Oops, there I go again…

Image by kabils via Flickr

I need to learn to keep my mouth shut more often.

This is doubly so when my ‘mouth’ is my fingers typing here, on Facebook or, most important, on Twitter where  I am known as Spedteacher.

Here’s what happens when I don’t.

I hate when that happens. But it is completely my fault when it does.

So now I’ll be easy to find on most Tuesday evenings starting at 8:30PM NYC time.

#spedchat is for teachers (and not just special ed teachers, either), parents, administrators, students and everyone else with any connection or interest in special education issues.

Topics proposed for the first chat on August 31^st are:

• How can parent-teacher relations be improved?
• What do grades mean in special education?
• Is inclusion working for general and special education students?
• How do we get general education teachers to understand? (the current leader in the voting)
• How have school budget cuts affected special education?

You can participate in the decision about what the topic will be by voting here.

To participate in the chat just log onto Twitter ( if you don’t have an account you can get one free, here ), then search for the hashtag #spedchat.

For a better explanation of all of this please visit my co-conspirator and #spedchat moderator Damian Bariexca’s excellent blog.

I hope to see you Tuesday.

I’ll probably get myself into even more trouble.

Student Progress: Sometimes Its Not the Teacher

Teacher accountability is all the rage.

Image by lorenabuena via Flickr

I don’t think there is anyone who would argue that teachers should not be accountable for what they do or fail to do, not even me.

The only argument is how to measure what teachers do.

Oh yeah, we also have to define what it is that teachers do.

Part of the problem is that part of what teachers do is not done in the classroom, part of what teachers do affects student development but has nothing to do with academics, and teachers are not the only ones in a school who help kids develop.

For one child in my school the teachers tried and tried, but it was the school secretary who made the difference.

And what a difference it is.

K came to our school three years ago as a hostile, extremely withdrawn and occasionally violent sixth grade girl.

Every day she wore this large black trench coat that she would pull up so that she could be totally hidden by it.

She was mute.

She ignored any teacher who tried to speak to her, no matter how gently.

She ignored any teacher who tried to speak to her, no matter how insistently.

She ignored students who tried to speak to her. If they got too close she would lash out with the sharpened pencil always ready in her hand. More than once a student would get stabbed. K just missed piercing one girl’s eye.

K did not like school.

K especially did not like the school lunchroom, a near toxic blend of cacophonous sounds near manic energy.

K was not at all manic.

K seemed to be an empty shell of a girl.

Our school secretary is a dour, efficient woman who does not tolerate teachers or other fools well.

But she has a heart a mile wide and twice as deep when it comes to kids.

Ann invited K to spend the lunch period in the office with her.  K accepted wordlessly by showing up.

Ann would continue to work while K sat there.

Eventually K began to draw.

Image by alex.ragone via Flickr

And draw.

And draw.

The first positive thing we learned about K is that she is a talented artist who, with only a #2 pencil, created pictures filled with texture and emotion.

Eventually we heard from K’s father who lives overseas. He told us some of what K had been through and we began to understand why she behaved as she did.

It was not a pretty picture, especially when K eventually drew it sitting at a desk in the office eating lunch with Ann.

K ate lunch with Ann every day.

In 7th grade K travelled with the rest of her class to their different subject teachers. K still wore her trench coat but she didn’t hide in it as much.

And she stopped stabbing people.

Every time I saw K I’d say hello and smile at her.

Eventually she would look up at my face as I did that.

One day I got a crooked, shy smile back.

K ate lunch with Ann every day.

The black trench coat was replaced with a very large sweater.

K continued to communicate with drawings. Sometimes we got what she was saying, usually not.

K ate lunch with Ann every day.

K did very little schoolwork. But she started to give other people that shy, crooked smile.

One day K whispered something to me.

She asked to go to the office to see Ann.

It wasn’t lunchtime, but I let her go. She spent the rest of the day there.

K started talking more.

And more.

She continued to draw, and she continued to eat lunch with Ann every day.

This year K is in 8th grade.

The sweater is gone.

K smiles and talks to anyone who will listen or smile back.

K made a few friends.

And there were even days when K did not eat with Ann because she wanted to be with her friends. She went to the lunchroom.

But most of the time you could find K in the office where she would sit opposite Ann drawing or helping out at odd tasks.

