I was following to my virtual PD session this morning with half an ear and a glance at the screen every little bit. To be honest, they lost me when they started 15 minutes late, posting the registration link at least 4 times in the chat, trouble shooting for stragglers, and gleefully reporting the participation number as it climbed to over 70 people waiting around for it to begin.
Even so, one name popped out at me from the list of participants: it was a former student who was obviously now a middle school ELA teacher in our district. A quick google showed me that she was a 6th grade special educator at a nearby school, and I thought back to what I remembered about her. She loved to write, and she was pretty good at it, too, despite struggling in other subjects and with executive functioning.
The first year of middle school can be a crisis year for kids who were holding it together academically with a lot of support in elementary, and that's what happened to her. We met with her parents a couple of times, and even working together as a team to help her, eventually we all decided that testing for special education services would be appropriate in her case. She was found eligible, and with the extra support she received, she became a real success story, working hard to make the honor roll by eighth grade.
And now here she was, offering other kids the same sort of help she herself once needed to be the best she could. That's the kind of long view that makes having taught in the same place so long so rewarding
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