I'm very excited to start my second placement, returning to my 11U/12C Physics class in the mornings and the School to Community class in the afternoons. I miss my great Physics students, and can't wait to dive into Electromagnetism with them (Karyn has a great idea for building speakers out of Tim Horton's cups, wire and magnets, which I hope we can try!). And I am especially looking forward to working with the School to Community class, which is the topic of this particular post.
I love even just the name of the School to Community class: isn't that what education should be for every student? A place where students can learn useful skills that they know they will use in their local community, and a place to practice those skills by doing helpful things for the community. In my high school, the School to Community students learned about taking care of the environment not by sitting in a desk and studying the greenhouse effect, but by actually caring for the environment practically: they ran a recycling program in the school. It is certainly a challenging class to teach, and I greatly admire the creativity, dedication, and care of the School to Community teachers who I've met. I think that special education teachers are truly leading the way for good pedagogy, which could (I think should) be incorporated in different ways into any classroom.
I'm looking forward to finding out how they are learning to capitalize on their strengths to do the important things that they were born to do. It takes a lot of creativity and patience to help students learn to develop and expand these strengths and abilities, and I am really looking forward to observing and practicing in this placement. I have so much to learn in this class! Most of all, I can't wait to get to know the students. I've seen amazing encouragement and valuing of differences in School to Community classes before, and I'm very excited to be introduced to this new classroom dynamic.
A bit of a background: I know that I'm very biased. Working with exceptional students has been my passion for a long time. I was fortunate to grow up with a wonderful friend, who was later diagnosed with Aspergers, who spent countless hours dreaming up creative stories with me. She's also a computer genuis, and so in the days when I was still in the ancient computer game world of "pipe dream" and "worms", she introduced me to the new world of "civilization" and other such games (As an aside, she's still a computer whiz, and has gone on to study computers and cognitive science in university). We had a lot of fun together as kids. She showed me the brilliance, but also the social pain of living with Autism, even though neither of us knew that her challenges had an official label. There were times that I didn't understand why she would react the way she did to social situations, but there was an unspoken understanding that it was okay. That friendship taught me a lot about seeing people for the amazing resilient, determined, brilliant people who they are, and tossing the negative lenses school culture can use to view people with exceptionalities out the window.
This friend continues to inspire me, but she isn't alone in doing remarkable things with her abilities. I had the privilege of growing up with several other amazing people with exceptionalities. The oldest sister of one of my best friends has the most beautiful heart, and despite her disability, every time I see her, she always has something encouraging to tell me. Her smile can brighten any sad day. When I was very young, my Opa (Opa is Dutch for "grandpa") was suffering from Alzheimers Disease, but could still humm along when we sang hymns and kept his laughing twinkle in his eyes. I started working at camps, with respite care, a group home, and volunteering at hospitals and retirement homes, where I've gotten to know many many more wonderful people with exceptionalities. I could talk all day about the amazing things I have learned from these remarkable people. I met a young woman who had learned to handwrite, draw beautifully, shoot arrows, independently drive her wheelchair, hold the attention of a whole room, and so many other abilities - all while being paralyzed from the neck down. I currently meet with a brilliant man who can hold each letter in every word of a complex sentence in his head for long periods of time while he spells each letter through blinking. I've met a woman who is both non-verbal and blind, and can communicate genuine love in ways that I admire and aspire to. I've met person after person after person who has done and is doing amazing things by capitalizing on their strengths. Any time I stop and think about it, I am overwhelmed by the remarkable people I have the wonderful privilege to know.
So that is where I'm coming from, and hence my excitement for this great opportunity to teach in a School to Community class. Yet, while I know that I am certainly biased by these positive experiences, I was still quite taken aback by several of the responses of others to my good news that I'll be teaching in a special education class. There seems to be a surprising misconception that the School to Community class is somehow not a "real" class or "not as important" as an academic Physics class! I think it's quite the opposite: in many cases, I think the School to Community classes have really got what education is all about, far better than some Physics classes! I'm hoping to take what I learn about differentiated instruction and teaching concepts that are applicable to real life in this placement and apply it to my Physics classes, since I think special education is leading the way for all education. There couldn't be a more "real" class in the school.
I'll keep you updated on what I learn there!
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