Now K holds her head up high and her bright blue eyes sparkle.

K is confident, relaxed and even kids around a bit.

K went to the prom! And had a good time. I know because she told me.

Last night I went to a retirement dinner for four colleagues. Ann is retiring in a week when our school years ends.

Last night was the first time I saw Ann smile and laugh.

Her work is done.

On Monday K will graduate with the rest of our 8th graders, all of whom have grown tremendously since they came into this school three years ago.

But none has grown and developed as much as K.

Today K will have her last lunch with Ann.

10 + 1 Not To Miss

I recently got tagged in a blog post by Shelly Terrell (@shellterrell) one of the many people I rely on for my continuing teacher education.

Tagging sometimes seems like the blog equivalent of literary logrolling in which authors conspire to praise each other’s books, but I really do read and recommend the blogs I am about to tag.

If you are tagged, follow these rules:

1) Insert the picture above into your blog with a link back to the blog that nominated you
2) List 10 blogs you feel others should read
3) Tell the bloggers you have nominated that you have tagged them.

Here, in no particular order, are the ten blogs that have made a difference in my teaching and/or my thinking.

SpeEdChange by Ira Socol (@irasocol) Ira is the single most interesting person I have met on Twitter. He’s a dyslexic former NYC police officer, author, and now doctoral candidate in Special Education and Educational Technology at Michigan State University. He is a passionate advocate for Universal Design in Education.

Philly Teacher by Mary Beth Hertz  (@mbteach) An inner-city technology teacher reflecting on teaching, learning, leadership and life with intelligence and spirit.

For the Love of Learning by Joe Bower (@joebower) challenges the “deeply rotted myths” that modern teaching and schools live by and explores more progressive forms of education. Always interesting, stimulating, incisive and quite often fun.

Keeping Kids First by Kelly Hines (@kellyhines) The title says it all. This blog is focused on teaching and learning, but takes a broad view of those topics. Don’t let Kelly’s easy-going North Carolina charm distract you from the deep thinking going on in these posts.

Learning is Messy by Brian Crosby (@bcrosby) His students are 4^th graders, mostly second-language learners, many of them in special education. Brian focuses on how policies, processes and politics affects his teaching and students.

Upside Down Education by Amanda Dyles (@amandacdykes) She’s passionate about “using technology to ignite learning” and the subjects she teaches her 6^th graders: science and social studies. And, despite living in Alabama, she’s a passionate Red Sox fan.

Human by Tomas Lasic (@lasic) A tinkerer who likes to ask ‘what if…’, Tomaz says “Rather than teaching people, I prefer to make them think and learn together.” And he plays water polo.

A Geeky Momma’s Blog by Lee Kolbert (@TeachaKidd) Asks questions. Asks lots of questions. Really good questions. Sometimes she finds answers.

ClassRoots.org by Chad Sansing (@classroots) One of the people with whom I often disagree. Here’s where we meet: Classroots.org presents failure and learning from it as equal partners with success in innovative teaching.

Reflections of a Science Teacher by Sandra McCarron (@sanmccarron), who describes herself as scientist educator and life-long learner. She likes to blow things up; all in the name of science, of course.

And one more…

Living the Dream by Diana Laufenberg (@dlaufenberg). Diana teaches social studies with passion and it comes through in every single post of this blog I recently started following. Diana discusses her teaching at Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy and explores larger themes of teaching and learning.

Challenge:

Take time the rest of the week to read these blogs and see which ones to add to your daily read! If you’re tagged in this post, please spread the love.

Academics or Life Skills? Yes! No! Maybe!

Image by Lichfield District Council via Flickr

Essential Questions are fun because there is no one right or wrong answer.

There are many answers, each with the ultimate potential to be right or wrong, or even change from right to wrong or back at any given time.

Our Essential Question today is: Academics or Life Skills? Should special education teachers emphasize one over the other, or is there a happy medium?

My answer: Yes.

My other answer: No.

My third answer: It depends.

I’m not trying to be difficult (there are those who will say I accomplish being difficult without any effort at all) but this is one of those questions of which the answer one gives depends entirely on one’s conception of the purpose of education.

My conception of the purpose of education is that it is essential that children be prepared to lead adult lives.

Vague?

You bet!

