My second student teaching placement is at an undisclosed middle school in urban Appalachia teaching 24 students with special needs in a self contained classroom. They are in 5th through 8th grade and all have varying degrees of disabilities. There are 20 boys and 3 girls. This placement has tested every ounce of patience I have and has made me question every teaching practice I have ever implemented or learned about. Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, the most difficult part of this placement for me has been the discipline. I find it hard to take the advice of some teachers and 'just yell' at the students or to become the 'bitch on wheels' in my classroom. I feel like on the Main Line, I wouldnt have a problem with that. On the Main Line, it would be like sit down, give me your iPhone, and do your frickin work. But in my classroom, I look out and see students who have difficult lives. I see students who are yelled at all day in school and then yelled at all night at home. I see students that have disabilities because their mothers were drug addicts while they were pregnant, were physically abused as children, or are genetic nightmares. I see children who haven't bathed in weeks because their family doesn't have running water. I see students who aren't given their medication because their mothers sell their prescriptions.
Those that know me know that I can yell. I'm Italian. It's a genetic marker. But in my classroom, I can't seem to raise my voice to these kids. My heart breaks for their lives. At the same time, there is a little piece of me that doesn't want my heart to get in the way of their education. If I can touch the life of even one student and help them (or their parents) see that they aren't failures, I will have done my job in the classroom. I only get them for 6 weeks but that doesn't matter. Lives can dramatically alter in a moment. I've got 3,628,800 of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment