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The Glass May Be Half Empty After All- But So What!
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Special Education, The Way I See It
When I came across the following article, I just had to read it. After all I’m on the Student Success Team at our school, and I teach and support at-risk kids all day long.
Halfway to Destination 2010, kids struggling
Given special support since third grade, program’s students show the obstacles confronting schools
As third-graders at some of the Twin Cities’ poorest schools, they were singled out for special academic help, connected to community programs, given free computers and told they would receive up to $10,000 if they stayed in school to graduate.
I though great- special academic help, connected to community programs, given free computers and $10 000 when they graduate. Those are all the things that I would like to be able to give to the at-risk students I teach. With all that support they’d to succeed. What are they talking about “struggling”. Then I continued to read
But five years down the road, halfway through their journey, students in the Minneapolis Foundation’s Destination 2010 initiative were struggling with attendance and discipline problems and not doing appreciably better on standardized tests than a comparison group of their peers, recently released data show.
Oh no. Don’t tell me that. I work with these at-risk kids everyday. I can’ t be told that what I do doesn’t make a difference. My students do tell me that I make a difference. Appreciable difference-what the heck does that mean? I’m discouraged but continue to read
Foundation officials caution against reading too much into the test results, given that several scores were missing and the sample size was small.
OK, that’s encouraging. Maybe the test results aren’t valid. Maybe the same couldn’t be said for my school. After all that’s there, I’m here. Conditions aren’t necessarily the same. Maybe…. Why did I have to come across this article, especially after the tough week I’ve had. I do believe that our greatest challenges teach us a lesson. What’s my lesson here? I though about it for a while as I poked around on the net. Suddenly this quotation by Tom Krause appeared
“Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.”
I thought for a minute. Courage. That’s it. That’s my lesson. I needed to be courageous. I need to have courage and not dis-courage. I need to continue to support and advocate for my students all the while knowing there’s a good chance some may not stay in school and graduate. Every year some of my students graduate, and every year some of my students drop out. I need to change the way I look at that half-full glass and say, “This glass may be half empty after all, but so what!”
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Elona,
I applaud you and every other Special Ed teacher around. You see hope when others see only failure. You see possiblilities when others just want to forget and move on. You look past the “mad” and see the “hurt” that is really there. You know when to offer a shoulder and when to give “tough” love. I have a lady at our school who is an AWESOME Special Ed teacher. I’ve passed you blog onto her – and I’ll encourage her to visit. In the end, it doesn’t matter how much water is in the glass, it matters that people like you still see a glass with water and not an empty vessel. Keep it up!
Kelly, thanks for the encouragement.