This is the problem with statements that need to apply to everyone.

Even if we narrow the statement to apply only to special education students;

It is essential that children be prepared to lead adult lives to the best of their individual abilities.

Not much clearer, is it?

The problem is that in stating the purpose of education, we are trying to answer an essential question.

Every student, whether or not in special education, needs an individually crafted answer to questions of whether academics or life skills should be stressed and to what extent one should be stressed more than the other.

It gets more basic than that: For each individual student the definition of what is appropriate to teach changes as each student develops.

When it comes to education, there are no easy answers.

It is time we stopped looking for them.

___________________

This is the third and final posting of a string of blogs for the Classroom Insiders series at We Are Teachers. I appreciate the opportunity I’ve had to reach their audience.

Never Let Go, Never Give Up

Image by TexasEagle via Flickr

“Once I am your teacher I never let go.”

That is one of the first things I tell my students at the beginning of the school year.

I started saying that in my third year of teaching when I finally got my own class. They were twelve sixth-grade special education students and they didn’t believe me.

Those kids are freshmen in high school now. I still have the phone

Image via Wikipedia

numbers of their parents or guardians in my cell phone’s directory.

Every now and then I call one of them to see how the boy or girl I taught is doing.

Some are thriving, some having a harder time.

One has dropped out and joined a gang.

I ran into him the other day after school.

He was wearing his colors so I didn’t have to ask him what was going on in his life.

We made small talk for a while before I asked him what happened, why had he given up on school.

He is a smart boy who has raging hormones and is easily distracted. He is also a very good basketball player.

He told me that his school doesn’t let freshmen play on the varsity and that students must maintain passing grades to be on a team.

He is capable of it, but he didn’t have to work too hard in middle school because, as a special education student, he had modified requirements for passing from grade to grade.

Those modifications disappear in high school

In high school all students are required to meet the same standard.

We warn them, but it still comes as a shock when it happens.

This boy realized around midterm, right around the time this HS basketball season ended, that he would not become a tenth grade student. He would not be on the varsity next year.

He has always had problems at home and those problems had worsened.

That’s why the gang is so attractive. It is a new family.

They don’t let go easily either.

This is where the corollary to I Never Let Go comes in.

I also never give up on a kid.

I reminded the boy of what I had told him four years ago and he laughed.

“I didn’t believe you then, but you tracked me in 7th and 8th grade and always checked in with me and my teachers.”

“I thought that was over when I graduated.”

I smiled.

“I never let go, and I never give up on a kid,” I told him.

“And the best thing about never is that never never comes.”

Sticks and Stones… Yeah, Right

It happened again.

I’m sure the person responsible for it didn’t mean to do it.

Why, I’m sure she didn’t even give it a second thought.

That is the crux of the problem.

We don’t give the words we use a second thought, at least not when we say them out loud.

When we write we choose our words carefully, aiming to get just the perfect nuance, the right shade of meaning.

When we write we recognize the power of words, how choosing one instead of another shifts meaning in subtle or overt ways. We use dictionaries and thesauri in tandem to aid us in our search for precision in language.

I do, and I am confident many other writers, cognizant of the complexity of our mutt-like English language, do as well.

While Professor Henry Higgins bemoans that “One common language I’m afraid we’ll never get,” the rest of us are free to revel in the diversity of words that Dutch, French, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Saxon, German, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Italian (itself a motley collection of distinct dialects), and more have contributed to what we commonly call English.

It is that very diversity that allows linguistic precision, and it is that capability for precision that makes it so very distressing when people who should know better use words carelessly.

It is one thing to use an imprecise word when speaking, but quite a different thing when one is writing and, perhaps, has the time to choose words more carefully then read and revise by picking a different word or phrase to better convey intended meaning.

Still, despite the opportunity to do better, I’m sure the person responsible for it didn’t mean to do it.

Perhaps I should say persons because the offending term appeared in a magazine article and this magazine has an editor who might have caught the offending term and suggested an alternative.

That this did not occur leaves me to presume dereliction of duty or, worse, intent.

I will not embarrass the writer, editor or magazine by identifying them, partially because that is not how I operate, but also because the offensive phrase is so commonly used.

Here’s what I’m going on about; just a few simple words:

“Regular education,” or in this specific instance, “regular classroom environment.”

