Here Comes The Sun, Little Darlin'

As many of you know, I work as a speech therapist for a public special education, early childhood center in Maryland. I've been working at my job for, going on, 8 years now. At 18-years-old, I made the decision to become a speech-language pathologist, and, 11 years later I've never strayed from the thought that I would and could love my chosen profession.

In the last few months however, I've been dissatisfied. It has nothing at all to do with who I work with but who I work for. As the years have gone on, I've noticed a disturbing thing. My therapy and they way I provide it is no longer dictated by the IEP but by lawyers. I've begun to feel like a pawn in a legal game and it has stressed me out to no end. Because we live in such a litigious world with smart, savvy parents I collect data and provide paperwork to prevent the county from going to due process. Add to that, I have ungrateful parents and un-willing to learn teachers and my happiness for my job had dwindled. Dwindled to the point I was considering quitting; that is until....

I stepped into a teacher's classroom the other day and my student, Laneah, said "hi." She is a student with a severe form of Cerebral Palsy which has left her in a wheelchair and with a trache tube to breathe for her. Still, she is smart. So incredibly smart, above age level with testing. She tries her hardest to communicate with words too. So, on this day her nurse said they'd gone to Build-A-Bear for her birthday and she made a bear. Nurse Sandra asked me to guess the bear's new name. She told me then, Laneah had named her bear "Ms. Jen."

That simple story reminded me that 1) I do my job for one purpose-to better the lives of my students, and 2) that no matter what I make a difference. That all educators can make a difference.

I will hold this story close to my heart for many years and I'll pull it out on days when I am sad or discouraged and remember that a 4-year-old taught a 30-year-old a valuable lesson, that life is grand!