“My toolbox is empty.” “I don’t know what else to do.” “I’ve tried everything.” “They didn’t teach me special ed. in my teacher prep program.” “I’m out of ideas.” That dang empty toolbox. We’ve all been there. Overwhelmed, confused, and at a loss of what to do. Sometimes we ask for help, other times we feel like a failure and shut down. Maybe we think it’s time for the student to be evaluated for special education or re-evaluated for a different program.
Here’s an Ashley belief for you: if your heart is still beating, air is filling your lungs, and your neurons are still twitching, then it’s impossible to be out of ideas or having tried everything.
Rewind back to October 2016, you know, my first month of elementaryland. One of the students on my caseload had a very unique situation: he slept the entire day at school. Fourth grade, documented sleeping on average 80% of the school day since Kindergarten.
What? 80% since KINDERGARTEN?
I’ll never forget walking into his classroom for the first time and asking for which one “Quinton” is. My principal pointed and he was curled in his chair sleeping. Tried to wake him up. Failed. We continued with my tour. During my first team meeting about this student, I learned that a lot of interventions and strategies had been tried. He had even gone to a sleep study that found he had no sleeping disorder.
When I was looking over the list of strategies that had been tried, I remember panicking. It was a list of strategies and interventions from special education 101. This was October of my second year teaching… first month in elementaryland ever. I had no idea what I was doing. “Have we tried?…” “yup…” “What about_____….” “Yup!” Meanwhile, one of my other students was throwing chairs down the stairs and another was screaming about how much he hated everyone in his class. That was just 3/14.
I googled how to keep humans awake and jotted down some different ideas to try. I was determined. A couple months later, I sat down with our district behavior interventionist where I gave her a list of 34 strategies. “Which ones were the most successful?” None were working in the general education setting, but we noticed a huge increase in his minutes awake per day in the resource room. He was awake almost 100% of the time in the special education setting. Meaning, he was now awake for about 40% of the school day. Sleeping 60%. We were slowly making progress.
A couple months later, 47 additional strange and out of the box strategies tried. The data stayed the same. More team meetings, more hypothesis on why.. but the truth was nothing was working… Going into this situation I had already felt like my toolbox was empty. I didn’t know what else to do… because the truth was, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing in general. Okay. He was awake in the resource room, so what if I kept him ALL day… COULD HE stay awake all day? That seemed to be the only thing that was working so… let’s capitalize on that.
I’m not giving this story any justice because I could probably write a book about how amazing this kid is. After 6 months of trying whatever weird thing popped into my head, 4 years of sleeping over 80% of the day at school, and hours of meetings and brainstorming, this kid was awake. For the entire month of June of 2017, he was awake and learning in the resource room.
Fast forward to June of 2018, he was awake almost 90% of the school day (he would still fall asleep during times of extreme stress but most days was awake 100% of the time), with a HUGE decrease in his special education minutes. This kid went from reading at a first grade level to fourth grade level in one year.
It’s crazy– not a single one of the strategies in my toolbox worked. I was out of ideas every time I stepped into my classroom. I wasn’t equipped for a kid like him. Then how did all this happen? That I actually don’t know, but I have a theory. I never stopped trying even when I didn’t have the tools, on the days I thought there was no way, and on the days I felt I had truly tried everything. I think along the way, he realized I might just actually care about him and believe in him… and slowly he started to trust me enough to stay awake. Once he was awake we started building a relationship. Once trust is built, it can be leveraged in different settings, with different people. Every time he would leave I would tell him, “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that I didn’t think was good for you.” After figuring out how to keep him awake, I was tasked with getting him to actually leave my class without having a meltdown– now that took some actual strategies… all of which were not in my toolbox. Slowly but surely figured that one too. Time + LOTS of patience 🙂
See, I don’t think we actually have the tools until we actually need the tools. So if you don’t have the tools, that’s okay, you just need to try and find them. Ask your colleagues, go to google, e-mail an education program, do weird things that you think won’t work, just don’t stop trying… You can still try while a student is being evaluated for special education or an alternate program… but as long as the student is growing, SOMETHING is working… and it’s crazy because it just might be you.
When you believe in ALL students, it can be difficult when ALL your tools aren’t working… but there is ALLways hope (and google:)) YOU GOT THIS!
WITH KINDNESS | ashley