I am known in many corners of the online world as Spedteacher. It’s a handle that takes SpEd, a common abbreviation of ‘special education’ and adds it to my job title.

Perhaps I should call myself ‘Irreguteacher ‘ instead.

The opposite of ‘regular education’ is irregular education. A classroom environment other than a regular one is an irregular one.

All people are different. We all come with a broad selection of abilities and things we’re not so good at doing. How can it be that only a very small group of that overwhelming selection of abilities is labeled ‘regular’ and the rest are implied to be irregular?

In the text for one of the many inclusion-themed t-shirts available from his Nth Degree Catalog (The Home of Wheelchair Boy Jeans) Dan Wilkins explains the problem with the phrase ‘regular education’ much better than I can:

“One of the problems I have with the Special” and “Regular” education dichotomy is that its very existence forces us to label every kid just so we know which box to put him/her in. It gets worse. Then we take all the kids in one of the boxes and we put each of them in their own box and slap another label on it…. perhaps two…or ten. After a while we forget about the kid in each box and just see the box (and all its labels). It gets worse. Inside the box, the kid, misjudges the edge of the box for the horizon and comes to believe ‘that’s all there is…’ In the eyes of everyone, including the child, the kid and the box become one. So much for dreams…the chase is over before it begins.”

There it is.

In general, it is better to call the classrooms most students are in “general education.”

Calling them anything else should be irregular.

What Will They Do Now?

Image via Wikipedia

Here we go again.

Congress is about to rewrite education law again.

I shudder every time I think about this.

535 people, whose primary interest is re-election, debating policies that will affect the future of this country for decades to come.

Let me make it a little clearer.

There are 535 people who will create the laws that will govern education for the next generation. Of those, 100 can, at best, think only six years ahead and mostly about their own self-interest. The other 435 can also think mostly about their own self-interest, but their vision is limited to two years ahead.

The starting point for their debate will be the latest iteration of the now 45-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act known as No Child Left Behind.

That law is almost universally regarded as flawed; the only disagreements have to do with what those flaws are, how they rank in importance, and how much teachers should be blamed for the law’s failure to accomplish its aims.

Forgive me my skepticism, but I can’t see any reason to expect any good to come out of this.

Even if conditions were perfect, it is highly unlikely that Congress would write a law that makes sense for special education students, their parents, or their teachers.

Conditions are far from perfect.

Both political parties are damaged and more interested in making the other lose than in creating good policy.

Lawyers or accountants, not educators, head more and more school districts, including most of the biggest districts in the country.

Tight money means great pressure to reduce the cost of special education services to school districts and their taxpayers.

Consider the political implications of this: Some people had teachers they loved but everyone had teachers they hated.

The only people looking out for special education students are their parents and their teachers—the two groups most marginalized in current discussions of education policy.

There have been seven re-authorizations of ESEA since its inception in 1965, creating almost 100 different programs affecting special education, many with contradictory requirements.

There is no reason to expect anything better from the 2010 revision, should one somehow make its way through Congress.

Image by cypheroz via Flickr

Probably the best that special education can hope for is allowing multiple methods of assessing the learning of special education students.

A crumb tossed to the hungry pigeons pecking wildly.

We should rise into the sky and express our gratitude the same way the pigeons do

Plop. Plop.

_______________

This blog is the first in a series of three I’m writing as part of the Classroom Insiders panel at We Are Teachers. Please visit to meet the two other special  education bloggers  on the panel and read their posts on this same topic. Our other series posts will appear on April 8th and May 6th.

When You Have Lemons…

This blog never fails to surprise me.

I started writing this blog because of Twitter. On Twitter I found dozens, now hundreds, of people who seemed interested in what I was contributing to the discussion.

But saying all I want to say in just 140 characters requires a better writer than I

Here, I have all the space I need so I just start typing.

I am frequently surprised by what I write.

Sometimes I start typing intending to write about one subject and say one thing and I end up writing something completely different.

When that happens I usually learn something about myself, my teaching or my students. Those insights are addictive. That’s why I keep writing.

Some of the responses to this blog surprise me.

Most have been very gratifying.

My father now tells me he likes my writing. So do a few other people.

My last post got a particularly surprising response.

Hi,

Thank you for your blog. It’s good to see that people are still passionate about teaching. I’m glad I found you through Twitter.

