The Power of Teachers

I have this ritual at the end of a school year. I go through all the school stuff Noah's saved up throughout the year and send some to the recycle bin, and save some for a special box that has a slot for keepsakes from each school year.

I'm running a bit behind (the new school year is two weeks away), but I got to his second-grade things this week. And I found whale mobiles and dinosaur paintings and manduka lifecycles. I also found a pattern of descent.

Noah is smarter than any of you. Don't feel bad; he's smarter than me, too.

He's simply brilliant.

He also happens to have disabilities.

In first grade, Noah had an awesome teacher. She knew how to support him; she knew how to work with his abilities to help him thrive. And she genuinely cared about him.

But in second grade, Noah had a different sort of teacher. The kind that wouldn't let him use the bathroom when he asked, leaving him to sit half the day in urine-soaked clothes. Yeah, I don't have enough words to say about her . . . so I won't.

I looked through Noah's work of a year and saw a pattern. He started out with stellar grades. 100%. 98%. 107%. As the year went on, though, those scores dropped. 65% became far more common than 107%.

She'd defeated him.

I look at the advent of the new school year with trepidation. What kind of teacher will Noah draw? Will we be lucky and get someone like his first-grade teacher, or will he be cursed with someone like his second grade teacher? And if he does get someone like his second-grade teacher again, will he ever be able to recover from that devastation?