new student

I realized sometime last year that I had been teaching a long time (Not like decades long, I teach with a woman who has been teaching for 36 years, that's 6 years longer than I've been alive. I find that CRAZY, and can't imagine doing this job for that long, I can't imagine having that sort of endurance. She's even still a good teacher. She drives me bat-shit-crazy, but I don't fault her intentions or abilities... but I digress).

Six and a half years is a long time right? It feels like it, I glance at kids out of the corner of my eye and see a student I'm sure I know. On second glance, not only am I looking intently at a complete stranger, but the student I'm sure I recognize was actually in my class as a seventh grader four years ago, 2,500 miles away. I called a student by the wrong name for almost a month this year because she looked like someone I had five years ago. It is more than a little unnerving.

On the upside, teaching special education for a few years allows me to recognize patterns, and more often than not my intuition about students proves correct. For example, I have a tiny study hall/study skills class, about six or seven kids. One wandered in yesterday with a new schedule. Now, a new kid half way through the senior year is a bit strange for me, I'm the only teacher working with the special ed seniors and so I know all names and most faces. This one I'd never seen before, he claimed he had been at the school almost a year and was a senior. This was curious, and I knew nothing about him.

Then, as I listened to his inconsistent and slightly unnatural speech patterns, watched his insistence on sitting as close to the front as possible, and saw him evaluating the continual (they both even had a thing for Swedish death metal) hatter and affectionate banter of his classmates, it occurred to me, I did know this kid. His diagnostic doppelganger was a student of mine three years ago and though not every kid on the autism spectrum is alike, there are some distinctive markers. This friendly, slightly troll looking kid, hit almost all of them within thirty minutes of class.

I checked with our department head today, and yep, I'm right. Special ed teachers can sense their own, It's like gay-dar, but with special ed kids. See, I do have some sort of talent. Go me!

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