Your blog has touched me for many reasons, mostly because I have a son with special needs, and his teachers are my heroes. To that end, I left you a present on my blog – I’ve nominated you for the Lemonade Stand Award. To accept, you must comply with the following conditions:
– Put the Lemonade logo on your blog or within your post. You can lift it off my blog (http://jonsmomblog.com).
– Nominate at least 10 blogs with great attitude or gratitude.
– Link the nominees within your post.
– Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
– Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

Please accept the award. I can’t wait to see and follow the people you give it to.

Here goes. The blogs I’m going to list are mostly aimed at teachers. Some of them have to do with teaching children with special needs but many just help me reflect on my teaching and the context in which I do it.

http://teachingeverystudent.blogspot.com is a blog for special education teachers that introduces us to tools, techniques and ideas that help us help all kids.

http://learningismessy.com/blog/ Teachers aren’t miracle workers, we just do the best we can. This blog tells how one dedicated teacher does it and provides ideas, inspiration and information to the rest of us.

http://mizmercer.edublogs.org/ Alice gets it. She understands that students have needs that go beyond books and academics. She works hard to meet those needs as best as she can.

http://budtheteacher.com/blog/ Bud is a smart man who has a different perspective and comes to different conclusions. I don’t always agree with him, but he makes me think.

http://www.empowerpeoplechangelives.com/ In her own words: I am a disability advocate. As a young woman affected by a disability and a special education major, it is my hope that parents, students, teachers, and other professionals who assist students with challenges will find my work informational and educational.

http://lisaslingo.blogspot.com/ Lisa is the general ed teacher in an inclusion class who does amazing things with her students

http://christinesouthard.blogspot.com/ A look at the same classroom from the special ed teachers point-of-view.’

http://www.vickiforman.com/ Writer, mom, advocate for people with disabilities. Put them in any order you like and you come out with a literate, readable, sensitive blog.

http://www.specialeducationteacher.me/ Is written by a special ed teacher in Atlanta who loves her kids but not always the logistics of teaching them.

http://katjewave.blogspot.com/ A passionate advocate for public education, this blogger always titles her blogs with song lyrics.

I wonder if these bloggers also sometimes are surprised by what they write.

This time I wasn’t.

Making A Difference Differently

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I used to want to change the world.

All of it, for all time.

No one ever accused me of thinking small.

I tried. I worked really hard at it.

I marched; I carried signs, candles, and bullhorns.

I boycotted grapes and aluminum foil. I sat-in.

I signed petitions, wrote letters, organized students, organized grown ups, made speeches, registered voters, voted, and more.

I did that for a long time. I still do some of that.

I’ve changed the world.

Really.

Not on the scale I wished to, but change none-the-less.

It happened in my first year teaching, and it was completely unintentional.

New York can get pretty cold in late autumn and as November slid into December 2004, it did.

One morning I noticed that none of my students had gloves, mittens or hats.

That afternoon I went to a dollar store and bought every stocking cap, pair of gloves, and set of mittens they had. I cleaned that store out. When I told the owner why and who they were for he gave me a generous discount. It still cost me about $75.

At that point of the year I was the push-in writing teacher for three of the four 4^th and 5^th grade self-contained special education classes. I taught 36 students and they all got either gloves or mittens and a stocking cap.

I had one pair of gloves and a stocking cap left.

The one special ed class I did not teach was the fifth grade class of students who had emotional disabilities.

Almost all of the students, and certainly all the poor, minority and/or special ed students in the NYC public schools have every reason to be extremely angry and most are.

The few deemed to have emotional disabilities are the ones who act on the basis of that anger in what is seen as a less than positive manner. These actions include relatively mundane things like yelling and cursing a lot, and less benign activities: hitting people or throwing pencils, chairs, desks or other students; generally putting people at risk of physical harm.

There were eight students in that class and one acted on his anger more violently than the others. At the end of my first day as a certified teacher I had to hold this kid, Tyrone, wedged between the cafeteria wall and a vending machine to prevent him from doing further damage to the face of some other kid who had somehow angered him.

I managed to hold onto Tyrone even after he knocked the vending machine over. I kept telling him that I had no problem with him and he did not have one with me. Eventually he relaxed and I let him go. By that time the other student had been taken to the nurse’s office.

