It’s
cold, it’s raining, and worst of all it’s 9 A.M on a Sunday morning. You
gradually make your way out from underneath the warmth of your covers.
After a shower, your mind attempts, with substantial difficulty, to adjust to
its new awakened state. You gather the new flash cards and other
activities you prepared the night before for this morning’s lesson. As
you dress, you try to get yourself excited for apple juice and graham crackers,
matching games, and music class. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re
saying, “Maybe today is a snow day, classes are cancelled, and they forgot to
call you.” Yet, it being May and fifty degrees, you come to terms with
the fact that you are not going back to sleep. Instead you must awaken
your imagination, your creativity and your patience. It is a Sunday
morning, you are sixteen, and you are doing the same you have done every Sunday
morning for over four years: you are going to your temple to teach fifth grade
Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Not to just any fifth graders, these children
are special--unique in their qualities, in their individual needs, and most
especially in the grand impact they have on you.
You turn the key to your classroom door, turning on the lights
and opening the windows, awakening it from its week long slumber. You
sharpen pencils, gather markers, and pull out the textbooks, games, and
worksheets. With fifteen minutes before class begins, you travel up the
long flight of stairs to the Hebrew School office, reviewing your lesson plan
as you walk.
A fellow teacher approaches you and says, “Oh, you look unusually
exhausted this morning.” You give a shy, somewhat embarrassed smile.
You are no more tired than you usually are. This is just another Sunday.
“Well I don’t blame you,” she responds, “the anticipation of
twenty students on a Sunday morning will do that to you.” What she
does not know is that you are not working with twenty students. You are
only awaiting two. Yet those two students will require an equal amount of
motivation, energy, enthusiasm, and focus as those twenty. You will spend
an equivalent amount of time, preparation, and must have equal skill as that
same teacher of twenty. This is inconceivable to many and you question it
yourself on a regular basis. But that is exactly what working with
children with special needs is: questioning yourself, your generalizations
about people, and many of the simple methods and facts which the foundations of
your education, relationships, and behaviors are rooted in. It is defying
limitations, standards, and others’ expectations. It is acquiring the
ability to surpass the confines of your imagination and your individual thought
process and evolve to accommodate someone else’s. It is allowing yourself
to grow and develop along with your students. Most challenging, it is
asking for the trust and the commitment of two young children-- two young
children who, standing only four feet tall, created a challenge which towered
over you like a giant. It is proving to yourself that the giant which
intimidated you at first, appearing to be an unconquerable task, is now a
reality and what you thought would be a frilly baby sitting job has formed a
relationship which has superseded all of your expectations.
“Emilyyyy,” your train of thought is broken and your day has
begun as Cara enters the classroom. It always amazes you how lively she
is on Sunday mornings. Her consistent motivation is almost as
mind-blowing as her great discipline.
You become distracted as you hear the sounds of space ships
crashing and an array of other imaginary noises. No matter how you
prepare yourself, you never quite find yourself ready for Spencer’s tremendous
imagination. “My father isn’t Jewish, I still don’t get why I need to be
here.”
You already become frustrated at how he uses his great
intelligence to stick a knife directly at the spot he knows will strike you the
deepest. “Spencer, be careful. Don’t cross that line so early in
the morning. Could you try to imagine why you might have to be here?”
“Mommy”
“Yep. Plus, what would we do without you? Although
you might not like those reasons, you’re here. Let’s get going.”
There in lies your very own contradiction: your students.
Working with a student with special needs is a tribulation in itself.
Teaching two who are similar can often be a handful. Having two children
with special needs in a classroom for two hours who are polar opposites of each
other can be an incredible ordeal for the teacher. You have taken on a
great responsibility and a great challenge. Now how do you go about
tackling it? An imperative part of being a teacher is feeling comfortable
enough and free enough to allow yourself to become a student. Firstly,
before even entering the classroom, you must know who your students are
medically. Seeking additional aid outside of your workplace as well as a
general basis of knowledge is most definitely essential.
Let us relate this back to Cara and Spencer. Before he even
entered kindergarten, Spencer was diagnosed with Asberger’s Syndrome.
