The OK Adventures of Peppersloth and Annie

Happy Almost 2021, y’all!! For those of you that are keeping track, we are fast approaching the seven month mark. But this actually isn’t a seventh month update. Tonight, as I am unable to fall asleep, I felt the need to talk about my job.

                Previously, I had been working as a sub and a library aid. I have since transitioned into a full time position as a teacher’s aide in a pre-k special education classroom. I work with anywhere from 3-4 students at a time, ranging from ages 3-5 years old. These children all have a variety of abilities, and things that have identified them as ‘special’. I have two that have Downs Syndrome, several with varying degrees of Autism, and a few that came into the world with birth defects that have affected their mental processes. Some of them have physical challenges. But please trust me when I tell you that a lack of walking does not stop them from trying to get away from their teacher when she wants them to do something! They are all faster, and cleverer, than I am! And they all think it is hilarious to make Miss Annie run! Nothing makes them giggle more than to take off to the other end of the gym, stop, and turn around to see me huffing and puffing behind them! These kids are TURKEYS!

                Even though it is pre-k, it is still school. All of the kids have specific goals that they are supposed to be working towards. Some are working on color identification, counting, or identification of letters and numbers. I have others that are on a lower level and have a goal of just staying focused and on task for five minutes. There are a few that are working on the physical act of putting an object into something else. I have one little boy whose goal is simply to respond to his name! He is a special case, and he holds a special place in my heart. He is also the first one to bite me! TURKEY!

                My job is stressful. There are a lot of needs that HAVE to be met. Not just physical and educational, but also emotional and mental. My job is physically, mentally, and emotionally draining. I give my all to these kids. If I had more to give, they could have it! I want to see all of these kids succeed in life. I want to see them live beyond the labels that have been placed on them. The world may only see diagnoses, or only see what they cannot do, but I see so much more. I see their smiles. I see them doing things others said they could not. These kids might have special needs, but honestly, who doesn’t? The only difference between me and those kids is that I made it out of my childhood with ‘weirdo’ being my only label. And my label is easier to overcome! These kids will be defined by the labels that are put on them for the rest of their lives. The notes that are written about them will follow them for the rest of their lives. Teachers, therapists, and anyone else they encounter will look at their paperwork, and make a decision about them before REALLY knowing them! How sad is that? We fight so hard against being defined by gender, sexual orientation, race, and anything else that we can think of to turn into an offence…sorry, different soapbox…my point is why are we not working just as hard with our special needs kids and adults to push them beyond their labels? To me, that is a much more worthwhile fight, than worrying about making sure all of the bathrooms are politically correctly labeled.

                Obviously, I’m very passionate about what I do, and I’m very passionate about my students. They do make me crazy! They are turkeys, for sure! There are definitely days when I think ‘I’m out! I’m done! I’m NOT doing this anymore!’ But then, one of them will do something sweet. One of my favorite moments was when I had to send a student to another classroom. The sub had brought him back down to our room to get a diaper change, and I was giving him back to her so that they could go back to the other room. The child was sobbing! He didn’t understand why he was with this other teacher, why he couldn’t stay in his room, and why Miss Annie was sending him away. There was nothing I could do to change the situation. The only thing I could do was say over and over again, ‘I’m sorry! Miss Annie loves you! I’m sorry! Miss Annie loves you!’ This poor, mostly non-verbal, child who couldn’t understand what was happening around him, stopped his sobs long enough to say, ‘I know!’ And then went right back to sobbing! To me, those two little words were everything! To me, they were God’s way of reassuring me that I was doing my best with a really crappy situation. Moments like this remind me to take a breath, step back for a minute, and then start again.

I decided this morning would be a good time to go back through and reread some posts. I just happened to choose this one at random. I’d actually forgotten that it was about my students, and thought it was about my nieces and nephews. They are turkeys too, and definitely deserve a post of their own someday.

My school year obviously ended much differently than I intended when I originally wrote this post. I didn’t get to end the year seeing my students off to new adventures. I didn’t get to see them complete their goals. I ended my year cleaning books in the library, far away from the smiling faces that I came to love so much. And now I’m changing schools, so I’ll never know what becomes of them. If I let myself dwell on this past school year, I would have to give it the grade of ‘Incomplete’. To quote ‘Boy Meets World’,

‘That’s WORSE than an F! That’s an I!’ -Cory Matthews (Boy Meets World, 1993 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105958/)

The unfortunate thing is that I will carry this ‘I’ with me for the rest of my life. Just like my students will carry their labels. And there is nothing that I can do to erase that. The only thing I can do is hope and pray that the next adventure, for both me and my students, is a whole lot better than the one we left behind. I can only hope that their next set of teachers and TAs see them the way I saw them. I can only hope that my next set of students see all of the hope I have for them. It is a very scary thing, moving on with an ‘Incomplete’. It leaves me feeling antsy and itchy. There is no closure, it’s just over. The end. It does not feel ok at all.

But that is also life. There is very rarely REAL closure in life. There are not always concrete answers as to the ‘whys’ and the ‘wherefores’ and the ‘whats’. Life just happens, and it happens quickly, without any regard to a human’s personal feelings. Life doesn’t care if we are ok. So, what’s an OK girl to do with that?