canceled forever

This text woke me up. It came from my boss, sent last week:

“Could you call the classroom and talk to Richard? He’s upset and wants to say goodbye to you. If you call now, he will be crying.”

Last week was the final week of classes at our high school. I missed all but one day of it due to a well-timed flu. I say well-timed because I was prepared to murder every last person I saw in that building if I had to go in again. Either I didn’t come in, or I would be imprisoned. Walking through the halls of the school means running into other teachers and hearing the count of days until the end of the year. By May, every student has a bull’s eye on their forehead. Still, I can’t say that final week was rougher on me than it was on my coworkers. Richard gets upset when some preferred routine is interrupted. The drama class I mentioned a post or two back is a good example. It has plenty of male staff and lots of enjoyable repetition, so naturally he loved it, and when it got canceled (which happened often, because God was testing us) he would go through his typical fit. These could be as mild as crying at his desk and whining to teachers or as extreme as running out of the classroom, screaming (deafeningly and suddenly–it startled me EVERY TIME), stripping naked, throwing whatever was at hand, clearing tables and desks, and intentionally pissing himself. These behaviors could last anywhere from ten minutes to an hour. I can’t claim to have been the front line for his fits every time–that dubious honor goes to our head teacher, who has an impressive endurance for it–but I was called in for the majority of them, if for no other reason than I knew him pretty well, and I was his favorite TA. He probably kept my attendance square better than any other factor. If any staff wasn’t in, he might have gotten a little upset, because their absence disrupted a familiar routine. If I wasn’t there, the whole morning was shot (or so I was guilted into believing). This both fed my ego and frustrated me. Any other staff could call in without much trouble, but I was made to believe that when I wasn’t there, the building all but caught fire.

I was mostly asleep when I got that text. I sat up, read it, and immediately called. It rings once or twice, and then I hear incomprehensible sobbing. This kind of emotional output is reserved for receiving news of a dead spouse or a burning home. It sounds heartbreaking until you see him react the same way to disappointment over a snack not being to his specifications; after that, it’s all bullshit.

“Richard! Hi!”

More sobbing. He’s inconsolate.

“Richard! Are you sad that I’m not there?”

More crying and moaning, and I think I hear a “yes”.

“Okay buddy, but I’ll see you this summer!” I felt guilty for saying this. At the time, I doubted my employment at summer school (due to the summer program’s awful hiring practices). I resolved right then to at least visit once, so I wouldn’t be a total liar. “Okay, Richard?”

More sobbing.

“Richard, I’ll see you this summer, so you need to stop crying!”

I regretted saying this as soon as it came out of my mouth. “Stop crying”? He would stop only and precisely when he wanted to. But he stopped when I said so, for the first time. There was silence on his end, except for voices in the background.

“Can you say ‘I’ll see you this summer’?”

“Yeah.”

“No, Richard, say ‘I’ll see you this summer’.”

“Yeah.”

I laughed and said “okay, buddy, I’m going to go now, okay? Bye!”

“Yeah.”

“Say bye!”

“Bye.”

“Okay, now hang up the phone, okay?”

There was silence for a moment, and the phone clicks.

I laid back in bed and stared at the ceiling. I thought about Richard, and the year as a whole. A lot of things ended with this school year. The day I called was the last day that students would be at the school. The next two days would consist of preparing the classroom for summer school. That conversation confirmed the fact that while he had caused me the most stress this year, he also made it the most enjoyable. I’ve rarely been as frustrated at a student as I’ve been with him, but I’ve also rarely had as much fun. He loves being around people. He hates being outside of any group activity, even if his goal is to be the most annoying member of that group. Going on trips to the community was a sociological experiment regarding how people react to strangers introducing themselves and asking about whether or not they own any pets. Since he lives in the area (and for going out to eat) he knows most of the staff at any place we visited. That included all sorts of fast food restaurants, the rec center, public transit, and probably more we never saw.

But the feeling I had wasn’t so much that I’d miss him. I’m not going to be working in his classroom next year, but I’ll be in the building (hopefully), so I’ll see him, probably often. The three month break between school years gives a full stop, separates each school year neatly into eras. Summer school is short and a relaxed and truncated atmosphere; there’s no real thematic continuity. (If years can be said to have themes, which might just be too pompous to suggest.) I realized even if I came back to this classroom, that year would be gone. Yes, of course, years come and go and I’m guessing for most veteran teachers they tend to blend together. Reflecting on the passage of time isn’t new, and I’m not pretending this post is breaking new emotional ground. Even though summer is a myopic goal by February, by the time it comes I realize that I’ve been digging my heels in, resisting it, resisting the change that I supposedly couldn’t wait for, until I careen off the edge of the school year and tumble into summer. There were things I hated, loathed about this year, so my restless discomfort with its end doesn’t make much sense. Maybe this is the sort of limpwristed reflection reserved for those privileged enough to spend their lives in education. But for whatever the movement into a new season means for me, transitions are chaotic for the students I work with. Richard isn’t the only one that lives and dies by ritual and routine. For anyone else, it would be like becoming a refugee from your home country every time June comes around, forced into an alien culture where you can never be sure anyone will give you what you think will make you happy. His home life didn’t change much, to be sure. His parents are wonderful, and I’m sure after fourteen or fifteen years they’ve found ways to help him ease into new eras, but someday he’ll have to leave his house, and there’s really no way to make him certain that the people who love him will make sure he’s cared for. That concern alone validates programs that take on students after high school. The nature of life is change, and for someone who hates and fears it, programs that can provide meaningful experiences are absolutely necessary.

