Teacher TALES

Wow, there was a story on 20/20 about a former student of mine last night.  I actually taught her science for two years.  It is a very sad story and I still feel very conflicted about the whole thing.  Believe me, this family consumed my teaching life for those two years.  These parents were very intense...  I sat through countless meetings, facilitative communication workshops, read various LONG e-mails from them(not usually very "good" ones) and struggled with their daughters OUTBURSTS in my classroom.  Oh yeah, the dad sat in some of my science classes as well - right in the front row!!!!!!

Luckily for me, I played a back seat role with her education when she was on my teaching team.  I was willing to do whatever they wanted and she pretty much was in science for "mainstreaming".   I did start to believe that she was learning something by the end of my time with her.  I also received hugs and endless affection from this little girl.  I felt bad for her and wanted to help her out as much as possible (it was difficult with 30 other students in my classroom)...

The conflicting part is that I actually really liked her facilitative communicator that she had at the middle school.  We had several great laughs, talks, and interesting moments together.  I thought that she did a great job with this student.

It is a horrific tragedy to this whole family - my heart especially goes out to the little brother.  If you have a minute, you can watch the hour long documentary on-line.  It is tough to watch,  or at least it was for me.

My teaching career wasn't very long (7.5 years), but boy it was packed with some CRAZY moments...  The highlights include the crazy, stalker dad my first year teaching; tragedy of teaching partner having a heart attack at school; autisitc program being brought to our building (putting several in my classroom with very little help and training), laptop daily craziness (special program where all students brought laptops back and forth to school everyday - I incorporated laptops almost everyday...  many days the technology aspect was a nightmare with our crashing wireless system, etc.) and all the ESL students my last two years...

With all that being said, I would probably go back to that same teaching position if I had the chance...