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.