irrationally crazy about them." For some kids, that adult was one of us on the teaching staff and not a parent or grandparent or foster parent or anyone that typically is that adult.
and
2. "An EBD kid is like a piece of scotch tape. That piece of tape has been stuck on the wall and pulled off and stuck on the wall and pulled off so many times that pretty soon, it doesn't stick anywhere." That is what an EBD kid feels like...they don't stick anywhere. Belonging is the basis of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If a person does not feel like he/she belongs anywhere, nothing else can be accomplished. We worked hard to make sure that the day treatment was at least one place in the world that these kids felt like they belonged. Then, and only then, could academics enter the picture.
Was it hard to teach at the day treatment? Yes. It was difficult and tiring and draining and sometimes painful. But more than anything, it was valuable. Here are the top things I learned while teaching there.
1. Sometimes students will ask for love in the most unloving of ways.
I was kicked, scratched, and bitten. I was called awful names and was told "F - you" more times than I can remember. But forgiveness and reparations were valuable for both students and teachers. I learned that even if the "I'm sorry" is fake, it still makes both parties acknowledge the conflict and gives them the ability to move on.
2. Mental illness in children is very real.
I am not talking simply about things like ADD/ADHD. I witnessed lots of debilitating anxiety and depression. I witnessed the advent of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Reactive-Attachment disorder? Real and so hard to combat or heal. There was and still is, very little help for kids who are DESPERATE for help. They often self-medicate with drugs and alcohol in an attempt to feel okay.
3. Clear boundaries are important.
Children and adults need to know where they stand. Of course students tested us. Every. Single. Day. My regular ed students now do the same thing. There is comfort for students when they know the boundaries.
4. Teamwork is essential.
The job that I did every day could never have been done in isolation. The team that I worked with included an on site social worker, county social workers, a classroom assistant (my BEST and most VITAL teammate), a second classroom teacher, an art teacher, two administrative assistants, family therapists, individual mental health counselors, home school district special education staff and administrators, two on site special education administrators, job coaches, law enforcement, parole officers, parents, step-parents, foster parents, and grandparents. It was like a web of support that was needed to help these students overcome barriers that never should have been theirs to begin with.
Another aspect of teamwork came about when we decided to field a basketball team. My co-teacher and I decided after hours of noon ball and a little push from the students that we should become more organized. And so we started by asking if kids were interested in forming a team. And lo and behold, these kids who had never been part of a team in their lives, were ALL IN. We ordered jerseys, held a few practices, and convinced some local teams (a couple parochial schools and a few public schools) to add us to their schedules as scrimmages. And we played basketball. Was it perfect? Of course it wasn't, there were a few F-bombs thrown out and some near fights as a foul may have been perceived as intentional. We celebrated every basket, every non-call when we traveled, and every handshake at the end of games. Win or lose, this team and this game, produced a teamwork victory.
5. All kids have talents, we just need to find them.
One student I had barely spoke. There was no way for him to survive in the regular ed setting. It was suffocating for him and he would feel like he was drowning whenever he went back. So, we kept him. And we brought him an engine or a motor or something. And oh my, did he start to talk. I learned more that year about engines and motors than I care to knew. I can't remember any of it, except how he looked and acted when he was teaching the rest of us about them. Another example came when we took a field trip to "Mary's Place" in the cities - a homeless shelter with a food shelf, soup kitchen, and transitional housing. We worked stocking shelves, cooking and serving, and in the daycare center. One student LOVED the daycare. I had rarely seen her smile and she had said "F-you" to me more times than I could count. But in there? Loving, kind, and gentle. From then on, I could refer back to that day with her and this would help guide her path forward.
6. Parenting is hard, and so is being a kid of struggling parents.
When I taught there, I wasn't a parent. I had no idea what it was like to work full time and try to raise a family, let alone working more than one job and still needing financial assistance and emotional support in the process. We held a monthly family meeting that was optional for parents and their kids. Some came. Some didn't. But for those who did, the parents were able to hear wonderful things about their kids (which was a rarity for them) and the kids could come to school willingly and not be forced to learn. The could actually come to school and have fun!
Even though I was not a parent, I still held meetings with parents of students. One of the first things I always did (and still do) while meeting with parents was say, "Here's what I love about your kid....here's what your kid does well..." These parents rarely get to hear good things about their kids as students. It is a new experience for them and not one they are used to. Parents of special needs students often feel overwhelmed, responsible, and guilty for the behavior of their children. An IEP meeting for a parent, who themselves may not have been successful in the traditional school setting, can be completely overwhelming and anxiety producing. Simply saying, "I'm glad you're here. I really appreciate ______ 's sense of humor (or reading ability, or creativity, or perseverance, etc), opens up amazing opportunities for communication.