I did not see Tyrone for a couple of weeks after that because he had been placed in a suspension school, about as close to being a juvenile prison as you can get without actually being one.

I had one pair of gloves and a stocking cap left. I was standing in the hallway holding the bag they were in when Tyrone walked by.

I gave him the bag.

Tyrone stared at me. I told him to look in the bag. He kept staring at me. Then he looked in the bag for what seemed to be a minute before he finally took out the gloves and hat.

As he stared at the items in his hand his shoulders began to shake. I realized he was crying.

I didn’t know what to do. Another fifth grade teacher, a gentle, generous and experienced giant named Mitchell Weintraub took Tyrone into his otherwise empty classroom.

I went down the hall to my next class.

Later that day Mitch filled me in.

Tyrone never knew his parents. He had spent his entire life as a foster child, moving from one placement to another.

It turned out that it was Tyrone’s 13th birthday. Tyrone thought the hat and gloves were a birthday present, the first he had ever received.

I cried when Mitch told me that and I’m tearing up again now.

I know that every thing that happens has an effect on every other thing that happens afterwards, and that the effect of any one occurrence increases exponentially over time.

That truth is the basis of the Butterfly Effect, a notion that the wind created by a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing will, over time, cause a hurricane in the Caribbean.

I didn’t know it was Tyrone’s birthday and I would not have given him a gift had I known. We did not have that kind of relationship.

Even so, that bag of warming things meant a lot to Tyrone.

It meant someone loved him.

The other evening, after sharing an intense day of science professional development and a pitcher of beer, I got into a heated discussion with a NYC Teaching Fellow second year teacher who saw nothing wrong with teachers being rewarded or fired based on the test scores their students receive.

I don’t think I sold him on the idea that the tests are unfair, easily manipulated and fail to test the abilities most people say they want students to develop in school, but I think I helped him realize that the most valuable thing teachers do can’t be assessed from year to year, from class to class.

The most important things that teachers do isn’t measured in a test or from year to year. What we do takes years, sometimes decades to come to fruition.

We change the world, one Tyrone at a time.

Not So Special Anymore

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My teaching life is changing again.

Every year I get a new teaching assignment. Up till now, no mater how different each assignment would be, they’ve all had something in common: they’ve all been teaching special education students.

Starting September, all that will change. I will still be teaching special education students using Scholastic’s Read 180 program, but I will also be teaching social studies to two general education classes, one 6^th grade and the other 8^th grade.

I am entering my sixth year of teaching, my fourth in a middle school, and I should be pretty fearless about entering any classroom by now, but this new assignment has me on edge.

Most of my anxiety is centered on class size. I’m used to having classes of no more than 12 students. My general ed classes are likely to have more than twice as many,

I know. I sound like a wimp.

After all, teachers in certain third world countries often have 70 or more students in classes.

But they don’t have to worry about making the mayor look good by constantly raising test scores. I wish my mayor worried about students learning useful skills and other important stuff, but that is fodder for another blog post. This one is about not feeling special anymore.

I’m not worried about my not feeling special anymore. I will admit that there is a certain undeserved cachet connected to being a middle school special education teacher. I say undeserved because the people who assign cachet to the job think I teach maniacal children running through the halls throwing desks.

The truth is, that hardly ever happens.

I spent twenty-five years in the bar business before becoming a special education teacher. I tell people who now don’t see how I can be excited about going to work every day that my students are much easier to deal with than my bar customers were.

As difficult as my students get at times, they are sober.

I’m not worried about my not being special but I am worried about my students not feeling special.

I don’t like the idea of putting labels on students but I work in a system that constantly does it so I’ve tried to adapt. My adaptation has been to do my utmost to make my students feel special in all the ways the education system tries to convince them they are not.

I tell them they are smart.

I tell them they are talented.

I tell them they are distinctive, exceptional, exclusive, extraordinary, select, individual, memorable, and unique. ,

I tell them that most of the difficulties that they have with school are more about school than about them.

I let my students know that there is at least one pretty smart adult who believes in them, and that I also do.

My worry is that I will not be able to do as much for each individual student when I have twice as many students.

I’m worried that I/ won’t remember all those names.

How can I help all those students feel special if I can’t even remember their names?