Seeds

Johnny Appleseed wasn't the only one with a strategy.

One of the things I love about “special” education is you get to keep your students longer. This is likely due more to a shortage and numbers more than to intentional design, but it should be intentional, because these kids need a constant. They need someone who isn’t going anywhere.

My first class was a group of fourth and fifth graders at Weiland Park Elementary in Columbus City Schools. Some of them stayed with me for years. And my job, across all of those years, could be boiled down to this: plant these seeds before the weeds took over.

The weeds were already thick by the time most of my students got to me. Sometimes it was because nothing at home was stable. But often it was because the school environment made my students feel “less” - like they were not as smart, not as capable as the other kids. And this was mostly because they couldn’t read.

So my first job as the special educator was to bring them back, to revive them, to get them to the place where they could see how fabulous they are - to show them that not being able to read is a problem we could solve together, no worries.

My fifth year as a special ed teacher, I got a student I will call Josh. Josh was in third grade when I received him into my “resource room” classroom. (His third grade “regular ed” teacher was Dr. Amy Acton’s husband, Eric Acton as a fun fact side note.)

I remember my first day with Josh, he was just sitting at this table in my classroom, hunched over, crying.

Not like sobbing or out of control. Just kind of quietly crying.

Now this wasn’t unusual for me at least because I was used to having to win kids over - with exception of one student - I can’t think of any kids who wanted to be placed with me. Obviously. If you got sent to my room, there must be something wrong with you.

So I was used to having to make my room seem like the funnest place on earth.

After a bit of getting to know each other, we finally got to the crux of the issue: Josh couldn’t read and felt like everyone else could and so he must be dreadfully stupid because why couldn’t he do that thing, just read those words?

Now when you receive a student who feels like they are nothing, it takes a minute to convince them that it is okay to try again, that they are in a safe space, and that you are there really to help.

But I got Josh there. And in the process of getting him there, I could also see that this kid was smart. Like super duper smart. Like he got stuff on a whole different level than some of his peers.

Josh drew a political cartoon as a sixth grader that I swear to you I had to explain it to many adults. As a third grader, he crafted Stuart Little’s boat out of a piece of construction paper and some twine. He made me a wallet entirely out of duct tape (I still have that somewhere) when he was going through a duct tape phase in fourth grade.

I got to have Josh as a third grader, a fourth grader, and a fifth grader.

After middle school, Josh no longer needed special education and ended up in gifted classes in high school. When he was graduating from high school, he reached out to me to see if would be able to watch him perform a song for this class he was taking his senior year. I was back living in Ohio after a teaching in Malaysia stint and so of course I went to see him.

Josh had taken some social studies art class…the details of I cannot remember…but one of the requirements of this class was to create a piece of art for someone who had impacted you.

And so Josh wrote this song and sang it (while playing his harmonica) for me:

Back in the third grade I thought I’d be stuck in the slow lane
But then you came and taught me the words of the pages and of books I now hold to my name
Now after six short years I’d like to thank you for making me me

I would never give up the mnemonic devices or that god damn rocket math
I would not trade the world for the slop bucket or the green team shirt on my back
That Alcatraz of spelling mistakes mean more than a dictionary
You taught us what was unique about us and that means so much to me

Back in the third grade I thought I’d be stuck in the slow lane
But then you came in and taught me the words of the pages and of books I now hold to my name
Three whole years was all that It took for you to get me back on my feet
Now after six short years I’d like to thank you for making me me

Cattle, cheese, knights and those fuzzy things Jackson drew
All these things mean more to me me now than I ever knew
Oatmeal to go and the clay monsters that Ben used to make
I can say one thing, that jolly ranchers will never be the same

Back in the third grade I thought I’d be stuck in the slow lane
But then you came in and taught me the words of the pages and of books I now hold to my name
Three whole years was all that It took for you to get me back on my feet
Now after six short years I’d like to thank you for making me me

I stood in that audience and nearly cried. I knew what that third grader hunched over the table on our first day together. I knew the weight of believing you are stupid when you are nine years old.

The thing that is always amazing to me is that Josh was and is perfectly capable of doing anything. All he needed was for someone to see him, someone who knew what to look for, and for someone had the training to do something about it. He got three years with a teacher who understood that not being able to read is not the same thing as not being able to think. And that was enough. Three years. That’s all it took to turn a kid who thought he’d be stuck in the slow lane into a young man standing on a stage, performing a song he wrote, in a gifted class.

Unfortunately, for every Josh who gets planted in the right environment with the appropriate kind of care, there are thousands who don’t. Kids who build that fortress instead - who learn that if you’re loud enough, mean enough, big enough, no one will ever ask you to read out loud. Kids who discover that bravado is a hell of a shield. Kids who figure out that if you attack first, no one gets close enough to see that you can’t decode the words on the page.

Some of those kids grow up to be fine. Some of them don’t. And some of them grow up to be the most dangerous thing a democracy can produce: a powerful person who has never, not once, been allowed to be vulnerable.

I wrote about this in The Shield of Bravado so I won’t rehash the argument here. But I’ll say this: Josh wrote me a song. He could do that because someone gave him the right kind of soil, the perfect amount of sunlight, and enough water to grow.

Because just like when you go to any conservatory and see different plants need different environments…some need a very constant temperature while others can survive nearly anything…our kids are the same.

Some need a bit more care and tending while they are still seeds so they grow into the beautiful plant they are meant to be.

Imagine what happens to these seeds if planted in the wrong environment? Imagine how they might cope?

Now imagine that seed coping - with money, with power, with the nuclear codes.

That's what happens when blast a delicate seed with a fire hose instead of gently watering it with the soaker hose.