That’s What It's All About

As a Special Education teacher I spend my days planning, teaching, and advocating for a future.  Not my future, the future of my students.  We all talk about, “one day when they are older” or “when they go to  high school” but do we really think about what we want.  I know, you are saying, yes, I think about the students job and living arrangement.  Their social group and how their family will support them.   But do we consider the little things, the moments that we all remember from our high school days but see as small moments.  I have to say, that I forgot the little things. 

Or at least I did until a young man, whom I have been fortunate enough to have in my life the past 12 years reminded me what really mattered.  He is an amazing young man who happens to use an augmentative communication device and wheelchair.  But please, remember, he is a young man.  He has crushes on girls, passions, and hopes just like everyone.  One of his hopes was fulfilled by a cousin who saw what I didn’t;  the little things matter.

reproduced with permission from their mom's and the young woman

Yes, I am talking about prom.  He went to prom, complete with two beautiful dates who danced with him and enjoyed it along side him.  His younger brother fit his chair with a camera and he shared the expeience later with his family in film as using the talker is more tedious.  At one point, as the juniors and seniors all circled around while individuals danced in and out of the circle, the young man’s classmates made room and had him join the center for his few seconds of dance solo.  Yes, one night of prom matters, and to a young junior, it is a highlight.  Prom wasn’t a single night.  No, it was a lifetime of memory.  I will always be grateful that he was my teacher as to how to plan what matters most in a person’s life.  I will carry this lesson with me the next time I start a sentence with “One day….”

Thanks, all three of you!!!

Do As I Say AND As I Do

Today, I was haunted by my own words.

Let me set the stage…

I am a firm believer in learning everyday and growing as a person.  I believe this so much that I try to model it for others.  This year, I have challenged myself to a physical completion that is 50% physical, 50% mental.  The mental part, for me, is believing that yes, I can do it.  I have told people I am doing this competition so I will follow through and have been overwhelmed by the support.  I even have a student who wants to come watch me. 

Today as I was chatting with his mom, we talked about how my training is going and I said that I am glad I am challenging myself but that I hope I can do it.  That’s when it happened…

“Would you let my son say ‘I hope’?”

Caught busted!  No, my students need to know they can and so should I.

“You’re right, I will.”

Thank you so much to that family for reminding me that I need to model not only challenging yourself, but believing in yourself.

Ripple Effect

I was in this great coffee shop today in a small historic town.  My husband and I ordered our drinks and then sought a table.  We passed a gentleman who uses a wheelchair and had a Dynavox attached with a mount.  My husband and I were thrilled to see him out in the community for we are both aware of how many individuals with physical disabilities become home bodies after high school for a variety of reasons.

My husband and I enjoyed our drinks and talked for a bit.  Then the true magic occurred.

The gentleman I spoke of backed up to the service counter and started talking to one of the employees, (without his Dynavox), and the employee talked back to him as a peer.  I wish I could express in words the magnitude of this conversation.  Ask an individual  who has a significant physical impairment or loves someone whose physical impairment is such to require a wheelchair and talker and they will tell you, this is not something experienced every day.  For some, it is only experienced within their own family, and for some, not even their whole family.

So often, individuals who are physically impacted, as is this gentleman, are spoken to as though they are eternally 2 years old.  The tone, voice pitch, and word choice, while meant to include the individual, are often degrading and insulting.  These are your peers, not your children.

In this coffee shop, they know that and for that, I'm eternally grateful. Maybe they are the pebble that dropped and the rings of knowledge will spread.

Inauguration

I have found myself questioning my future and what I want this week.  I just didn’t know where to start.  Until now.

Today was a school holiday and I was able to watch the Inauguration in real-time.  I watched because I love this country and our capital city.  I watched because I feel that it is the right thing to do as a citizen.  I watched because God needed me to listen.

What I found was my future.  In the few moments that it took Kelly Clarkson to sing a beautifulrendition of My Country Tis of Thee, it was suddenly clear.  As I watched the flags wave, I remembered a summer quite a few years ago when I worked on a special project at the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP).  I left with clarity, a clarity I lost but found again today.  My Mission Statement for a lack of better term for who I am and who I will become.  Today, I take a great risk.  I am sharing it with you.

printed from: http://www.nortoncreative.com/images/mission-statement.jpg

I am a teacher.  I am destined for leadership.  I believe in this country and all it can and will be.  I have unique talents, gifts and insights that can lead others to a reality that we can only hope for at this moment. 

I have a passion for teaching students that have significant and intellectual disabilities.  I am drawn for so many reasons.  Their courage; but also, what they represent to the education of all children.  You see, teaching those who appear to be the most "un-teachable" or most “challenging” is a testament not only to who we are as a society but what is truly possible.  After all, if the child you think can not learn, does, then imagine what will be achieved by the child you think is brilliant.  If a method of teaching or curriculum works with the child that others feel will be a “burden to society” their entire lives, imagine what the child you think is our next great mind could be become. And yet, imagining that future is almost impossible as it takes so many of us outside the limits of what we believe humans could ever do no matter the circumstances.  I however, do believe in that vision.  I can see it in my heart and know that it is a reality, not a dream.  A reality we simply haven’t yet reached.   I will be a catalyst to reaching it.  I do have leadership within me.

