I really haven't wanted to write this blog post because, when I finish
writing it I will know, deep down in my clenching heart that it is real.

I am leaving the classroom.

There,
I said it. I have accepted a position as a Head Start Child Development
Specialist. I will be supporting and supervising approximately 18
classrooms. I am excited and at the same time my heart is sinking. I
have been on this teeter-totter for the past two weeks since I accepted
the position. I will have the opportunity to practice the leadership
skills I have developed as a teacher leader and in my studies in
educational leadership. I will also be giving up what I have always
known: one class, 18 kids. I will still be in classrooms with kids and
teachers a lot. I will learn if I am able to become the transformative
leader I hope to be by developing some more streamlined systems to meet
accountability requirements. I think my supervisor secretly hopes I can
help us move into a paperless system, but we both know how hard that
might be. I will keep blogging here, but my stories may change.

I am standing on the edge of a new life.

I
think the scariest part is that I won't have "that one kid" this year.
Every year, for twelve years, I have felt that there has been a capital
R – Reason for me being exactly where I was in that classroom. There
has always been "that one kid" that needed me and not anybody else. She
could have been a pawn in a inter-family power struggle, or a boy with
overly reactive parents. As a way of saying goodbye, here is a list of
kids, one for each year in the classroom, who I know I helped.

Benjamin
– We went to the Washington Zoo together. He was the only student
without a parent on the trip. I treated him like my own son, before I
had one. He came to school with a language delay and left on track.

Tarshena – Her mother was on heroin and went to jail before the winter
break. I tried to keep her emotionally close by doing home visits at her
grandmother's house. She was reading on grade level by third grade.

Craig
– An extremely bright boy with lead poisoning. No one understood why he
couldn't sit still. I figured out a way to teach him without that being
a prerequisite.

Gregory – He was being raised in his great-grandfather's house. His
great-grandfather, an eighty year old man, was shot by one of his
grandson's with a drug problem. Gregory was in the house. The
investigation took several weeks. Later we realized the killer had
picked up Gregory a couple times from school. We were able to keep
Gregory on track academically and get his family some counseling. I
will never forget him.

Nisha – A girl whose mother had not had a decent relationship with a
man until she was in my class. She left my class reading small words
with a mom who learned how to trust.

KenDaja
– Her mother once told me that she wished her daughter had "any other
teacher in the school." I think she was afraid that there was something
wrong with me because I was a male preschool teacher. I invited her
mother into our class to volunteer every day. Her daughter came
in with a slight language delay and left reading. Eventually she
acknowledged that I had taught her daughter well, but she still
couldn't stand me.

Amani – His parents were combative with
each other and the world. I held him on my lap as he screamed "I hate
this f–in school!." His mother cried on my shoulder as she thanked me
for helping him. He left with literacy skills way above level with
social skills to take him successfully through the remainder of his
schooling.

Shakeece – He had extreme social and language delays when he came to school. He left on track after two years.

Jakeece
– The next year I taught Shakeece's younger brother Jakeece who, when I
met him as a two year-old, ran around his apartment hitting his big
brother with a stick and peeling paint off the walls. He left reading.
While in my class, their mother's twin brother was shot and killed for
protecting a young woman who was being harassed by some thugs. Over the
course of those four years, their mother got her GED, became a
certified nurse assistant, and moved out of the housing projects to the
suburbs.

Candice – Candice's mother had never learned to read,
complicated by a brain injury in middle school. Brianna had some
physical delays and wore leg braces as a toddler. She developed her
physical abilities in our class and left reading. She stayed at the top
of her classes as long as she was at our school. Over the two years
Candice's was in my class her mother entered an adult literacy program.
As a 6 year-old, Brianna was helping her mother read.

RaShawn
– RaShawn had some attention problems and low self-esteem. He was
disagreeable and physically aggressive. One day he seemed exceptionally
agitated. I called his grandmother and she told me the story. That
morning there was a 6:00 A.M. knock on the door. His father was shoved
to the floor, hand cuffed, and arrested in front of him. RaShawn left
on track, but his behavior threatened to nose dive after the arrest. He
eventually became a successful student but it has been excruciating to
watch each year as I imagine him asking his teacher, "Will you let me
fail?"

TaShaunda – She was the pawn in the inter-family
emotional battle. TaShaunda was extremely busy and hard to manage but,
in the end, she was the first child I ever taught that I thought might
actually need to be in a gifted program. She was reading well when she
left our class and had developed social skills that have helped her
become a successful student.

There they are, twelve kids,
twelve years, twelve stories. Of course there were the ones that got
away like LaRon whose language delay was insurmountable, Tevon who was
expelled from my class and ended up on Thorazine, and Jonathon who has
experimented with shop lifting as a second grader. I have lost fewer as
I have gotten better over the years. Then there is the one who I almost
lost but, thanks to a mentor, I didn't:

My second year DeVonte
was driving me crazy with his anger and hitting. I asked for some help
from my program who sent a retired expert teacher to support me. She
came to my room, observed for a day, and then came back the next day
with some information. We had a conversation and she helped me realize
that I was as much a part of the misbehavior as my little troublemaker.
She helped me become a better teacher by giving me some practical
advice and helping me to see a broader perspective on my teaching. 

So
that is what I hope becoming a Child Development Specialist means.
Maybe it is time for me to be like that mentor who helped me. She
changed the course of my practice and helped me to help all those
difficult kids that came after DeVonte. I may not have that one kid but
hopefully I can help that one teacher who does. Stay tuned.