Summer school starts for real this Monday, so I’ll be back to my regular misanthropy by then.

Let me tell you about the greatest thing. It’s the annual basketball games special ed classes play against each other. I’m saying this without the tiniest whiff of irony. Each class plays two games in the spring semester, one at home and one away. They are the best days of the school year. This is a scientifically verifiable fact.

When I first started, the staff that had been working in the classroom for a few years talked it up, and I was doubtful. How could a basketball game be that great? I’m not much for sports, and the event takes up most of a day, even more so for the away game. It sounded stressful and exhausting.

The game is organized a bit differently than the average high school basketball game. There are large plastic rings hung from the normal hoop, to accommodate students that might not have the strength to heave a ball to a normal hoop. There’s a second one hung lower for students in wheelchairs, who can roll up to the hoop and push it in, which adds an interesting dynamic: any student in a wheelchair that gets the ball can take it straight up to the hoop and push it in without any interference. The players are switched out often to give everyone a chance to play.

When I first got to the auditorium, it was mostly empty, except for the team my students were playing. They were warming up too, in uniform; a strange classroom full of students and mainstream peers from the Twilight Zone, like us and ours, but also… not. Their class seems a lot more difficult to handle, and I was thankful that my class that year was so tame compared to others. But the bell rang, and students poured in. The auditorium was completely full. There was a band, announcers, the pom squad, and an auditorium of screaming students. It was utterly overwhelming, and whatever anxiety or disinterest the students had over the game was blown away. Allen in particular, who spent the weeks leading up to the game telling the staff that he didn’t want to do it and that it was canceled, would scream and shout whenever he did well. Every time he got back to the bench, he would scream his teachers’ names and high five everyone in sight. I shamelessly yelled and cheered myself hoarse, commenting feverishly on a game I barely understand even when there aren’t wheelchairs and autism involved. There wasn’t a bored look or a cynical sneer in sight. In that moment I understood why people enjoy sports in general. I had spent the majority of my nerdy hermit life heaping contempt on sports and the people that watched them. They must be troglodytes, these bellowing morons who get so wide-eyed over buff dudes that throw balls and add numbers! They’re overpaid degenerates! Why can’t we pay teachers that much! Blah blah blah. But I was pulled into an entirely new community. I understood the emotional connection people could have to and through the players, the game, and other fans, because I’m already emotionally invested in my students, the players. I could understand how people could maintain a dual consciousness of the fact that the game doesn’t ultimately matter (an oft-cited reason to hate it among elitist turds) but that in that moment, it’s important. Granted, this is a strange and roundabout (and still pretty damn nerdy) way to get to an appreciation of sports, but I can definitely connect my recent interest in soccer and football to these games.

There are things about the games that frustrated me, especially this year, but that’s not what I remember the most. I remember the announcer coming up with nicknames for our students, the sweaty glee with which they threw themselves into the game, an excitement I rarely got to see when it came to math problems or reading. Maybe this sounds like a sugary dose of not only inspirational special ed bullshit, but inspirational sports bullshit too. But believe me, it somehow broke through my cynical unhappiness to fill me with an unexpected and uncharacteristic pleasure. I found myself grinning like a moron for most of it.

(The only thing that clouds the event for me is an attitude some teachers have toward the game. Some people seem to believe that the best way to foster a fun time is to make sure everyone comes away feeling like a winner by ending the game in a tie. Because as everyone knows, everyone wins in a tie game, instead of no one. Apparently the impetus to treat our students like everyone else stops when it comes to playing games. Why would we need to foster healthy competition and teach the value of losing gracefully when its far easier to gloss over the issue and treat them like children? The students that understood what was going on in the game loved to win and could grasp what it means to be nice when you lose, and the students that didn’t connect the game to the score wouldn’t have cared one way or the other, so why pass up a potentially fun memory and a good teaching moment? It baffles me.)

And afterward is pizza! Usually followed by a bunch of movies! Then we get to go home! Who wouldn’t want to do that? And to get paid for it, well golly! I may have enjoyed it more than any of my coworkers this year, and probably more than some of the students.

