(1/3) “I got my first classroom when I was twenty-two. I was...

(1/3) “I got my first classroom when I was twenty-two. I was so young at the time. I think I first went into special education imagining that I’d be hanging out with kids all day. I’ve been teaching for ten years now. Special education is a lot more exhausting than I imagined. It’s like a performance. You need to be ‘on’ the entire day. You need to be strict. You need to always say the right thing and respond in just the right way. I do enjoy it, but in a different way than I imagined. Many of my students come from broken places. Some are homeless or live in foster homes. So the gains come slowly and can be difficult to track. But I get joy from seeing my students want to learn. It’s very fulfilling for me if I can inspire my students to want to read a little better, or get a job, or be kinder to their classmate. It can be very tough sometimes to feel like you’re making a difference. I remember during one of my first years, I was teaching a group of nonverbal students how to take turns, and everything went to hell and the students started screaming and beating their heads against the table. Then my best-behaved student turned and bit me. I thought: ‘I failed. I made things worse.’ But anytime I feel myself burning out, or losing patience, or not giving it my all, I pull back and do some meditation. Because if I’m not fully present and trying my hardest to make a difference, I should just quit.”