This is a neurological disorder which commonly affects boys with normal
language and intellectual development. It is a disorder which primarily
impinges on social and communication skills, varies greatly in severity, and
has many parallels with Autism. With the abundance of knowledge on
Asberger’s Syndrome, you can teach yourself new techniques which will make his
experience with you much less difficult. With the sensitivity to smell
and touch, characteristic of Asberger’s, you will know not to wear strong
perfume. When his parents go away and he complains of unbearably painful
itchiness you will know about his sensitivity to fabrics and the way this
relates to a heightened need for sameness. You will find a way to
distract him and a way of teaching without doing work, a concept foreign to
many, yet crucial for these circumstances. When Spencer complains of the
voices in his head, you will know that he hears things and see things you will
never even be able to imagine.
Most importantly, you will be able to keep in mind that despite
many of his comments, eccentricities, and often intolerable behavior, it is
truly not out of rudeness. You will know how to discipline and proceed
accordingly and how to help him understand what he has done wrong after the
fact, which is the point where he is able to reflect and think clearest.
As he asks you, “What are all those red dots on your face,” and you feel that
you want to scream apologizing for disappointing him but since you had to come
teach him this morning you did not have sufficient time to beautify, you will
think twice. You will remember that although you know how smart he is,
children with Asberger’s have an unusually high level of naivete and he is
simply asking a question, a remote, but significant for him, effort to try to
relate on a social level.
As you gain the consistency he needs for a productive
relationship, you will be able to discover his incredible capabilities as a
student. Although this will frustrate you more when he does not
apply them in a productive manner, this new knowledge will help you sympathize
and assist you in maintaining your patience with him. Although there will
be days where you will leave feeling insignificant, useless, maybe even want to
cry out with frustration, there will be other times which will outweigh them.
After you bypass his efforts to get you off topic, his disparaging comments
about Judaism, and his abundant science fiction and biology lessons he will,
flawlessly, read a line of Hebrew and proceed to relate it to a previous Jewish
Studies lesson. You will sit back, almost aghast having not seen it coming.
On his bad days you will return home learning your own lesson on how to work
with him, how to work with yourself, and on his good days he will go home with
his.
Contrasting with Spencer, Cara does not have a “textbook
classification.” Some of her behaviors have been compared to mild down
syndrome, in the sense that you can clearly see that physically something is
not entirely “normal” about her. She pales in comparison to the massive
intellectual capacity that Spencer has, yet greatly compensates for it with an
intense drive and ability to relate to others her age which Spencer lacks.
Cara also has a definite speech impediment related to her condition and has
shown some signs of dyslexia, often reversing letters. She is a child who
is always smiling and yearns for your affection, your attention, and to be
treated as if she is an equal. This is something she rarely finds with a
third grade reading level and kindergarten speech yet something she must
receive from you to win her trust and her adoration. By forming a
relationship with the student, allowing them to look at you as a friend rather
than an authoritative teacher, they will enjoy being with you as well as value
your companionship. They will trust you enough to open up to you and permit
you to see their natural behaviors and thus allow you to learn how to best work
with them. With the amount of extra intense work she does during the week
for her regular schooling she must be a child who enjoys coming to Hebrew
school rather than dreads it. This is rare among the average fifth grader
but once achieved it will create a student driven to learn and who enjoys it.
They will have the motivation to work and you, feeling proud of your
accomplishment, will continue to have the motivation to teach. Although
this type of relationship seems like a simple check on your list of things to
do, it will prove to be essential for you both to have a successful
experience and must be given much attention. In the end, you will be
proud to say that you have a best friend who is in fifth grade and who has such
respect for you. You will realize you have that same great adoration and
admiration for her too.
Yet now you can see one of your first problems: these are two
very different people. While Spencer is craving to move on and learn
something new, Cara is at risk for being left behind in Spencer’s whirlwind of
learning. Yet when everything seems to be clicking with Cara, Spencer is
having one of his less than good days and you need to pause to discipline.