DRAMA CLASS

When I get back from taking a pair of students to science class, I leave them with other teachers and take a different kid to a drama class. This particular student, who I’ll call Richard (which may not relate to him except in some strange distant connection, but somehow it fits for me, so I’m going to keep it), is wrapping up his break on the computer, when he watches movie trailers. Any movie trailer will get him excited, waving his hands around and doing a frantic humming rendition of the theme song like he’s seen it a thousand times, which he has. I used to come marching in and demand that he get the HELL off the computer THIS INSTANT (because apparently I think that teaching primarily involves maintaining control over your students’ every move), but usually I’ll let him finish whatever trailer he’s watching. That’s not entirely accurate–depending on the day, you really have to badger him to get off and get going to his next class. But because of our historic conflict over computer time, whenever he sees me, he puts his hand up and waves his fingers around at the computer. This is baffled me at first. I wasn’t sure what it’s supposed to accomplish, but it looks exactly like he’s trying to cast a spell on it. His energy level is pretty high in this movie trailer euphoria, so his whole body is tensed up and he’s got an arm up to block me from Apple Qing him, or simply hitting the power button.

“Richard, it’s time for drama.”

No response.

“Hey, get off the computer.”

“No!”

“Lets go! We’ll be late!”

“I’m bu-sy!”

I reach forward and start poking at keys, this time too amused to be really upset, and deciding to let him finish the video anyway. He’s a bright kid; he gets that I’m playing with him, whereas other kids might have just stressed out or hit me.

“Mr. S! Mr. S stoooop iiiiiit!”

This has become a ritual that I can’t help but indulge in sometimes, if for no other reason than to see him wiggle his taut fingers at the computer like he’s trying to expel an evil spirit. It’s also a mild form of teasing to a kid that spends the majority of his day cycling through provocations that have gotten reactions out of his teachers, whether its screaming for no reason, grabbing his classmates and shaking them, or spitting on the floor. He does it because he thinks it’s hysterical, and to get attention, which, of course, it does. But he’s still one of my favorites. If I ever wanted to steal a car and go to Mexico and had to take one kid, it would probably be him. I’m not sure who would stipulate that I kidnap a student and go to Mexico, but if the situation ever arises, I’ve already made my decision.

A MOMENT

I don’t know how God crammed so much asshole into one tiny body. The beginning of this year was chaotic enough without him exhibiting a titanic level of selfish dickhood. He was completely unapologetic, too, and for the longest time did not show the slightest interest in anyone unless he could get something from them. I’m not even going to do the usual “yeah but he’s not all bad” caveat (until later). He stole drinks and food from complete strangers, he would throw himself on the ground and pretend to cry for what seemed like hours, he would hit, mock, and say the most sexually inappropriate things he could think of, and the firmer his teachers got, the more he would defy them. All this with little t0 no provocation. Try to make him say sorry, and he would respond with a furious or sardonic apology that meant nothing except that he could tell the difference between the spirit and the letter of the law. I almost never worked with him. If I had, one of us would have died, and I don’t think I have his single-minded drive for self-satisfaction and preservation.

I thought I had met the one student I couldn’t possibly like. Toward the latter part of the year, the staff member that usually worked with him was out sick, so I had to step in and work with him for a few periods. I was prepared for a fight, and I got one. We were doing flashcards. One side had a price, and the other side had the number of dollars he would have to give. Dollar-over math. He demanded to see the back of it, and I didn’t show him, so he jumped on me, trying to claw the card out of my hand. I realized he was way more dedicated to this scuffle than I was, so I gave it to him, telling him that it didn’t count (I.E., grasping at straws). I still have a scar on the back of my left hand from that encounter. We eventually sulk through the rest of the lesson and I  tell him he can go to the bathroom. He wanders down the hall instead, and when I start trailing him, he shouts at me to stop following him and runs down the hall. In a rare moment of humility I realized that I couldn’t keep doing the brute force commands against him, because they would only escalate his behavior. So I let him go to whatever bathroom he wanted, and waited for him to come out. We stared at each other when he did, and he stepped up close to me, craning his neck to see some pimple on my face. I started to ask him what he was doing, but just laughed instead. He, surprised, looked up at me, and started laughing too. He gave me a side hug and walked placidly to his next class.

As I’ve gotten to know him, I’d still call him a jerk, but a lot of his behavior seems (to my totally unscientific observation) to stem out of a discomfort with new situations and a response to something that legitimately challenges him, but an inability to express himself. And a pretty substantial selfish streak. BUT, I wouldn’t have come to that conclusion without that entirely saccharine but entirely real moment in the hallway, where I got to see (a nanosecond’s worth of) consideration for another person. I don’t mind him now, and I’m starting to like him more as the year comes to a close.

