On the personal side of things, I’ve recently been accepted to graduate school. (Yay!) I’ll be starting this November on working towards gaining Special Education certification. It will be for Mild Interventions, which encompasses learning disabilities, emotional/behavioral disabilities/disorders (EBD, my favorite), mild/minor mental impairment(s), and other disabilities and/or disorders as defined and identified by school and medical specialists. I can say from experience that it is a HUGE umbrella.
I’ve been working in the field for the past year and half and somehow–I don’t know how–but I seem to have the patience needed to work with these children. Or at least that’s what folks keep saying to me when I answer their question, “What do you do?” It’s not just patience, but really an annoyance, a “Dammit! This is so silly! This shit can be fixed!” type of annoyance. But this description feels like downgrading or downplaying the real severity of these children’s lives. It isn’t silly to them at all, only silly to me, in the moment-by-moment of the daily grind. Like when it’s taken you two days to assess a child’s pattern of behavior and by the third day you’re all, “What the fuck, John Doe? This shit again?” but to the child it’s “Holy shit I’m freaking out and I have no fucking idea how to cope so I’m just going to throw this chair and scream FUCK YOU BITCH”. Yeah, not so silly. More, scary and freaky, the kind of freaky where you go home and shudder at thoughts of this child’s home life.
I’ve read and heard repeatedly that the average burn-out time for teachers is 4-5 years. I have no idea what the time frame is for SpEd teachers, but by the time I’m finished with my school work and ending student teaching, I’ll be near the 4 year mark. I figure I’ll have a better idea of whether or not I can hack it by then. Right now I’m going off the fact I still show up for work after a year of being cursed at like I’ve never been cursed at before, hit, punched, kicked, spit on, and threatened with murder. On a daily to semi-daily basis. Yes, really.
With even my paltry position as a quasi-teacher, I’m scared by the lack of psychological background required. Even my on-coming studies don’t focus highly on the psychological side of things, which I’ve come to view as paramount to students’ success. They’re dealing with shit I never imagined eight-year-olds would have to face (that’s my bourgeois naïveté for ya). And in the classroom, I feel wholly incompetent and repeatedly find myself throwing up my arms in frustration at not knowing what the fuck to do to help these kids. With adults you can say, “Buck up. Buy a helmet, cause this shit doesn’t get any better” but with kids you feel remorse at their lack and/or loss of childhood, of that time when they shouldn’t have a care in the world, when the adults around them are there to make things better. With my students, often the adults make things worse. They come from “broken” homes, overworked and overburdened parents, or parents who just don’t give a shit because they’re more concerned with themselves.
I never knew this segment of children existed. Or at least, I never thought about the possibility of their existence. Sure, my childhood has mixed parts fucked-up and normal, but these kids? For these kids it’s mostly fucked-up and abnormally normal.
I suppose a lot of this rant of mine stems from the lack of support from our administrators and so-called therapists. But I’d gather even they feel at a loss as to what to do with these kids.
Statistically, I’m working with a miniscule portion of our public school student population. But really, I’m only working with kids who have been so out of whack behaviorally as to garner the recognition and time of their teachers, administrators, and special case workers. Think of all the kids with fucked-up home lives who don’t throw chairs. I’m only working with those who “act it out”, not suffer in silence.
There are upsides–if you look real hard for them, and they’re the things that keep you going.
I’ve seen students who have changed. Who have learned coping skills. Who have been able to learn how to deal with their anger and sadness and frustration and hatred in more “constructive” manners. Sometimes, I have to admit, because we all need to talk about it, it’s only because of drugs. They’ve gotten the antidepressant or stimulant or downer or “inhibitor” that has just clicked with their body and has made them calmer, or more focused, or able to deal with (acknowledge) their emotions. Other times it’s because they’ve been in the system long enough, they’ve matured, or just reached a (mental) age where they can handle the shit life they’ve been dealt. And then they move on, they go back to “normal” school, to a “regular” classroom. And sometimes they stay there. Other times, we see them again, next semester or next year. Sometimes, sometimes though, they’re in the system for good. They get passed along through elementary, junior high, high school, ‘up and out the system, and into our “justice” system.
Seeing a child go from “unmedicated” to “medicated” is halting. The first time I witnessed it in a student unknowingly, I thought something was seriously wrong. It was just like in the movies or teevee, where the mental patient is all crazy and then the doctors stab them with a syringe and the next scene they’re catatonic.
And I have to keep thinking about all the stuff I’ve read about our whole public school system. About how we expect children to sit still in hard desks for 7-8 hours a day, five days a week, ingesting things only to regurgitate them on “standardized” exams. I can’t blame John Doe for getting fidgety after 6 hours of sitting in a desk.
I don’t know what I’m trying to tell you.
I do know that I feel like I’m facing an unwinnable battle. But I’ve signed up for it, thinking that somehow I can win, somewhere, so fuck it, why not try?
