Invisible

     The other day we had an abnormal number of tardies. I decided to walk some of these students into their class. It was a nice little conversation with the student on the way to his/her class. I dropped one student off and the student was embraced by a hug (obviously before Corona hit us in the US) by two students. Another student’s face lit up when his teacher announced him entering the class. Yet, one student when dropped off went right to his desk without a word from anyone. Now, the teacher was helping a student with morning work, and students were busily working on said morning work, but not one person in the room noticed that the student came into the room.

     It hurt me for her. It upset me. It made me ensure that I found a way to see the student several times during the day and say something valuable or life affirming. I think I am still doing it in some way or another other. I am finding ways to run into the class or the student and ensure that he isn’t invisible.

     I was thinking about this student the other day and was reminded of an experience I had many, many years ago. I was challenged to Try this as a simple exercise: get a piece of paper and try to write down your whole class from memory. You’re given just one minute to do so. I was lucky because at the time I taught self-contained and only had 9 students. It was pretty easy for me, but I was with a group of teachers. On average each teacher was unable to complete their list by forgetting at least 2 students. The invisible child.

     I can’t lie. I was a little judgmental of my teacher friends who could not remember all of their students’ names. Until I became a teacher of 22 students. I tried the exercise again and realized that I, in fact, had an invisible student in my class.  The invisible student is one who does not initially stand out for any reason. This student is not extremely athletic, overly popular, or very outgoing. He/She  invariably follows all of the rules. An invisible student is compliant, well-behaved, and rarely does anything to call attention to himself or herself. I decided that he would not remain invisible anymore.

     My invisible student was great.  He was always in the right place and doing the right thing. He got along with everyone and never rocked the boat. He was never the best at any activity, nor was he ever the worst. He was great, but I wanted to find a way for him to shine. One day, I was talking to him and he told me that his older brother had recently taught him how to whistle “loud like a grown man”. Naturally, I asked him to demonstrate. It turned out that he was right! He was able to whistle in the way that people do with two fingers that I have never been able to master that was so loud it actually hurt me ears. I was so jealous.  The next morning, I announced in our morning meeting that there would be a whistling competition after lunch at recess. The kids got very excited, and my invisible student was the most excited of anyone. For the next few hours, the students off and on practiced their whistling, but he kept quiet. He knew he didn’t have to practice. At the competition, he blew everyone away (pun intended). He won easily. The other students swarmed him with congratulatory hugs and requests for whistling lessons. At that moment, he was the opposite of invisible—he was the star. I often wonder if that was a moment he will remember.

     I challenge you today to make sure that no student you’re in charge of feels invisible all the time. Find ways to help them shine if only for a brief moment. It can change everything for them.

The Impossible

I have been lucky in my career to teach a variety of grade levels, students, and schools. In one school, I was hired to teach EH self-contained.  These will always be my most favorite years in education. There are several reasons why this is my favorite. One reason is that these were the neediest of all my students I ever taught. They were EH kids. They were angry, they had zero emotional control, they lied, they stole, they fought. Most of them struggled with huge gaps in their academics. Some had a learning disability, some just had missed so much school due to behavior or environment that they really had never been taught well.  It was tough. I mean really, really tough. Some days we all just survived. Other days we thrived.

At the end of the first six weeks, we had had a particularly rough day. One of my students, who had no academic gaps, had been doing extremely well, and I was ready to start mainstreaming him to regular education for math in hopes that with a great supportive teacher and the support of his safe place-our classroom- he would soon be able to get back into the general education route by the end of the year for all core content. Yet, I could not find one teacher-there were six on the grade level-who were willing to let my student be mainstreamed into their class. Not a single one. I went to the principal and asked for his help in what I should do. His response was even more disheartening. He told me probably more eloquently than I will express in this writing that my job was to keep my kids quiet, out of the hallway, and to just keep control until they reach the time to go on to junior high school. I was told that while I was young and lived with rose colored glasses, the sooner I figured out that I was teaching “future convicts” the better I would be.

Now, I needed a job so I had to be careful about my response. But I was hurt and I was mad. I told him respectfully that I disagreed and that I would make sure I proved him wrong. He looked at me again and said, “You can’t do the impossible.”  I left his office. I left because I didn’t want to cry in front of him. That night I called my Dad. He reminded me of something that he had told me a million times…..”The impossible is only impossible until someone does it.”

And so that is what I did. I would not allow anyone at that school to believe that my students could not be successful. I challenged my kids. I was honest with them-they knew. I showed them statistics. We worked hard. We celebrated hard as well. I spent more money that year than probably all other years on rewards for my kids. At the end of the year, my little class of 8 students had the highest percentage of MAP growth in the entire school (it was the 2^nd year we had taken MAP in the district), not one student had been suspended after my initial meeting with the principal, we had only 1 fight-it was because a gen ed student called me fat and one of my students hit him (love that kid), and 3 of my 8 were taken out of my classroom and put back into gen ed with resource support, 1 was placed on consult, and 2 were being mainstreamed for ELA and Math. I did the impossible.

But it wasn’t the impossible. It is what every teacher should do……..believe in their kids.  Do the impossible. Never give up on your students. Never. They are one caring adult from being successful. And I really would like to find that administrator and let him know that out of the 8 I had that year only 1 served time. The rest are doing very well-two are in the military, one works for the city of Union, one owns his own landscaping company, one works at a daycare, one I lost touch with but I know he graduated SHS, and one completed her degree at SMC and is working at a business here in Spartanburg.

Do the impossible.