Here’s what I believe is the weirdest outworking of a culture defined by mass media. I’ve read plenty of writers saying our relationships, self-image, and all the other things that constitute being human are being shaped by TV, the internet, radio, etc. Some people more than others. But I literally cannot imagine many of the students I’ve encountered without the culture they’ve consumed. I guess this is true for everyone; who are we without the stories we’ve heard (regardless of the source)? But in this case television and film and music form the backbone of their interactions. For that matter, a very narrow range of media. Off the top of my head, here’s an incomplete list of stuff that has influenced the students I’ve met: Spongebob Squarepants, the entirety of Disney Channel programming (like the whirlwind of mega-hit tween sugar like Hannah Montana, but also the lesser known shows like Drake and Josh, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, The Wizards of Waverley Place, blah blah blah. Haven’t heard of them? You don’t spend time around kids with access to cable because you have been blessed by the gods), Kid Songs, every paycheck-cutting family movie that comes out, every thumping R&B club hit clean enough to make it onto mainstream radio and TV, Wicked, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland, and so on forever and ever. Basically anything that makes people hate the idea of media for kids. (I wonder what percentage of its profits Disney and its ilk can attribute to special education.) (The kids I work with are all 14 years old and up. By all rights they should be old enough to shed interest in things included in that list. They do not. I have met a single kid with age-appropriate interests [and a fantastic knowledge of what movies are coming out and what actors are in them], but the rest of them are content watching media targeted at children, and even a bunch of stuff meant for preschool ages. It’s a weird balance and a nearly impossible battle–you can’t force them to care about things, but you also want them to move past things like the Wiggles or Sesame Street, since they’re in high school.)

All that to say a lot of my students learned how to interact through Disney and its army of subsidiaries. You could blame their parents, I suppose, but raising a kid is exhausting enough without disability. I’m sure most of them thank God every day for glowing rectangles. I would. I would teach them to call the TV “mommy and daddy” too. But it’s not that the fairy tale endings or comedy has made them think of the world in those terms. Rather, they’ll recite whole blocks of dialogue, or mimic the actions and reactions of the actors. Most of them are capable of original thought, of course, but often its easier to initiate a conversation with something familiar they’ve heard before, rather than come up with something new. “Something new is boring.”

Understanding this factor has helped me understand my students. The real reason behind this is that they are more comfortable reciting something familiar than something new. It takes a lot more effort for them to come up with new things to say. Why expend the effort, when its easier to draw on the library of interactions they’ve already had? If it wasn’t TV, it would be stuff they’ve overheard from other conversations.

ANYWAY, here are two personalities I’ve gotten to meet and/or work with in the past year and a half, with more to come:

Noah: If some kind of Gaimanesque personification of the Jewish Lounge Entertainer attended my high school, he would be Noah. If the personality of every scummy Hollywood producer in the world were beamed  into the brain one well-meaning and bright young kid, it would be Noah. Pass him in the hall, ask him how he’s doing: “Feelin’ lucky!” Every day is a party, complete with his rendition of a well-known party anthem, like “Let’s Get it Started” by the Black Eyed Peas (!!!). He has hit on or asked out every girl in his class, and a few teachers. He’s a good example of someone who learned how to interact from TV. Specifically comedies where the Scuzzball will sidle up to some girl, put his arm around her, drop what he thinks is a foolproof line, and get shot down. He’ll even enact the Scuzzball’s shocked reaction to the shutdown, freezing with an exaggerated expression of shock, and then hastily backpedal to say that the pickup line meant something else. My reconstruction of a common response to the question “what did you do over the weekend?”:

“Well, I’ll tell ya! It started with a PAAAAR-TAY!” [dancing, general carefree hooting and hollering] “Then on Saturday I went to the action-packed movie that had adventure, romance,” [sly wink at some poor girl], “and great acting–” and then get interrupted by a teacher that desperately wants him to get to the point. Throw in some show tunes and ubiquitous pop songs from the last 30 years, and Noah’s story is complete.

Technically he’s not in my class. He’s in a class for higher-functioning students at the school I work at, but I see him every day when I take different students to inclusion classes. He’s remarkably bright and hardworking, and basically unflappable. He’ll get a little long-faced when he’s scolded, but he visibly pulls himself out of it with a deep breath and puts on a toothy smile, as if he had flubbed a line and was getting back into the show. He also can’t stand my students, which makes it all the funnier when they antagonize him. “Hey, back off, kid!” “I’ve had enough of you today!” “All right, that’s it!” His best friend is a kid named Bob, and during their free time they enact these scenes where one of them (usually Noah) is some Dennis the Menace-like antagonist and the other is a puffed up authority figure.

Allen: I won’t pretend he wasn’t my favorite. It was one of his oft-repeated phrases that named this blog. On my very first day, he and I had writing together. He had to pick a topic to write about and four or five details about that topic, plus an introduction and conclusion. After goading him into picking a topic for god knows how long, I gave him some options, and he chose to write about what he did over the summer. I had decided I would be the fun, playful teacher (a fantasy I quickly abandoned), and in that persona I corrected his spelling of “great”, which came out as “geart”, pronounced like it looks, like “gear” with a t. “Geart!?” I said. “What’s ‘geart’?” Ha ha! He thought this was utterly hysterical, and I thought I was in. We were both elated. I learned this would be my greatest mistake. Every day after that he brought it up. “W-w-wemembew Geawt?” Every single day we were both at school, he would ask me. I wasn’t alone, either. He had a few scripts for everyone around him that he never stopped thinking were the pinnacle of comedy. To a gym teacher whose script was generated two or three years previous: “Mr. Harris, door’s locked!” and would repeat it a few times until Mr. Harris said it. And then he would say “that was two years ago,” just like Mr. Harris had started to say after two years had in fact elapsed. To another student: “Derek, I hate dogs.” No response from Derek. “Derek: I hate dogs.” “Allen Smith,” Derek would reply, with a weary tone instead of the reprimanding one Allen was looking for. At one point the two of them had that conversation legitimately, where Allen announced his distaste for dogs and Derek expressed his shock over such a deviant opinion. Derek would then be cursed to repeat it until the end of time.

