What does it mean to choose your battles as a special education teacher?
First thing in the morning, a fellow teacher approaches me. “I need your help,” she says. “Jack keeps showing up to my class with his hat on and I’m just done with it. If he comes to you this morning wearing the hat, will you take it from him?”
This is an established teacher. She’s been here a long time, and she’s known for her strong academic instruction and no-nonsense approach to student behavior. If I’m being honest, I’m a little afraid of her.
“Sure,” I say, and she thanks me and moves on with her day. Meanwhile, I’m filled with dread. I want to be a team player, and, of course, I want to enforce the school dress code, but I also don’t want to be the bad guy first thing in the morning–especially for something that to me doesn’t seem like a very big deal.
The student shows up to my class: Resource Room Language Arts. His most dreaded subject, an area that is incredibly challenging for him because of his disability–and made worse by the fact that it’s a support classroom. It’s first thing in the morning. The kid is still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. A toaster waffle wrapped in tin foil bulges from his hoody pocket. And he’s wearing the hat.
“Good morning, Jack,” I say. He responds with a shrug and removes his waffle. He reads the instructions on the board and begins with his morning work. This is the moment. This is where I should have stopped, or else asked him about his soccer game.
Instead, I say, “Hey, Jack. Mrs. Rogers stopped me this morning. She said she’s talked to you already about your hat and you agreed not to wear it in school anymore. She asked me to take your hat away if you still had it today. I’m not going to take it away, but I am going to ask you to put it in your locker.” This was not my best ‘choose your battles’ moment.
I knew right away that I’d made a mistake: tears came immediately. And there are few things a sixth grade boy hates more than a person who makes them cry in front of their peers. He slammed his fist into the desk. “I have the worst haircut ever.”
My heart broke. I had taken a kid with an open mind, ready to learn, and completely transformed him and his safe space as he’d known it–and the worst part is I knew better.
Why ‘Choose Your Battles’ Means Something Totally Different in A Special Education Classroom
Here’s the thing: the special education classroom is different. My students come in each day to read and write even though these tasks are incredibly difficult. And–surprise–they are often not super thrilled to do it.
As adults, we’ve chosen careers (hopefully) where we are able to experience success (95% of the time.) We forget what it feels like to struggle with something. Meanwhile, these students still have to spend a good deal of their lives working at and struggling through academic tasks that feel impossible to them.
The fact that these kids come through the door of my classroom is a win. The fact that they pick up their pencils and get started on a task that involves reading or writing is a win. Every day I have to challenge them to do something they aren’t good at, something that doesn’t come easily for them, that is frustrating and infuriating–but they still do it.
And if they do it while wearing a hat, what do I care, really? The important thing is that the learning is happening.
I’m reminded of the Dr. Suess book, Green Eggs and Ham. Sam-I-Am doesn’t care where the green eggs and ham are eaten. He just cares that the eating happens. And I bet if someone came along and told Sam that eggs are not to be eaten in the rain, he would probably respond with something like, “If he eats them, I don’t really care where he is.”
You may argue that I’m being a pushover, letting kids do whatever they want. But I believe the moment I was truly a pushover was when I allowed another teacher to dictate how I ran my classroom–and I would argue that that was way more damaging to student outcome than permitting a minor dress-code violation.
I went into this field not to be a dictator, not to feel powerful (boy, do I really not feel powerful sometimes!), but to create a safe place for kids to learn how to be better human beings.
So the moral of the story is this: Listen to your teacher heart. Choose your battles. You know when it’s worth the fight and when to just say, “Cool hat.”
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