There is a moment every special education teacher knows. The room is fine. The morning is going reasonably well. And then something shifts — a transition goes sideways, a student gets bumped in line, the wrong song comes on — and suddenly the whole room is different. The energy is different. Two students who were…

There’s a particular kind of tired that sets in around February. Not the tired that a good night’s sleep fixes. The kind that lives behind your eyes and sits heavy in your chest when you pull into the school parking lot and have to give yourself a little talk before you open the car door.…

And What I Learned About Teaching, Trauma, and Trying Again I want to tell you about one of my favorite projects ever — and also one of my biggest classroom failures. Because they’re the same story. If you’ve been following along, you know I spent years teaching at a residential treatment facility. My students were…

I was standing in front of six sixth-grade boys in a residential treatment center – a locked-down facility for students labeled “Emotionally Disturbed.” Every single one of them had blown out of every regular classroom they’d ever been in. ADHD, ODD, trauma histories that would break your heart. Kids who couldn’t sit still for five…

I once got a “Needs Improvement” rating on a teacher evaluation in the category of professionalism. Let that sink in for a minute. After years of teaching special education, working with the students others often find too challenging, I was told I wasn’t professional enough. Want to know what I got dinged for? Buying a…