A lot of kids with autism have very similar speech impediments. I never got tired of Allen’s. We would try to help him pronounce words correctly, of course, but there was something about his in particular that endeared me to him. It might have been this conversation. He and I were reading a book about animals that asked the reader to identify an animal based on its eye.

“Okay Allen, what animal is this?”

“A wizard.”

“…what?”

Nothing.

“Allen, what animal is this?”

“Its a wizard.”

“What? …a wizard? Really?”

“A LLLLizard.”

Working with Allen was sometimes like trying to herd burning cats in traffic because of his Planck time attention span, but of all the kids at the school I used to work at, I probably think about him the most.

(You may have noticed I changed the name of this post. It was a dumb title. This one is good and better!)

It’s unfortunate that this article had to come about partially because of some stupid things said by three people unusually prone to saying stupid things. The author, David Wilcox, discussed the use of the word “retard” or “retarded” and the way the media has approached the issue of mental disability in a thoughtful, honest, personal way.

“Let’s be honest: the mentally challenged make people uncomfortable. They talk funny. They don’t always respect personal boundaries. They often have a tenuous grasp on social mores. And because of that, we go out of our way to avoid them. We’re content to let them exist in a world that’s segregated from our own. And on those rare occasions when our worlds intersect? We find we lack even an agreed-upon vocabulary to discuss them.”

On the one hand, I’ve noticed that a lot of people have heard of autism or Down’s, but will still describe someone with special needs as “retarded”. Not out of malice, of course, unless they’re eight years old, which means they’re 90% evil anyway. It always raises flags in my head now, and I try not to use it myself. On the other hand, I had decided when I first started that I wouldn’t raise a stink about the r-word. I wouldn’t be one of those people around whom his friends would have to walk on PC eggshells. I don’t feel like it’s my responsibility to badger everyone into using the correct language for everything all the time; God knows I don’t and I’d hate to be reminded all the time. I’m not a crusader, unless it’s for something stupid, like how thinking that Mike Tyson could beat Bruce Lee in a fight is utterly preposterous. You can’t force people to care (about language or imaginary fights) and I know the people I see most often who might use the r-word without thinking aren’t brutes. On top of all of that, I feel like a fraud only now wagging my finger at society. A year and a half of work in special ed hasn’t given me the right to speak out like I’m an expert.

There’s a moment when I’m talking about my job and someone wants to ask a question, and I can see them pause to consider the right set of terms to use.  I’m torn over how to respond. I obviously want people to be respectful, but I don’t want them to rein in what could be an intelligent conversation on the topic. There really is no “agreed-upon vocabulary” for the subject. On the one hand, people that don’t know much about it will just call them all retarded and leave it at that; people in the fray have developed a specific and technical set of terms that sometimes feel like a new dialect, and it’s unreasonable to expect everyone to use it. (My favorite term for people without mental disability is “neurotypical”. Good luck getting that to catch on.) I usually keep quiet and let them take whatever path they feel is necessary. No one should be afraid of offending someone if they’re being honest. I suppose the bottom line is to remember that before they’re disabled, they’re people, so use vocabulary that reflects that. Sure, there’s such a thing as making your language so sugary and cushioned as to be totally ineffectual and patronizing. There is, as always, a healthy middle ground between insensitivity and overcompensation. (There’s also such a thing as a sense of humor, which is always the first thing to go when things like this come up.)

At best this is a complicated situation, and this is, in short, what I’ve worked out so far. My guiding principle about this is grace, grace to people with special needs and grace to people who may not have thought about it as much. A part of me jumps whenever I hear someone use the r-word now, and there’s nothing I can do about that, but I can’t expect everyone to experience the things that led me to a greater understanding of a group of people I never would have encountered otherwise.

Remember when Linda Blair’s character barfs all over the place in The Exorcist? It was an act of malice and rebellion by Satan (or maybe some other demon). The vomiting wasn’t because little Regan was sick; the demon was looking for a reaction, looking to terrify everyone present (I guess). The only way to respond in a way that will allow you to retain any control over the situation is to act like it has no effect on you. After all, if he just wants to freak you out, the only thing to do is to not be freaked out. You can’t hurt it, all you can do is try to get it out.

