An Extraordinary, Everyday Victory

I went into Special Education, I once told my old friend Jim, because it's a field that is morally unimpeachable.

To fully understand this, you have to know that my first job out of college was working in the West Texas oil fields. I made amazing money for someone with a fresh bachelor of science in geology; but I was acutely aware, every day on those plains, that we raped the land in a way I've never been a part of before or since. Enormous pools of salty water or oily acid, thickened with guar gum no better for the environment because it was a tree product, littered the ground that we'd spent just a few hours on, all to the benefit of the royalty owner and producer, who thereby made a few more barrels a day of hydrocarbon. And that was all before any awareness of climate change. I owed the earth - something.


But even after I began teaching, there was enough left in me of the higher-education-besotted Central European to always question how I spent my work life. Would it not create greater value, the part of me that still related to that mitteleuropa asked, if I used my brains to teach kids that are gifted, that can contribute great discoveries to the world, if I can't win the Nobel myself? So I quested after the "double-identified" kids - the ones with disabilities, but also academic gifts or talents. And I shied away from the situations that involved working with kids with more cognitive disabilities, even when the jobs offered were ideal in every other way.


In districts I'd taught in before D-11, this was relatively easy - the kids with severe needs had whole separate rooms where they spent most of their day with their teachers and educational assistants. We might get together with them for a party sometimes, or walk through the room on our way to somewhere else, and comment enviously about their cooking facilities, all the while thinking, somewhere deep inside, yeah, but they have to work with those kids..


"Sean," my first student with moderate mental retardation, had Down's syndrome, and he had all of the gifts and deficits typical of it. He loved to be sociable - in fact, had a serious talent in that area. But he also hated to work independently, and generally would show his displeasure with loud vocalization - which made teaching pre-algebra to kids who mostly had some combination of learning disability and ADHD more of a challenge than I was pleased to take on.

Until I got used to it, it bothered me badly - as did Sean's blithe assumption that everything he did was universally loved. Worse, most of the other people in the school played along - they glad-handed Sean, high-fived and low-fived and hugged him, and all I could think of was, the kid is 13, come on, let's teach him some grown-up behaviors here! And then one day it was the last day of 8th grade and I gave him the longest hug I ever gave any kid in my whole life. I don't think I wanted to let him go - ever.

I'm at a different school now, and this year I have not one, but three, kids with significant disabilities! And yes, I'm still the grown-up in the room. I look askance at the sing-song the educational assistants employ to speak to the kids. I could barely swallow my anger when one of them gave one of the girls a Barbie for a 12th birthday present. I give the kids intermittent lectures and advice about being almost grown - and sometimes, perhaps, I make enough sense for them understand. Perhaps because I once worked at helping people with severe, sometimes multiple, disabilities work productively at regular jobs, most of my effort with these kids is directed at where I want them to be when they turn 21, and age out of the school system. They won't be taking up floor space in front of mom's TV if I have anything to do with it..

And sometimes they pay me back. Today's victory belonged to "Leo Dvorak." Leo came to our school afraid of anything new. A kid with high-functioning autism, he likes things to be exactly the way he's used to. If he put his backpack down on a table yesterday, he'll put it there today - even if it's on top of a pile of carefully sorted legal paperwork I'd just spend 15 minutes arranging. If I forget to punch holes so he can put his math paper in his binder, he'll interrupt a fraction demonstration to remind me.

But most of all, when he showed up, Leo worried about unexpected noises, and stairs. He needed an hand to hold going down stairs, and someone to carry his books so he could hold the railing with the other. During the first fire drill, I held him under my arm the whole time to keep him from bursting into tears.

But now it's December. At the end of third period, Leo goes to art, in the downstairs studio. This involves negotiating a staircase full of rushing, loud, mostly bigger seventh graders on their way to the cafeteria next door. But Leo and I have been working on it: gradually, I've increased the distance between him and me, by yesterday stopping at the landing as he made it down the lower set of steps. Today I had to answer the phone right at the end of class. I put the phone down and looked around; no Leo.

Yep, he made it to art. All by himself. I walked down to make sure; he was making his way to his desk like he'd accomplished nothing in particular.

But then.. almost at the end of the day, the fire alarm rang. It was an unannounced fire drill, and Leo was with a substitute educational assistant in a classroom across the building from me. As I walked out, it occurred to me that I should have found him before I exited, but I knew they wouldn't let me back in.

And there he was. "I don't know who was leading who," the educational assistant said. "He knew where to go.."

After the all clear sounded, I walked straight to the phone and called Leo's mom. It was a day of everyday, but extraordinary, victories. It was time to celebrate.