In last month’s issue I reminisced about my first year of teaching. Once I got through the first year things seemed to change. I suppose word got around that I was a strong disciplinarian and worked well with the students. Oh, what did I get myself into?

The second year started well. The students were learning the rules, and they actually seemed to be learning them faster than the year before. The school’s administrators had first started sending me students who were very high functioning learning disabled students. These were the students who most likely could continue to progress and be successful in the regular classroom. I believe they were playing a numbers game. The resource classes were getting higher numbers, and they couldn’t have that! So I had to try to come up with activities to challenge and keep the higher functioning students interested. At the same time, I needed to keep the students who were truly struggling progressing at their own level. I was told that I needed to group the students based on ability level and teach them in groups. The administration assigned two aides to my classroom to help. Well, that didn’t help much, because the aides needed just as much direction as the students. There weren’t enough hours in the day to keep up with things.

Next, the powers that be started sending me students with emotional disabilities. This increased my class size from 9 or 10 the year before to close to 20 students, and not all of them were just learning disabled. I knew I needed to keep these students engaged and teach them how to behave appropriately. This took away from the learning disabled students to the degree that I was spending most of my days dealing with behavioral problems. That’s not an exaggeration: I kept track for two weeks one time and found that out of a seven-hour day with students, five and a half were spent dealing with one discipline problem after another. I got through it, but I don’t know how. I wonder to this day just how good of an education the students got that year from me. From my standpoint, it wasn’t much.

I remember one student who had been held back and placed in my class – which was a sixth-grade class for the most part. The administration had started sending me seventh and eighth graders by then. This student was somewhat immature for his age, and I was talked into retaining him on a trial basis. Boy, did I get suckered into that one. Hanging out with younger students and emotionally disabled students was not a good idea. He would follow one group and then another. Neither group was a good influence on him. I tried though. I would call his mother a couple of times a week to discuss how we could handle the situation. She was supportive, but she readily admitted that she couldn’t control him. You know, you hear of situations like this, and there is usually a good ending to the story. Not so in this case. By the end of the year, I was beginning to think we had a student with an emotional disability on our hands rather than one with a learning disability.

After two years of sixth grade, he finally moved on. In my mind I had failed. That would not be the last of our meetings. A few years later when he was in high school I transferred to the middle school and high school. Of course, he was assigned to my class. It all started again. It didn’t appear that anyone else had had any success with turning this student around. However, I have to say that the thought of following this student through the remainder of his high school career intrigued me.

But things just continually got worse. He was using and abusing alcohol and drugs. Mom, the vice principal, the counselor, other teachers, and I all tried to find some way to get through to him. The closest I got was having him admit to me that he thought he was stupid and that an education just wasn’t a priority with him. Instead, he made the choice to lead a life of crime. The alcohol and drug abuse led to other things. Petty theft led to grand theft when he stole a car for a joyride. Alcohol and marijuana led to meth and crack. The last I heard he was serving time for burglary, assault, and drug charges in a prison outside of Blythe, California.

Reminiscing isn’t always about the positive; sometimes it involves the negative. The most positive thing I learned was that you can’t save everyone, and you can’t blame yourself for how some students turn out.

Jim Wade is a special education consultant for ReSolutions-ESP, Inc., and has been teaching special education for more than 20 years. Email comments or suggestions for future issues to Jim at jwade@resolutions-esp.com.