You must, without question, find some common ground between the two. With
a student with a social disorder this is far from easy but hands on games will
become your new best friend. You will need a survival kit in your classroom for
break times from book learning or when sitting in front of a textbook is just
not going to cut it for your easily distracted students. First is the
hacky sack which you can pass around the table. Each toss of the hacky
sack can be a different word in the current prayer or sentences which you are
working on. This provides a motor action which will keep everyone paying
attention as well as a relatively exciting method of reinforcing the material.
When everyone really needs to move around, there is a basketball
game where each syllable is a different type of bounce with the ball.
Each person passes the ball around the group, imitating the sounds along with
the bounces. This is a guaranteed excellent way of motivating everyone
with a field trip to a large empty space and a requirement to get up off your
feet and “get the blood in your body flowing.” Matching games and other
card games are also a fun way of attempting to bring your two students and
yourself together on some common ground. Although many of these
activities require much brainstorming and preparation before hand, when it
saves you when both students are having a rough day or when they finally are
able to read that line of text you have been stuck on for weeks, it will be
well worth the great efforts.
Although your new knowledge about your students’ disorders has
most definitely played a role in your innovative games, your best chance of
finding what is going to work best for your students is their personalities.
Especially in Cara’s situation, where you really have little to no outside
knowledge sources, you must place great emphasis on your one on one experiences
with your students and the information relayed to you by those close to them.
This leads us into your next learning experience: finding out who your students
are on a personal level. You will learn much about your students through
anecdotes from their past teachers, their parents, as well as your basic time
in the classroom with them.
In the cases of both students, getting to know their habits and
interests will prove effective. With Spencer, relating Hebrew letters to
Pokémon characters will help him have more of an incentive to learn. With
Cara, knowing who her best friends are, noticing her interest in shopping, and
being aware of her need to be like everyone else will set you on track to
becoming her confidante. This aspect of teaching is entirely based on
your perceptiveness as a human being. It is studying a person’s gestures,
the tone of their voice, eccentricities which are heightened on certain days or
a difference in level of conversation and topic. Through this, you will
be able to rule out which of your teaching techniques have been successful and
which have failed. If you focus enough of your energy on this area, you
will be able to anticipate when a break will be needed, when a melt down is on
the way, or when someone’s just having a bad day. You will also be able
to recognize days when your students are focused enough for you to take your
lesson to the next level or push them to that next step that they might not
have been able to achieve normally. With this heightened sense of
sensitivity towards the behaviors and habits of others, you will see dramatic
improvements within the classroom and eventually realize that you now look at
the world quite differently. You will see that your perception of what is
important to take note of will evolve beyond belief and your interpersonal
skills will be greatly improved.
Yet after having hands on experience with your students in the
classroom, reflecting on your sessions together when you return home, taking
note of tips to yourself or unusual behaviors, you will have realized that it
is impossible to record a complete set of rules or steps to follow to teach someone
with special needs. You must simply learn it yourself--not through a
textbook, or a professor, but experience. People can give you theories,
explanations, hypotheses, yet why children behave the way they do will always
be somewhat of a mystery to adults. Although it is is rather nerve
wracking to be expected to rely on your own intuition and knowledge to guide
two children through their next year at Hebrew school, that is what being a
teacher is--being confidante in who you are, your capabilities, and using them
to be responsible for others. Yet, at the same time, it is opening
yourself to new experiences and new information. Teaching is learning.
Although that may sound awkward now, after reflecting over a few years
experience it will become clear.
After the end of your two hours together, you, Cara, and Spencer
pack yourselves up to return home. You watch them, realizing what respect
they have for you, as a teacher, as an adult, and as a friend. You have
seen how much they have progressed and how they have developed from
children into people with opinions of their own. Yet as you are walking
towards the door of your classroom your eyes catch your reflection in the
mirror with your two students at your side. You see how you have
developed such patience and tolerance. You recognize how much respect you have
for your pupils. You see how much you have learned and how much you have
achieved. You smile at how they have changed your life and you have changed
theirs. You look at your two friends in the mirror and realize that they
will always hold a special place in your heart.
Cara grabs your arm and pulls you out from your trance. You
shut off the lights and lock the door, tucking your classroom in for
another week of rest. It knows you will be back and it will be prepared
for another day of matching games, snack time, Hebrew letters and learning for
both you and your students.