Dream Dispersal

Note in my staff mailbox. ^ I found it at the end of the last day of school, yesterday--from my favorite student in the Bad Class:

"Thanks for being the coach who never benched my dreams and thoughts!!! You are amazing
Thank you for being so nice and real. You are one of my favorites at this school."

This is The Best Reward. I got teary.

Several other students expressed things like this to me, in their way.
The student I attended art class with is graduating. He--not a touchy kid--said, "I'll miss you" and hugged me.
A girl who doesn't speak and who often hits for attention instead patted me at the bus stop. This speaks volumes.

Meanwhile admin gave nothing. One of the v.p.s was outside with the bus crew. I approached her and reached out to shake her hand.

"Thanks for everything," I said. "Am I invited back next year?" I asked. [By default I figured I was, but I had had no official notification.]

"We'd let you know if you weren't," she said. "But we always need sped assistants," she said.

"Do you mean, 'Yes, you did such a good job, we'd love to have you back!'?"

"Well, yeah, of course. But have you seen how many opening there are for assistants?"

Okay, then.
In the end, the management is no better with humans than the thrift store was.

Like at the thrift store, it works best to LOOK TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER: the people I serve.
The customers or the students give the truest read.

The boy who said, "Don't touch my backpack!" at the beginning of my time taught me more than all the required video trainings on boundaries.

The girl who asked me to make cupcakes again, because more students were having birthdays taught me about making implicit promises.
(She was quite right--stupid of me not to see if you do it once, you have to be fair and do it for everyone--I made rice krispie treats the second time.)

The note in my mailbox said, keep supporting students who are not always easy to support.
It came from the student I'd met with one-on-one after she said rude things in class about sped students.

She'd told me, "I have no filter", which may also be why she calls out things in class to the teacher like, "You don't know what you're doing".
Unlike her sped comments, the student's judgements of the teacher were astute.

In the last week, for instance, the teacher handed out worksheets every day on random topics, like hammerhead sharks and Amelia Earhart.
The student said, "You're just giving us busy work."

This was so clearly true, if I were the teacher I'd have agreed––"Well, we've got to fill the time somehow!"––but the teacher dissembled, as always.

My friend Abby says, "Never lie to the students. They know."
Right!

(I had a failure of nerve and never did recommend to the teacher that we read short stories. She was so hard to approach, I just backed off.)

The student also says she fears failure.
I can see that: in her writing, where she can employ Failure Filters, she relies a lot on clichés instead of being fresh and honest.
The coach metaphor in the note to me, for instance, but I believe she means something along those lines.

But to me, the fact that she, a freshman, figured out how to find my mailbox in the main office speaks loudest:
"I went out of my way to say thank you".

This is an example of this student's strength. I wish she could see that. She is Taurus, an earthed sign, that yokes itself to its love and that pulls with strength.
If she doesn't somehow get derailed (pleasegod no), I predict this kid will be a leader. I told her that, but I don't think she believes it.

Anyway, cliché or no, I'll take that metaphor! It matches how I see myself--as someone who champions the students' dreams.

. . . And overlooks their grammar.
Grammar is good, and learning self-discipline is good,
but there are other, better people to help with that.
_______________________

Marz read aloud a passage from a newish book about astrology––You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance (by Chani Nichols, 2020)–– about the "modalities" of the signs.
The 12 signs are grouped into 3 modalities, classically called cardinal (ruler), fixed, and mutable.

Often these are presented as possible negatives:
Cardinal signs are rulers, inclined to despotism like Putin;
Fixed are rigid, may get frozen in place;
and mutables are flaky. Pisces is mutable.
Nichols reframes that:
cardinals initiate; fixed signs harness, stabilize; and mutables release and disperse.

Pisces, the most watery sign, disperses dreams.
That sounds so woo-woo, but looking back, that's exactly what I did with the students, and I'd say it's my superstrength to encourage them in the direction of their love.
Because what you love is a good--probably the best--indicator of where you should plant your seeds--invest your energy.

Like... I printed info about art schools for the kid who wants to be an animator.
I picked up paper bus schedules at the library for Transit Boy.
I wrote out summer hours & directions to a library closest to a student's home--a kid who loves the library's excellent computers.

And I'd asked Maura to calligraph Certificates of Achievement for the seniors--both of whom were more moved than I expected.
One put his hands to his cheeks and said, "I can't believe it! I can't believe it!"
These students really are starved for positive feedback.

I also wrote little notes to my favorite staff people, including drawing a bear in a motorcycle helmet for the art teacher, who loves motorcycles.

"Everybody is a star," I wrote––[from the Sly and the Family Stone song he knows I love]--"But not everybody is a Cool Bear! Thanks for making art a good place to be."

Really everyone was running up until the last minute though, and there wasn't  much of a wrap-up between coworkers, or at least not my ASD (autism) unit.

But a bunch of teachers/staff from a different, sometimes overlapping sped group (mostly DCD--developmentally/cognitively delayed) went out for happy hour at a nearby Filipino bistro and invited everyone.
I work tangentially with some of them, so I went too.

It was fun, and helpful at the last minute:
I got the validation I needed when I told a speech pathologist how I'd approached the v.p.–– "I thought she might be out there thanking all the staff and wishing us a good summer"––and this woman burst out laughing, "Oh, you are new to this."

At the end of the gathering, I went up to a young man I admire, "Andy", who is all of 22. He has gotten licensed as a teacher and will be at a different school in the fall.
He and I had been assigned to split the task of attending Trouble Student ...who, as it turned out, was no trouble. 
We had talked and agreed that we had gotten the assignment because we were lowest in rank, but that we ended up liking it and admiring this student.

Andy is my opposite in temperament.
He is so quiet, sometimes I didn't realize he was in a room--sitting in the corner. He worked so well with the students! He was their silent support, instead of the other adults who are always helping--or controlling--the students.

So I try to be like him, though I am always going to be more engaged, I can still be background. I am not the star, the students are.

Anyway, I went up to Andy and I said, "I'm going to miss you. I learned so much from you, and I really love you."
(I'd had a margarita, but I'd have said this anyway.)

I was so, so touched:
He hugged me and said, "I love you too."