This week I was asked what I am called to do that “requires passion, vision, hard work, proverbial wisdom, and sacrificial love.”  My first reaction was teaching. Then I questioned it.  Did I say teaching simply because it was what occupied most of my day?  Was I called to it? Maybe I am just not enough.

I was wrong, I was listening to others judgment not my heart.  The inauguration for all its pageantry and beauty reminded me that teaching is my passion. But a larger class than I had considered.  My passion reaches far beyond teaching my class.  It is about teaching by example, by words, by hope.

I am called to teach with passion, vision, hard work, proverbial wisdom, and sacrificial love?  YES!  But, for the first time, I realize, that the teaching I am being called to, is the teaching of our society.  I will be a leader.

No, I am a leader.  I just took my first step.

Miracle on 34th Street

I love Christmas movies.  I start planning my evening movie schedule from Thanksgiving until Christmas eve beginning with Miracle on 34th Street and ending with It's A Wonderful Life. I am taken but the beauty of these stories every year.  They talk about miracles both physical pnes and those that happen in our hearts.  They remind us, miracles are real.  I watch small miracles each and every day.

The students in my classroom are so often viewed through the lens of what is missing, a struggle, or different. But simply looking from a different angle you can see perseverance, success, bravery and, a miracle.  You see, we all forget how amazing that moment was when we first stood on our feet, took a step and walked. We forget what it was like to say a word and have the listener know what we said.  I don't remember the first word I read, the first time I wrote my name, or the first time I counted to 100.  But I remember the first time a young man spoke an original sentence, the first word spoken by a young lady with an assistive technology device, the first time so many different students wrote their own name without an adult, the meeting in which the parent cried because the child exceeded their greatest hope.  You see, anything really is possible.  The magic is in believing that it can happen.

In Miracle on 34th Street it was not until the young girl played by Natalie Woods believes that her greatest wish comes true.  "Faith is believing in something when common sense tells you not to."

I hope this season you find your faith and, in turn the magic of a miracle.

Those Who Can

A small gift to all the teachers in the world.

Those who can - make failure bear fruit,
bring fruit to seed and plant seeds
for tomorrow.

Those who can - turn injury to endurance,
endurance to dreams and give dreams
substance. 

Those who can - shape hate to awareness,
awareness to grace and crown grace
with compassion.

Those who can - massage fear to faith,
bend faith to courage and sculpt
courage into wings.

Those who can - subdue chaos with meaning,
define meaning as light and translate
light to vision.

Those who can - give knowledge reason,
fashion reason into tools, use tools as keys
so that doors become opportunities.

Those who can - give charity character,
invest character with strength and
free strength to ministry.

Those who can - define love by their acts,
spin their acts to hope and with hope
give children a reason to celebrate.

Those who can - teach.

Written by Gavin Kayner and published in Teaching K-8 March 1993
as true today as then

Matters of Faith

I love Christmas.  I love everything about it.  Twinkling lights, trees covered with ornaments from my childhood, my career, and the ones I share with my husband, Christmas music on the radios and at every store, Santa Claus, fancy dresses, and candles.

Candles are one of the most symbolic symbols of the season for me.  In New England, you will find a candle in every window, lighting the way to home.  At the stores you can find candles to give as a gift to everyone from good friends to colleagues.  My home is scented by candles from the day of Thanksgiving until every last decoration is packed away.  All of this culminates with the most amazing candle moment, the Christmas Eve candlelight service.

When I was young, about 6 years old, I was going to sing in the church children’s choir on Christmas Eve for the candlelight service and my mom made me the most beautiful navy blue velvet dress.  I loved the dress and knew that I was wearing the dress that everyone else would notice.  It shimmered and made me feel grown up, or at least like I was 8.

But then, they gave me a candle to hold while I sang.  I couldn’t believe the magic and the science of that burning flame.  Each face was highlighted by a single glow and yet, in that glow there was a magic puddle of wax.  As I examined the candle and sang to my church, I also poured the melted wax down the front of my blue velvet dress, all while my mom watched.  We laugh about it today and she talks about the candle and my singing more than my ruining the dress.  She does because it was Christmas Eve, the day a small child came to bring us a gift from God. 

My faith is important and has shaped many memories such as that night.  My faith helps guide me and listen to my heart.  I passionately believe that all people should be able to choose their faith and how they celebrate.  But have we made religion accessible to individuals with disabilities?

I am watching one family try to figure out how to have their son’s Bar Mitvah when he is still struggling with communicating in English.  I watched a family struggle to find a church where their daughter would be able to wander through the sanctuary during the service.  I was blessed with the invitation to witness the baptism of one of my students, but he wasn’t able to really speak about the event in a meaningful way later as the communication had not yet been taught.

Where do we but faith in the list of things a child needs to learn?

Have you found a way to include your child with a disability in your family’s faith in a meaningful way?  I would love to know how to help families and children in their spiritual journey.  And maybe, someday, they will tell us about their favorite holiday symbol.