I’m not comparing my students to little girls possessed by thousand-year-old evil priest-killing spirits, first of all. I was driving home from work the other day, thinking about some of the behaviors I’ve had to deal with. (Special Ed Lingo Note: “Behavior” is a general term [at least in my organization] for specific undesirable behavior. A student’s character doesn’t go into this designation, but screaming when he or she doesn’t get french fries does.) I’ve seen kids do the normal stuff like hit and bite, but I’ve also seen one intentionally piss himself and strip naked. I’ve heard stories of kids throwing actual poop at actual teachers, actually. And used tampons. And heavy crates. Computer monitors. There was a period of time where at least once a week (more like once every other day) I’d have to get a kid to stop masturbating in the bathroom. (Not that the act itself is forbidden, but come on, I want to finish this math lesson. Pull your pud at home. [I've seen a decent number of boners in this line of work.]) Every special education teacher has horror stories like this.

As I was thinking about this stuff, I was amazed at how quickly I got used to things like that. For that matter, it’s amazing how quickly anyone can get used to it. It became nothing to me to lift a seventeen-year-old out of his wheelchair and change his diaper while making conversation with him about Pat Sajak, or to him, “Uncle Pat”. To me and the people I work with, someone hitting you in the back as hard as they can, repeatedly, for kicks, is not only normal, but expected. (But still fucking annoying.)

To date, I still don’t have the best reaction to the more extreme behaviors. In my worst moments I find myself asking why they would do this to me. To ME! I’ve spent eight hours a day with them for months for little pay! The ingratitude! The answer is obvious. My students do not have the means to express themselves, and their genetic affliction halted their mental maturation at a very early stage. Of course Michelle will scream and beg when things aren’t going well–it’s a time-tested method of getting attention, no matter what kind. From her perspective, there is no other recourse. The frustration wells up and there’s no other obvious choice except to scream. The entirety of my work is hinged on teaching these students communication methods that work better than the ones they know, and proving that they work by responding positively. This knowledge doesn’t make her behavior less infuriating, but it does put it into a framework that allows her teachers to more appropriately address her needs.

(I’m now going to take a moment to tell a story about the most disgusting thing I’ve ever had to do. A particular student was taking a poo. His name was Jack. We had to escort Jack to the bathroom to make sure he didn’t spend too long doing unsavory things, and to make sure he cleaned up. There’s an element to Autism that somehow seems to cut across the Spectrum to blow away any regard for personal hygiene. This isn’t true with every student with Autism, but many of the ones I’ve worked with exhibit this wonderful contempt for basic cleanliness. Ever done some paperwork you hated and cut some corners to finish early? Well, wiping his ass is something he hated, apparently, and cut corners by taking precisely one square of toilet paper. I was about to suggest that he try again, but then I realized the problem was much more dire. I can’t remember exactly what I thought, except that alarms were going off and I needed to deal with this situation immediately. There was actual shit all over his fingers. I recalled in that instant what a terrible hand-washer he is. He’ll squirt soap into his hand and wash it off of that hand. Only one hand will get wet in this exchange, and the only part that will get clean is the palm where the soap landed.

“Jack, go wash your hands.”

I knew what was going to happen. I knew! But I wanted to postpone this nightmarish scenario.

It happened. A bit of soap, a bit of water, all done! I briefly considered letting him return to class and act like I hadn’t noticed, but I couldn’t face being viewed as a total incompetent. I couldn’t ignore the problem.

“Jack, try again. No, wait, more soap. More soap! Now rub your hands together!”

Nope! He was done, and eager to get out of this boring room with this boring teacher who seemed to be having a boring fit about something boring.  I had one option left. I covered my hands in soap, grabbed his hands, and rubbed like I wanted to dissolve our skin. I have a pretty strong stomach, but I couldn’t do it too long before starting to gag. Eventually it was finished, and I washed my hands again like I was prepping for surgery. In retrospect, I could have gone back to the classroom to get some latex gloves, but I couldn’t have left him alone without some consequences. I could have probably worked something out, but all I could think about was getting the SHIT off his HANDS. Fun fact: he’s done much more disgusting things, but I haven’t been present for them.

Finally, for those of you thinking “oh who cares, I had crap all over my hands back when I had a baby” I say–no no no. Try to think of the grossest person you’ve ever known. Maybe the stinky kid in middle school that was late catching the train to Deodorantville, maybe that coworker who exhibits the Platonic ideal of obliviousness. Now imagine that person’s feces on your body. QED. Honestly, he was a fun student to work with and I miss him, but he was an aggressive candidate for the grossest kid ever.)

Honestly, I’m still not as good at this job as I want to be. I wish I could be more patient. There are still days where I’m baffled and aggravated to an extent that makes less sense than the students’ behaviors themselves. Just writing this is a good reminder that they’re in this class for a reason, and I can’t just assume they’ll be as good as they are in their best moments. But this is the core of what I do. The quality of my work depends on how I respond to behavior that needs correction. Academics are secondary. (What good will multiplication do some student when he can’t be in a grocery store without eating the stock? Often, academics are actually cloaked lessons in patience, focus, and listening skills.) In short, it makes for a strange day, and while I’m used to it, it doesn’t make it any less strange to reflect on. But the elements that make working in special ed so unusual are the absolute center of it.

