Why does teaching everyone matter?

As teachers, if we spend our lives thinking disabilities are bad, we will respond by excluding the student with a disability, because we think we will avoid negatively affecting other students. If we as teachers understand that anyone could become disabled, then the way we treat the disabled would most assuredly be different. If we move away from negative constructions of disabilities and see challenge, opportunity and difference instead of negativity and fear, we can shift how students both with and without disabilities learn. Is that not the goal of teaching? To develop a person to where his individual potential for learning is maximized? To set aside the misconception that every student learns the same and therefore set up our curriculum and the way we teach exactly same.

No wonder students tune out of school.

We have suffocated any desire to learn by pounding on them facts upon facts all in the name of state tests. So they grow up attending school and barely making it past senior year. Then what? Not only might that child be using your tax money for food stamps because they cannot or will not work to live, but they may end up in prison – a place you fund via, can you guess? Your taxes.

As teachers we are developing the next generation. Meaning, we teach them what they will learn and take with them for the rest of their life. No matter who the child is, what their strengths are, or what their label is, we determine their outcome based on whether we cheer them on or stand in their way. And the manner in which we teach them determines how they will learn, or not learn. In essence, the future depends on us. No pressure.

The future of your community, your country and ultimately your world depends on what you invest into your child. Be careful who you are quick to label “dysfunctional”.

It is that one child you taught in 7^th grade social studies. Who paid you no attention and did not care about “dead guys” or the constitution of his country. The boy you wrote up at least five times a week for yelling out in class, making classmates laugh and causing everyone to get off track. So you checked him off as “the bad kid” just because he got on your last nerves. Besides, he did not care to learn your material. This kid was an easy “Fail.”

Except you did not consider that he had Tourette's syndrome. And on top of that he had the text book definition of ADHD with an emotional and behavioral disorder. Relating to this boy matters because he is a person too. And he deserves to be loved despite his disability that makes it difficult for him to focus. He needs to know that someone is on his side, that someone cared enough to invest in his education so that he can become who he was born to be. To overcome with him the obstacles that makes learning so difficult for him. Because what he really wants to do when he grows up is save lives as a firefighter.

For that boy, teaching really matters. For the next child, teaching really matters. For the children after that, teaching really matters. Until we realize that every child has strengths and are valuable and worthy of a quality education, we are not sufficient teachers.