Category: Special Education

Dream Boots

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The author reflects on a significant dream during a challenging time as a teacher in special education, feeling emotionally drained. In the dream, a circle of supportive women offers her unique boots, symbolizing empowerment. Ultimately, she overcomes her fears and joins their dance, illustrating how dreams can inspire us to persevere.

Getting Hit in School

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I got hit in the face this past week. I’m a special education teacher these days, so in my current line of work while that’s unexpected it’s also very much expected. It’s basically just a bad day at work.

Over the past few years I’ve been hit, kicked, shoved, scratched, bitten, sworn at, threatened, had desks, chairs, and all sorts of other stuff thrown at me, and dealt with and been covered in just about every bodily fluid elementary school students can excrete, not to mention being covered in all the globs of macaroni and cheese or whatever other food is on the menu. So, why note getting hit? It wasn’t a bad punch. It knocked off my glasses, but didn’t break them or even leave a physical mark. It was one of those hits that came at the wrong time though and for that moment I broke into tears.

It happens to all of us who work in our schools today, especially in schools like mine that serve significant populations of students who are from low income families, struggle with maintaining housing and paying their bills, and who often have generations of history that tell them school success isn’t meant for them. Eventually, our hearts break.

I felt the tears come to my eyes as soon as the student’s hand hit my cheek. I knew I needed support to address the situation, so I called on a staff member in the hall nearby to takeover and I walked as quickly as I could to the office space I share with the other special education teachers at my school. I was crumbling. I was a broken mirror in which each of my colleagues could see themselves. One went to get ice and a health care staff person to check my cheek. The others each offered support and let me cry out my tears. They created a safe space for me for which I will always be thankful.

The hit hurt not because of the hand that landed on my cheek, but because I’d spent my day, like more and more days lately, trying to help not only this student but others, my students who simply don’t have the emotional skills to handle being homeless or dealing with any other horrendous and unfair situations they and their families are in. So often their emotions fly all over. One moment they seem to be fine, calm and settled. The next they’re screaming and throwing chairs. It worsens as their life situations become more chaotic and all I can do so often is just try to be that steady safe person they can trust. That can be good and it can be hard. After all, I’m the one they know won’t hit back. They can show their anger, fear, and sorrow, and it hurts.

It’s tiring. I don’t know how to change the situation in our schools, but I do know it can’t go on like this. I took a day off to just take care of myself before coming back to help my kids again. That helped me for the moment and gave me the strength I needed to give to these kids again, but it’s no solution. We ultimately have to stop focusing on teaching subjects and start focusing on teaching and caring for kids. There has to be a way. These beautiful kids deserve the best.

What Happens to Hungry Kids?

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My work for social justice for the past few years has largely been working in special education. It looks a lot different than my days running non-profits or organizing on the streets, but ultimately the same questions are there. It’s always about recognizing the underlying issues if we want to find the long term answers.

Because of the federal government shut down SNAP is running out. Millions of people will be losing the benefits that make it possible for them to feed themselves and their families on November 1st. Many states are jumping in to hold off the crash and to keep people fed.

As a teacher at a school that serve many families that receive SNAP benefits, I’m wondering what’s going to happen. How long will states be able to keep their finger in the dike to stop the hunger flood? What will be cut from those state budgets to make it possible to keep the families fed?

Mostly, I find myself asking what happens not only in the loss of SNAP but in the fear of the loss? When families are in that spot of having to choose whether to buy food or pay rent, which will they choose? So many families are already making tough choices to make ends meet and it impacts our kids far beyond the dinner table. Families are choosing between buying food or paying for gas. When they can’t keep gas in the car, kids don’t get to school. In many schools this means that not only are they losing out on their education, but they’ve also missed out on breakfast, lunch, and probably a snack which they were entitled to via free and reduced meal programs. It’s an awful circle. Not enough money for food and gas, so buy gas, then no food at home so skip eating from lunch until the next day. Buy food and well, can’t get to school and parents can’t get to work.

I wonder how our attendance rates will be affected in upcoming weeks with tightening budgets and already stressed parents facing yet another strain making it more and more to keep themselves together and get their kids to school. I wonder how behaviors will change. Kids are ultimately mirrors of the stresses in their parents’ lives.

How to we amplify the voices of these kids and their families so that those in Washington can hear them? How do we make their struggle visible? How do we take this moment in time of losing SNAP and point to where it leads us with kids going hungry, struggling in school, struggling in life, and just not going anywhere?

The Next Chapter

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It’s hard to believe that I’ve not written in eight months. I had no idea it had been that long. It’s one of those things that seems as if it was only yesterday and at the same time feels a lifetime ago.

I got home from my travels in Europe to a stint of being underemployed that changed my life once again. Some people stay with jobs they don’t believe in and that tear apart their souls so they can be assured of a steady paycheck. That might be the smart thing to do for a lot of people, but it’s never been something that I could face. I’ve left good paying jobs because the organizations I worked for did things that were, in my view, morally unjust. Some groups I found mistreated workers, discriminated against people, or were racist and homophopic. I couldn’t stay with them and stay with myself. Other jobs ended just because in the nonprofit world sometimes there’s no money left and without money organizations stop operating and jobs end. In the case of Solace Friends, the group I worked with before I left for Europe, it was just a situation where it became clear to me that the organization needed something that wasn’t me and the work was going to burn me out like a candle lit at both ends. It couldn’t continue without me risking more seizures and burnout. It wasn’t worth it. So, I leapt into the unknown. After the vacation to Europe that I’d booked months earler, I returned to Madison and to no idea what would happen next.

What happened was dozens more resumes sent to everyone and their uncle followed by many interviews. Meanwhile, I started to sub in the Madison Metropolitan School District, mostly at Lowell Elementary as a Special Education Aide. The thing about subbing as an SEA in 2023 in Wisconsin, and in many other places I’m sure, is that a person can sub every day if they want. Schools are desperate for people to fill so many roles. I was lucky enough to find a long term subbing position that allowed me to work in the same school and with the same kids for weeks. It was a challenge. I had my favorite runners, little ones who’d simply run out of the classroom when they didn’t want to take part in activities any more. I had the kids who just didn’t want to deal with some support staff person trying to get them to go take their medicine and who’d mastered the great skill of talking back about everything. Then there were the ones who didn’t talk at all, those who hadn’t learned to speak yet. The kids trying to exist in our public school system when they were still non-verbal and operating developmentally years behind their peers.

I’ve been an activist and an organizer for a long time, about three decades as a matter of fact. Working with these kids isn’t changing the world in the big ways that I used to aim for, but it is much the same. It is changing the world for each of them through being there, caring, and taking the time to sit with them and figure out things together, so that they might become the person who can advocate for themselves.

So, it was there, at Lowell Elementary, spending time hanging out with those kids defined as having “special needs” that I turned the page to start my next chapter. After putting quite a bit of thought, I decided on a midlife career switch. I left the nonprofit world and applied to work for the Madison Metropolitan School District as a Cross-Categorical Teacher (what many may know as a Special Education Teacher). I started teaching this Fall at Mendota Elementary with a provisional teaching license while going to school to get my permanent license. It’s hard. There’s no doubt about that, but I am happy to have made the change and look forward to the chapters ahead. More stories to come.