WHO’S ON FIRST

Many of the students I’ve worked with have various after school activities, and some of them require their teachers to hang around and wait for whoever is orchestrating it to come by. This entails a bit of sitting and waiting around, trying with little motivation to keep them from wandering around or destroying something. At that point, usually we’re just trying to keep them alive long enough so we can shuffle, zombie-like, home. It also entails occasionally attempting conversation. My good friend from the first school I worked at, Mr. R, had a book in his hand he planned on taking home. One student, Allen, (in a surprisingly out-of-character move) asked Mr. R what he was reading. Mr. R answered “What is the What,” by Dave Eggers.

“What is the name of the book.”

We looked at each other, baffled.

“No,” Mr. R said, “What is the What.”

“What is… the book.”

We were both stunned when we realized what was happening. The title of the book was framed in the same way we often frame questions. If you wanted to ask Allen, say, what is the name of the high school we were going to play basketball at, you could say “the name of the high school is what?” If you wanted to know the name of his favorite train, you might say “your favorite train is what?” (The answer is Wisconsin Central. I used to have his top ten memorized, and Mr. R and I would occasionally ask him random positions on the list to see if it changed.)

“No, the name of the book is ‘What is the What’.” Mr. R repeated.

“What… is the president.”

“No, Allen, the book is called ‘What is the What’,” I said, trying to help.

At this point he’s losing interest. It doesn’t bother him that he’s not understanding,  You might call us assholes for intentionally prolonging the confusion, but judge not until you have borne witness to the most incredible moments of spontaneous comedy in your life.

“What is the country.”

“No, ‘What is the What’.”

“What… is the anteater,” he said, conjuring up everything he had learned with Mr. R.

“Allen, look at the book, it’s called ‘What is the What’!” Mr. R said.

“What is it.”

He, bored with our hyena-like laughter, returned to his train book.

(Just to prove that we’re not always jerks, we eventually cleared up the confusion and made sure he knew what the name of the book was.)

PEOPLE NEED TO BE FOUND

Vince is a crowd favorite. He has a gravelly voice, a speech impediment, and swears like a sailor, which makes him sounds like a grizzly butcher from the Bronx. His favored way to get your attention is to simply walk up to you and tell you to go fuck yourself.

“Hey Mr. S.”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck you.”

“Come on, Vince, try again.”

But this isn’t some kind of repetitive, single-minded attempt to offend. His means to shocking teachers are varied and numerous. He once announced that he was going to sell tickets to his mother’s funeral (she’s still kicking). He’ll tell you his dad lost his job, bombard you with ceaseless questions about what you had for dinner and when he or anyone else will die, and announce that he’s going to bring his gun to school. A personal favorite of mine is when he’ll ask someone if he can kill them. I eventually stopped treating this like a grave affront, since that’s the reaction he’s looking for. So the other tactic for responding to it is surprise.

“Mr. S, can I kill you?”

“I dare you to try.”

This usually gives him pause for long enough for a turn toward a more appropriate subject.

During summer school, he spent a lot of time with a TA called Garrett, which meant that he spent a lot of time screaming his name, trying to find him and demand things of him. I and another TA were changing a student in another room, and it was understood by everyone that at the end of the day, you don’t go into this room because some TAs are with a kid and this kid needs his privacy. But Vince had questions that needed answering, so he burst into the room.

“GARRETT! Where is Garret!?”

In between stifled laughs, we answer that he isn’t in this room.

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiit,” he mutters, and stands and thinks for a moment. He turns around to go out the door, yelling “GARRETT! GARRETT ARE YOU ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND!?”

Here are the three experiences I had with people with special needs before I started working in special education:

1.) My aunt Georgia was born with a cocktail of genetic disorders that left her bedridden and mute for most of her life. She had to be fed intravenously and could only make moaning sounds that to kid me sounded like unhappiness. (They weren’t. They were, in fact, quite expressive.) My grandmother loved her as much as any mother could love a child. I knew that there was nothing to be uncomfortable about, but whenever I was in her room, I was never at ease. What was I afraid of? That she would get mad at me? That something would go wrong and I wouldn’t know what to do? That she was suffering and couldn’t express it? That she had latent psychic powers? My problem was that her room had the Sega Genesis, so whenever we visited, I had no choice but to sit next to her bed and cautiously play Sonic the Hedgehog or Golden Axe and hope that whatever I was vaguely afraid of wouldn’t come to pass. My grandmother said that Georgia would smile whenever she talked about Jesus, and was certain beyond a doubt that she was saved. She passed in her early twenties.

