Maybe it was just that first day; the one where everyone around you can sense that you're a rookie, and takes it easy on you, in whatever manners they can. In the days since, my two experiences in Special Education classrooms have felt like some of the longest days I have ever known. In the past two days, I simply haven't been able to shake the feeling that any one of these kids could have been mine. How lucky am I?! Well, I'll tell ya--I KNOW I am, I have known I am, but by all this, it burns it into your mind so clearly you can't possibly shake it. To the unititiated, a lot of areas of teaching might seem similar. I mean, I had a hard time communicating with students in my ESL classrooms, but none of them ever fixated on plush animal fur, drooled continually or ran the risk of injury from over-stimulation. Hard as may be to believe some of that, it doesn't happen at nearly the level it does in a Special Ed classroom. I'm in this strange place over the course of the last few days, somewhere between zombied and exhausted. I couldn't make career out of THAT, I can tell you that right now. I don't have that brand of inner strength, I guess, and if you're calling me chicken, so be it. I damn sure couldn't live a life like that. But I know now. I can probably hang with doing Special Ed as a sub, but not as a career. I tip my hat to anyone who DOES do it professionally for any length of time, I am simply not of the mind that I could leave it all at the door at the end of the day.
And perhaps, in some odd sense, you're not really supposed to, or I just DON'T, generally speaking....... And then there's the idea that....well, I just don't feel like I have an impact on these kids. Maybe I do, maybe I could, maybe I am just a self-centered bas*ard in that regard, but the bottom line is, I like to feel better, and more influential, even at the end of my worst day, and I don't feel that way. I just feel blessed for everything my life has been. And as for the stupendously high burnout rate among Special Ed teachers, I understand it now.