One thing about my job is that it has made me consider job options out there. I truly love working in a school; there is no doubt about that. There’s something about it that just makes me happy. I love the environment. I don’t see myself ever having that typing 9-5 office job even though sometimes I think I should just settle for it.

While I would love to teach officially (beyond the capacity of the assistant teacher role or Sunday school position) and get a teaching degree (and if I can get a ‘promotion’ at work and teach, I’m all for getting my certification or Master’s in Special Education since that’s what they’ll pay for), I don’t know if it’s the right position for me even though I love being in the classroom. I don’t know if I could teach year after year and not get burned out or bored (then again, you do get summer vacation as well as winter/spring break to help prevent from burn out). Which is partly why for so long I’ve chased the dream of being a school psychologist but I’m wondering now if I truly want to do that (there are other reasons as well). I mean, I do absolutely love teaching now…I just wonder if it’s something I could do when I’m 35…40?

Which left me at a crossroads: I want to work in a school but as what? I’m not musically or artistically gifted by any means so that rules out specializing. I don’t know if I want to be a guidance counselor even though it’s also something I’ve considered for a long time (though still toying with the idea). Speech Pathology leaves me…eh. So what?

So this is my first time working with children with learning disabilities (I work at a nonpublic school for such children). It’s actually opened up the idea of special education for me because it’s made me realize that special education does not just include autism or children with physical disabilities. When I was in school, the students I think of who were in special education were in wheelchairs (or using walking aids) or they were just off (i.e. the girl who came to school every day with Power Rangers and Mary Kate and Ashley Olson coloring books and wore dog tags in her hair). We never had paraeducators in our room because no one as far as I know needed one. In high school, I understood other kids had IEPS even if they were not in special ed- my “ex” in high school used to use a hand held computer (not a laptop but it was some kind of tiny green machine) to write everything down because his handwriting was worse than chicken scratch and I had other friends who had extended time on tests – never really understood why. The ones who in special education classes were always the ones who again, were in wheelchairs and the like. As I have no desire to work with children with physical disabilities (more power to those who can – it’s not something I could do), I never wanted to go into special education.

However if you look at my students at first glance, only 1 out of my 6 students look like they need to be in special education – only because he has a speech impediment and weak muscle tone that does cause him to drool when he speaks. The other 5 unless you watch their behaviors closely you would never know they need to be in special education program. They appear absolutely normal which for me was a shock based on my experience. When you get down to it though, every one of them have learning disabilities. My students are 10 or 11 and I have one who cannot barely read a primer and another with retention issues. It’s not because they’re lazy because they do work so hard, it just doesn’t stick.

I’ve been exposed in the past month to a lot of reading and writing programs as well as had to figure out how to teach math when I suck at it myself. The reading however fascinates me – all the tools that are available to teach a student how to read from Read Naturally to computer programs and the like. I want to know more. I want to figure out how to teach reading skills to students. I want to be a reading specialist – never thought I’d say that because I’ve seen information on such graduate programs and scorned it – who would want to teach reading, I wondered? What’s so hard about reading, I pondered, that someone needs to be a specialist? I was wrong … because there is a need and I really think it’s something I could do and truly enjoy.

Both Towson and Maryland offer programs so it’s something else for me to consider in the upcoming months if this is a path I’m going to pursue.