2.) When I was in elementary school and playing on the jungle gym, a large (to me in first grade) dark haired girl with Down’s Syndrome almost pushed me off. I’m sure now that I was in her way, and she didn’t know the appropriate way to express that (par for the course for six and seven year olds, really). At the time I didn’t know she was different, I just thought she was a bitch.

3.) In college, a high school graduate with Down’s worked in our cafeteria. He was a very friendly dude. So friendly, in fact, that he would put strangers in headlocks so he could give them noogies. Eventually he learned a host of dirty gestures from other students and staff.

4.) In my youth group at the church I grew up in, I casually called something “retarded”. One of the leaders sternly told me not to use that word. As justification, he asked me what was wrong with being retarded. I didn’t say anything, but I thought the answer was obvious.

The lessons I had gleaned from these experiences were that these students’ medically uncertain lives are in my bumbling and surprisingly feminine hands, I have to be careful about what I say because they’ll memorize all of it and repeat the worst of it, they can go bat-shit at any time, and I had to totally sterilize my vocabulary around anyone remotely connected to the field.

The few days of training I had further confused and frightened me. It was a flurry of special ed lingo (which is a whole essay in itself), cautionary tales, tearful and sickeningly sentimental reflections, teeming crowds of middle-aged women, and endless ways to mess up. I think slipping on a banana peel is funny, play video games too much, and am mildly obsessed with Joan of Arc. I was convinced that I would need to become an entirely different person, as though I was entering into a religion with a whole new code of ethics. “Be patient!” I heard from a few mothers who were asked to speak at the orientation. “Be sensitive! Know what to do during a seizure! Support your students in their effort to meet their IEP goals! Take data all the time! These students are beautiful and life-changing!” The cherry on the terror sundae was what is called Nonviolent Crisis Prevention and Intervention training, or NCPI. (The N is a new addition. When in a hurry, CPI will do just fine.) It’s a set of basic instructions on how to deal with a student trying to hit, kick, or bite, and how to restrain that student if it gets bad enough, all in a way to eliminate injuries to both parties. (I would later learn that most of this goes completely out the window when you’re trying to keep your glasses from getting smacked off your face.) Not only did I have to be baptized in special education, I had to learn special ed kung fu.

I couldn’t sleep the night before I started. I kept imagining all the ways I could fail, all the things that could go wrong, and all the awful, sandpaper-like parts of my personality that would be utterly unwelcome in the environment I had conned my way into. I imagined the people who worked in special education were all middle-aged women who had cross-stitched pictures on their wall that say “God Bless This Mess” and three kids. And what if I said “shit” in front of a student? It’s a word close to my heart, honestly, and certainly close at hand. Would I get fired on the spot? Who do I have to become to do this? For a lazy college graduate with a sense of entitlement, this is probably too much responsibility. Did I accidentally hypnotize the woman that interviewed me? This, for some reason, felt like homesickness. This wasn’t just a job; it was my first full-time job after college, albeit one that I didn’t get because of my degree. It was the second biggest change in my uneventful and sheltered life.

The class I was assigned to had twelve students and a total of about thirteen staff, including a handful of specialists and two teachers that split the case load. (I’m tempted to talk about the students in terms of their various diagnoses for simplicity’s sake, but it does nothing to get at what they’re really like. If you hear that someone has Autism, you know nothing except that they fall somewhere on the spectrum between someone who’s social skills are less than adequate to someone who is totally non-verbal and might be at a first grade developmental level. This was lesson #1 for me: the individual kid matters far more than whatever they’ve been diagnosed with when it comes to deciding how best to teach them.) I was assigned to work with a different student almost every period, although I was first assigned to the students and activities that tended to be easier, due to my inexperience.

The first boss I had, Ms. Andrews, was a deafening fifteen year vet, a baseball fan, a consummate leader, an awe-inspiring teacher, and mother of two. “Do you need to talk to Ms. Andrews?” became a magic phrase we could pull out at almost any time and it would bring instant obedience, but not through fear. Well, okay, it was fear, but there was also intense adoration in equal measure. They responded to her better than I have ever seen a student respond to a teacher. It was from her that I learned possibly the most important lesson I would ever learn about special education: They’re people. For all of the difficulties in relating to students like the ones I’ve worked with, if I patronize them, there’s no point. They have tastes and moods and sex drives, and in high school, they’re only a few years away from job training and the rest of their lives. Pity is the cardinal sin. I learned quickly that I wasn’t there to feel bad for them. Everyone already does that. I saw it countless times when we would make trips to the grocery store or restaurants in the area. People would make special concessions to them because they were obviously different, things like overlooking certain charges or automatically giving them special privileges. But I was there to help them get as far as they could possibly go toward independence from a small army of teachers and family member, and treating them as anything less than their age would render their time in school meaningless.

Since then I’ve messed up a lot and gotten poop on my hands.

P.S. (5/1/10) Apparently I’ve gone 3 or 4 months without noticing that I said I’d had three experiences and listed four. I won’t change it for now, since its kind of funny to me.