lessons learned from special ed

i don't actually think i should write this post right now because i haven't thought everything over as much as i like to do, but i want to get something out there because i've been humbled these last couple weeks.

i've been working one-on-one with a downs syndrome student in a special needs/life skills classroom. and these students are something else. i never thought i'd be in a special ed classroom, it's not really my thing. but every day is an adventure, and every day is hilarious, and every day those ten kids make my day full of sunshine.

see these kids are all different, and they all have different levels of functioning, but they all accept and love each other like i've never seen in a classroom before. it's so refreshing and encouraging! usually at some point during the day, my student or another student throws some kind of tantrum or makes a noisy scene, but the kids just go on with their work and later will comfort the party involved. today one student was feeling sick, and all the other students gathered around him. they kept repeating how sorry they were for him and just wanted him to feel better, and they rubbed his back and gave him hugs (though i'm not sure he wanted them :)). i can't describe the loving feeling that i get from them, but they hold such an innocence about them that i've allowed all of them to quickly attach themselves to my heart.

i'm reading "Searching for God Knows What" by Don Miller (which i'll probably blog about when i'm finished) and it's just excellent. this evening what i read made me cry; he was telling the story of a boy in his middle school who was bullied. and he was writing about this ridiculous cycle of how we compare ourselves to one another.

A child learns early there is a fashionable and an unfashionable in the world, an ugly and a pretty; a valued and an unvalued. Where this system comes from, God only knows, but it is rarely questioned, and though completely illogical and agreed upon by everyone as evil, it remains in play, commanding our emotions as a possession. It isn't something taught to us by our parents; it is something that comes naturally, as though a radioactive kind of tragedy happened, screwing up our souls. Adulterated or policed, the system can grow to something more civilized, but no less dominant as a drive of nature. In youth the system is obvious. If you want to learn the operating system to which humans are subjected, step into a classroom of preteen students and listen to the dialogue. You will hear the constant measurements, the talk about family wealth, whose father drives what car, who lives in what neighborhood, or who is dating whom.

not so in special ed. if only i could've had what these kids have.