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By Dalton Roberts
Sometimes we can use our own pain to correct great injustices in life. I recall one time when I did this.
I started my teaching career at North City School in Athens, Tenn. When they had enough students for two classes, they separated them by test scores into “slows” and “advanced.”
I was a new teacher, so I guess that’s why they gave me the “advanced” that first year. Those 40 kids were a pleasure to teach. I looked forward every morning to arriving for work. I breezed through that year and still remember it as one of the most productive years of my life.
The second year I got the “slows.” It was one of the most difficult years of my life. It drove me mad to realize I could not teach some of those wonderful kids. I dreaded going to work and developed an ulcer.
Let me give you two illustrations. One boy who could not read or write was a great artist. I did not realize at the time that he probably had damage to the area of his brain that dealt with words. The part of his brain that dealt with artistic symbols functioned beautifully.
Another fun-loving boy who remained my friend for many years was too hyperactive to learn anything, but years later I discovered he was successful as a drummer in several bands. What could be better than drumming for a hyperactive kid? At times I have had the thought that our handicaps can dictate our life work.
No bachelor’s-degree teacher is equipped to deal with all the educational challenges I faced that year. I was so deeply disappointed at my inability to teach some of those kids that I started driving to UTK to take master’s level classes, finally managing to keep from starving long enough to get an MS in special education.
It was the pain and frustration in that classroom that drove me to get that master’s degree. I think subconsciously I was paying back those kids I felt I had failed for a year of our lives.
What a dear blessing those kids were to me. They motivated me to become a better person and a better teacher.
Later, I became supervisor of special education in the Chattanooga schools. We started the first class in a public school in Tennessee for deaf and hard-of-hearing students (they had always had to go to the state school). We also started the first class in the South for kids with perceptual problems, like the Athens boy who was sensational in art but could not read. We sent a teacher to Syracuse for special training. There were eight kids in that first class, and at the end of one school year, all of them could read, and several non-readers were reading at grade level. When parents thanked me, I said, “Thank the second class I taught who motivated me to learn how to do this.”
Maybe there is such a thing as pointless pain, or pain we cannot process into a plan for improving life for ourselves and others, but when we can find ways to use it purposefully, it sure feels good to us and opens doors for others.
E-mail Dalton Roberts at DownhomeP@aol.com