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196 • Stories from Educators with Disabilities The spelling, at the teaching level-I make mistakes. But I have a very good rapport with the kids. I tell the kids right off that I have a learning problem like they do. So I can empathize with them. I remember once that I was trying to write a three-letter word in a letter. I sat there for two minutes, extremely frustrated. You can only know that frustration if you've lived through it. You cannot produce it. I think it's more the adults that have a problem, that teachers have to be perfect. I will have kids say once in a while, "You made a mistake." And I will say, "That's right. I never said I was perfect, did I?" Some teachers think they are. Adults often feel that a teacher must be perfect and cannot have any flaws. Patrick My supervising teacher was really excited about me. This school was kind of, I don't want to say affluent, but the parents were more professional. Many parents had asked this resource teacher, what happens next? When my child goes on to high school how-shall we be looking at colleges? She was really excited about me doing this. Because here is the living answer to those parents' questions. Yeah, and it was real encouraging to me. One of the boys, only the mother was able to come to the child study team meeting and she said, "Will this child ever amount to anything?" And I think this child was the best as far as LD. He really worked. The teacher said, "Here we have proof. I would like to ask Sarah about this." The parent really liked that. Sarab My students know that they can come to me with any little complaint, feel upset and frustrated. I don't care how the reaction of their frustration comes out. They know that I'll be able to deal with it. They know I won't get angry with them, I won't shout at them or scream at them. In fact sometimes they are puzzled when they come in from their other class. They are totally frustrated from what has transpired. I sit down and they are amazed. I don't encourage them to do work because I know they are in a situation that they could not deal with. I will spend time telling them that I really know how they feel because I have been there. We will try to work out strategies to deal with that the next Support Systems • 197 time. They will tell me, "Wow, no other resource teacher that I have ever had has been willing to sit down and do that with us." I think that that is one of the most valuable things I emphasize to my children . Look, I can't write on a blackboard. That doesn't make me a bad person. There are a lot of things that I can't do, just like anybody else. That doesn't make me a bad person. Yet I have never tired of trying to accomplish what it is that I want to do. I try to instill that in them as well. SLUan We have a boy in first grade in our school who has CPo He comes in early in the A.M. and works with a therapist provided by the school district. 1 talk to him and encourage him. The therapist is constantly giving me the evil eye. Like, Why are you talking to my client? 1obviously have the same handicap as this young boy. I will say, "Come on, Tim, you know you can do it. Should I get down there and show you?" He smiles and laughs. She just gets angry. One day I talked with him a little longer and 1said, "You know, Tim, maybe someday you will be in my class. But you are in first grade now and 1 teach third." The therapist was absolutely shocked. "You teach here?" she said. She sees me every day. I don't know what she thought I did there. The child is also affected with poor hearing so he works with the program that helps people with hearing handicaps. The woman in the program said that she used to work down at the state school for the deaf. The kids there, when they finally realized, at the age of twelve, thirteen, fourteen, that they were going...

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