I witnessed a struggling parent and her son at an IEP meeting that has stayed with me all these years. Her son was bright, artistic, and talented. He was also had made some poor choices, suffered from anxiety and depression, and had used drugs and alcohol. He was 15. His mom was 30. He had a baby sister whom he adored. At his IEP meeting, I said, "Oh _______, you are a great big brother. When she starts talking and says your name you'll be so proud!"
He said, "Well, I'll probably be gone by then."
And his mom said, "We can only hope."
How do you heal that? When a parent says that in front of you, you know that much worse has been said or done when you are not around. This was one moment when I realized that I can't heal everything. I can only control my end, the school end, and try to give him the tools to deal with the home and community end of things.
7. Some kids can't survive in a regular school setting.
Do you know the feeling when the mall is just too much for you? When you are around a bunch of people and the noise is intolerable? When, if one more person asks you how you are, you feel like you might punch them? When every single day you have to walk into a place that takes everything that you're not good at and make those things the most important things? When you go to bed at night thinking tomorrow things will be better and you wake up and they're not? Well, the kids we saw had some of those same feelings. Over and over, kids would begin the transition back to their home school setting, and deliberately fail. We would have ZERO behavior issues with kids and the minute we started talking transition, behaviors would suddenly appear that we hadn't seen before. Or, when kids started back at their home schools, attendance would suddenly become an issue. Kids would skip or just suddenly stop attending the hours at their home school, but still come to the day treatment. Finally, we said, "Why can't kids graduate from our day treatment and their home school at the same time?" And so, with approval from the home school districts, we simply KEPT some students until they graduated! Win-Win.
8. Being a school in the middle of a cornfield has its advantages.
Sometimes kids don't want to be in school. And so they run. However, if you don't want to be in your school which happens to be in the middle of a corn field, there aren't very many options available to you. And we were, quite literally, surrounded by corn. We were at least 8 miles from the nearest town and out in the middle of nowhere. Students knew that if they decided to run, that we would have no choice but to call law enforcement. Once there were two students who decided they'd had enough for the day. So, they ran. And ran, and ran. For 8 miles. They ran, walked, probably hitched, on the gravel road to the nearest town. When they got there, they went to the school and found our custodian who was there to pick up our school lunches and got a ride BACK to school, arriving just in time for lunch. Apparently, school was not such a bad place to be after all, even if the next day had to be spent in ISS - In School Suspension.
9. Academics sometimes has to come second.
Students would often come to school with what we termed "carry in" problems. Even today teaching in regular education, I know that many of the kids I see each day have literal baggage. That baggage could be as simple as hunger, or a complicated as abuse or mental illness. Hunger could be relatively easy. We partnered with malt-o-meal and they provided us with free cereal for every day. Breakfast became sort of like a family meal. For kids who rarely had a family meal, this was an opportunity to practice manners and conversation, while breaking away the first barrier - the physical need of hunger. Even in my classroom today, I will have students come to me and say, "I didn't have breakfast." I open my desk drawer and say, "What can I get you?"
10. Humor helps you take it all in stride.
A couple of my favorite moments at the day treatment could have gone either way. Teaching a lesson in the 90s often involved a tool called "the overhead projector." If you don't know what that is, you didn't teach or learn in the 80s or 90s. After a lesson on who knows what, I asked my student to "flip off the overhead projector." He grinned gleefully and proceeded to literally flip off (using a certain hand gesture) the overhead projector. When this happened, I had two choices. Punish the humor. Or reward the effort. I chose to say, "Perfect. Now, TURN OFF the overhead projector." There was another instance, ironically or not, with the same student. I was giving a test on the skeletal system. The test question was, "What is a joint?"Giggle, giggle. He said, "I can't wait to answer THIS one!" Haha, I responded, the joint that has to do with BONES! I won't test you on the other one! I learned a bundle about using precise language when teaching my EBD students.
After 3 years at the day treatment, I got an interview at a public school in the small community where I had been coaching. I interviewed there and got the job teaching third grade and have been there ever since. Being back in the regular ed setting was still a challenge, but a relief at the same time. I did not realize how many of my students' problems I carried home with me from the day treatment and how much I worried about them when their lives weren't with me. I STILL worry about them, and I know they are adults. It's not all happy endings - some are in jail, some have died, some have children, and some lead functional lives. I hope that I helped in their lives, but I would be naive if I thought that I had been able to reach them all. I do know that they all reached me and I have them to thank for making me a better teacher than I was before I met them.
A few months ago, I ran into a woman at a business in Rochester. I had taught two of her children. I didn't recognize her name so I asked who they were and said, "Yes, I had them both for social studies." Then she said, "And you taught my husband, too!" What?! Really?! Yes, when you were at that special school! And I asked his name and she told me. "Wow!" I said, "That is so cool! I remember him as a very kind and gentle young man." She said, "Well, he is still a kind and gentle man." We had a bit more conversation, where she told me I would have to stay with this 'teaching gig' so that I could have her younger two, just like I'd taught their dad.
I told her that I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. This 'teaching gig' is a lifetime thing.
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