Dear Teacher,
Welcome to the new school year! I know that today is a hard day, for many the first day after the holidays is, but I hope that you have rested and regained strength, desire and enthusiasm for the new year.
I am writing to you in relation to one of your students. Perhaps even in reference to two or three of them, but allow me to personalize it to one in particular.
You do not yet know him, although it is possible that you have already been given some background information. In any case, if you do not mind, I will write to you about him.
He is a child with different abilities than the rest of your students. I don’t know if his intellectual abilities are much higher than the average, what used to be called “gifted” or if he has some genetic syndrome (Down, Williams, Jacobsen, or another) or if he has some kind of diagnosis of those that are preceded by the word “Disorder” (for attention deficit, with hyperactivity, negativist-defiant, autistic spectrum, etc.).
I do know that this student is going to become your biggest challenge this year. Because he is so different from the rest of his classmates, he will undoubtedly be the one who will demand the most resources from you, both intellectual, technical and emotional. He is the student who you will talk about the most at home and to the rest of your teaching colleagues.
Your student has not chosen to be like this, he cannot avoid behaving in this way that so distorts the classroom, although there are certainly times when he takes advantage and knows how to use his “different abilities” to the extreme for his own benefit.
The first few days of class, this student is going to put you through a whole battery of tests designed to find out your limits and where you stand. Believe me when I tell you that a big part of the success or failure of the rest of the course depends on how you respond in these first few days. If you are overly condescending, timid, or show signs of insecurity, you are going to have a pretty tough year. If, on the other hand, you are authoritarian, controlling, and distant, your year will be even worse.
Make sure you are the way you would like the teacher to be if that child were your child. Approachable but in control. Set very clear limits with lots of affection. Don’t be afraid to show your authority – but remember that the only authority that is respected is that exercised with a great deal of affection.
Difficult? At this point in your professional vocation, I won’t be the one to tell you that you have been called to the most difficult profession of all, and the younger your students are, the more so. (I know that there are many who believe that anyone can be a kindergarten or primary school teacher, and that the more difficult the university studies to obtain a degree, the more important these professionals are for society, but you and I know that those who think like this would not last three days in a row in their classroom trying to teach their students – and if they survived they would have changed their point of view on what it means to be a teacher to such an extent that they would know that there is nothing more important or more difficult than helping a human being become a person.)
You know perfectly well how to teach students with “normal” abilities, those who are now called “neuro-typical”, standard children, but most likely at university or in further training they have not explained to you how to take care of this student. Don’t worry, you know how to teach, work and get the best out of children and this case is no different. It is not a syndrome or a disorder with legs. It is a child. Treat him as such, and you will see how he goes very far.
This student will certainly demand more from you than the others, so you must decide whether you are going to get the best out of yourself, force yourself to learn techniques that you have never needed before, look for tools that will keep the attention, not only of this student but of many others in your classroom; or if, on the contrary, you prefer to continue using the same techniques and tools that you have always used, even though they only work for the majority. You must decide whether to make this student the lever that leads you to be a better teacher at the end of the course than you are today or survive this course as best you can, which is only one year in total.
Obviously, when you retire you will not be able to remember the name of all the children who were in your classroom, but I assure you that you will still remember the name of this student. You will probably even remember their parents.
When you meet them, it is very likely that they will also seem to you to be … “special”. You know what I mean. Every teacher I’ve asked has admitted hearing the phrase “their parents are weird too” in the staff room. Let me explain why.
The basic emotion that characterizes your parents, although they are experts at hiding it, is “fear.” They are afraid that you will treat your child as if he has “Down syndrome,” or as if he is “hyperactive,” as if he is “autistic,” or as if he is “ill-mannered” and not as the child that he is. They are afraid that you will not be able to give your child everything that he needs because they know that you have many more students in the classroom. Likewise, they are afraid that you will not feel capable of working with your child because they know that you have not received specific training for this type of child. They are afraid that you will leave him parked in a corner, physically or emotionally.
Therefore, do not be surprised if they do not talk to you about the difficulties that your child has, or if they insist on telling you about all the things that he does at home and how well he behaves with them. You may get the impression that “they do not want to recognize your child’s problems.” They know them, they are constantly present with them, and they know that they have a lot of work to do, but they want you to understand that your child is NOT just the obvious, there is much more to this child, and they are afraid that you will not be able to see it.
It is possible, although in this case the parents may not have reached this point yet, that they are also tired. Realize that they have gone through a very hard road. First the diagnosis, what a pain! Then telling family and friends and putting up with everyone giving them advice on how they should act, what school they should take him to, what therapies they should go to, etc. even though no one in their environment has had a child in the same situation… and then, every year, playing the lottery: “let’s see which teacher he will get this year.”
Don’t be upset, dear teacher, but there have been some years in which this child – and these parents – have had very bad luck. They have been assigned a teacher who is too young or too old, too strict or too soft, and certainly too many students, but they simply did not know how to handle it, and what for any other student-teacher duo would have been just another year, for them both (and for their parents) that year was hell.
That is why their parents may seem “special”, distant, obsessive, perhaps “excessively demanding”. They come after having bull fought (or been bull fought) in many arenas.
Do everything possible to make them understand that you want to be your child’s best ally. That you want to do everything in your power to help your child get as far as possible, regardless of what the rest of the students achieve.
Explain to your parents that you know your child, you have to demand from him for who he is and for what he truly can, and that you want to count on them to achieve this.
After twenty-seven years of working with students similar to the one in your class this year (no two are alike) I know perfectly well that the teacher is always an accomplice to their success.
Thank you for your work with each one of your students, but above all thank you for giving your best to this student. You will never forget him. He and his parents will not forget you, either.
