Learning I Have Done

Being grateful for things each day is harder than you think, especially when you have to do it everyday, and when everyday is not exactly full of things that you are actually grateful for. Take today for instance, I am a teacher at a specialist school with special needs children in my class, all are individual and with different needs and sometimes, and lately most days, a particular student comes to school with a bucket full, and already overwhelmed by stuff that may have happened at home or on the way on the bus to school or whatever that I am not sure about. So when the student gets into school, they really don't want to be there and they don't exactly express this with words so they use other forms of communication that is not in a socially acceptable form. Today I tried everything and nothing worked.  I spend a great deal of the day being positive and using a positive tone of voice which is sometimes really hard to do and is truly draining. I endeavour to engage my students so they learn and improve their future academic and social outcomes. Some days are harder than other days, and most days are hard and frustrating to say the least. I am lucky that I have a great mentor next door whom I can ask for advice, and most of the time she gives it and other times I have to figure it out for myself or just try different things to see which one works.....frustrating, especially when the ones I choose don't work. I now also have a great young assistant who is firm but positive with the kids, and very efficient as I have mentioned in a previous post, so this really helps. Although I have some really hard and frustrating days with the kids, I am slowly learning that it's not because of me that a particular child doesn't want to do the work that I require of them, or that they want to go home, or hit out or throw things, or they haven't retained the information you taught them only last week or even last hour. It is because I do work in a special school where the kids who are there are there for a reason and the reason is why they do what they do and learn how they learn or in some circumstances not learn. So what am I grateful for today? I suppose I would have to be grateful for the fact that I am learning so much about these little people I teach, as well as learning so much about the curriculum that I teach to them, and lastly but not least the amount of learning I have done about myself as a teacher....that I am a good teacher who cares enough about her students to try harder each day to improve their future, no matter how hard or frustrating the task may be. In the long run it will be worth every effort, I can feel it.

Steph