Be The Change

Is anyone as devastated as I am over the Oscar Pestorius story?  I cried every time that man raced this summer and he seemed like such an incredible human being.  The media is even having trouble finding people who will say a bad thing about him – even the victim’s agent said he was a charming, great guy.  What a hot mess.  He was such an inspiration for so many people.  I’m holding onto that whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing, but it isn’t looking good.  What is this world coming to?

On that note – I am going to get back to the quote I have up there.  Yesterday I was heartbroken over the news (AGAIN).  Basically, all the news ever does is make me sad. I should quit watching it or reading it.  Death, gambling, natural disasters, cop-killing ex-cops…it’s all just petrifyingly horrible.  I was scheduled for an afternoon practicum in a 7^th/8^th grade classroom.  It might seem like something that should be easy as pie for me, but when all your experience and training is at an upper/honors secondary level, middle school is terrifying!!  Then add the sad news I read on my lunch hour and I went to my practicum feeling broken and sad.

I was supposed to sit quietly at the back of the classroom and observe, make notes about how to handle the classroom, absorb teaching methods I would want to use in my own classroom someday, that sort of thing.  So there I sat, when my host teacher asked me if I could do them a favor and transcribe for a student with a broken arm. I of course obliged immediately and as the teacher led me to the computer lab, I received an explanation on the student and notification that the student was moderately special needs.

My palms got sweaty and I started to panic on the inside.  My specialty is poetry and modern YAL.  What could I possible offer a special education child in middle school? I felt all wrong for the job and ill equipped to be trusted with it.  I tuned back in post-panic to hear my host teacher finishing their instructions with, “….and since you’re specialty is English, if you manage to get to two paragraphs with the student, please help the student understand sentence structure, grammar and punctuation through questions instead of straight instruction.”  Good gracious, the student and I were doomed.

I sat down in the chair at the computer and typed the exact words the student spoke to me.  The student was fantastic and funny and sweet.  It’s true; there was a prevalent learning disability.  As I typed the words exactly as the student spoke them to me, I fought the urge to edit, revise and change what the student said to fit my idea of “perfect English.”  When we reached two paragraphs, I started to ask the student questions about the information that had been portrayed to me and if the proper language was used to get the point across in a clear and concise way.  The student started to struggle and get frustrated.  I started to falter (after all, there was a voice in my head telling me the whole time this was not where my training lies).

In a miraculous moment of clarity, the idea floated into my head to try asking the student to simply read back the script to me.  As the student and I took it one sentence at a time, I watched a miracle unfold before my very eyes.  I watched this student stumble and hesitate over the words that were incorrect.  I watched the student pause when they saw a word that didn’t fit and in the student’s eyes, I saw that they KNEW the mistakes that had been made.  Through painstakingly slow progress and thought processes, the student was able to identify and correctly revise the paragraphs we had written.

When the student felt it was as polished as it was going to get, they requested I print it out so that they could show it to their group members for changes and revision.  As the student dashed out of the room I thought to myself that these paragraphs were nowhere near perfect in my eyes, but for this special spirit, they were impeccably written.  In a matter of minutes, this very special student ran back into the computer lab with their broken arm and jumped for joy, exclaiming to me, “They said it was perfect and I don’t need to change anything!”  In that moment, my heart melted.  The fullness in my heart that I felt at the student’s joy will forever be a defining moment in my life.

The truth is, I am still not trained or equipped to deal with special education children. I never will be, it’s not where my education lies.  However, this experience opened my eyes to supporting a full inclusion classroom…or not supporting it depending on the circumstance – at least when the day comes, my decision can be based on actual experience and not something I read from a text book.

The truth is, my desire to teach at a higher education level instead of younger children still outweighs any other teaching desire in my heart, but at least now I know that if I ever teach middle school, I will be able to relate to the students and pull this moment from my rolodex of life experiences to try to be more compassionate and understating.

The truth is, even if just for an hour in my day, I WAS the change I want to see in this world.