Blog Assignment #2

I'm giving everyone a bonus...you get two for the price of one. A photo that's new and a photo that's old even though from the looks of it, not too much has changed.

A quote that I recently saw that I thought was exemplary of how I feel about my work with children is: "We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today." -Stacia Tauscher

A story that really touches me in a special way has to do with one of the students that I used to work with before I left my previous job working with special ed students. I was assigned to work with a student who no one else had any success with in molding his behavior and basically no one wanted to work with him because he was extremely violent and I was convinced that he was a very intelligent child whose needs were not being met in the fashion he needed them to be met. When we started working together it was hard to know what the "right" thing was to do because everything seemed to make him mad. He wasn't eating the way he needed to, he was barely speaking any words that would help him to get his needs met, he was still really aggressive towards himself and others so I figured the only thing that I could do was to just be patient with him, pray a lot, and do my best to teach him how to do things for himself. I only worked with him for about 4 months before I left and headed off to my current job but he had made such an improvement. I knew that he had greatly improved when one day we were in one of the classrooms alone and he wanted to go outside and I told him that he needed to open the door himself and he couldn't do it. So, I waited and told him that if he wanted me to help him open the door that he needed to say "help." After getting frustrated a few times trying to open it himself he finally just said "help" and I immediately opened the door for him and told him how proud I was of him. From there on he had started to speak all kinds of words. One of his favorite songs was this "Good Morning" song and he liked to listen to it over and over and when he wasn't listening to it he liked it to be sung to him and his way of requesting the song was to sing the first part of it and then I would have to finish it. That was the best part of my day. I knew that the work mattered to him when he would pull my face up close to his ear so he could hear without disruption the song that he enjoyed so much and the amazing thing was that it used to be impossible to get that close to him without him trying to head butt you or hit you in the face so I knew I had made it into his good graces then. :) I still go and see him whenever I get the chance and he has continued to improve drastically from the boy he used to be and that is truly the greatest reward that any teacher can have when working with a student.

Our topic this week is about having passion for what you do. Stories like the one above are what makes me so passionate about what I do. It makes me more persistent and insistent on doing what I believe is the very best I can do for the children that I am very blessed to work with. This story is not an isolated situation and I am excited to say that this is one of many. There are many stories that inspire me to do my best and to achieve the highest standard of care and learning for children. The things that really make me passionate about teaching and about trying to develop my own program are the great needs that are out there for someone to just take an extra step in making something really amazing for children to experience, to give families the support that some of them desperately need, and to do it all with a smile. It is a privilege to teach young children and it is not to be taken for granted. Passion is having a deep drive that is almost innate to move you to do what may be considered by others the unthinkable. Passion is what turns the impossible, possible.