Special Needs Students Teach Life Lessons

Sometimes the smallest moments in life teach the biggest lessons. Such a moment for me occurred many years ago during a gym class. I was substituting for a local high-school coach. My duties were simple: throw out a basketball and let the kids play. One student; however, could not play. Her name was Jolene. She sat on the sidelines with me. Her appearance, mannerisms, and speech patterns suggested to me that she spent her days in a self-absorbed world, unaware of her impact on others. She helped me realize that my assumptions about her and about special needs students were stereotypical and unkind.

Jolene was small and frail for a sixteen-year-old girl. Her blue eyes crossed and looked glazed over. When speaking, she looked toward the ceiling and fluttered her eyelashes so fast that her eyes weren't visible. She could see, but to what degree I did not know. She chattered about this-and-that, showed me how she could jump off the lowest bleacher, and demonstrated her ability to do a somersault. When excited, she put her fists together, in front of her face, and giggled. Her teacher, Mr. Howard, came into the gym, and Jolene laughed. I asked her if she liked Mr. Howard. Her fists squeezed so tightly against her cheeks that her arms shook.

"He be real nice," she said.

She practiced jumping a few more times, and then sat down and became still. Her hair was pulled up on the sides and held by a pink ruffled ribbon. Her bangs and the back were curled under neatly.

"You look pretty today, Jolene," I told her. "Who fixed your hair?"

"My mama. My mama do it," she replied.

She patted the top of her head. I told her that her mama did a good job. Jolene swayed from side-to-side and then jumped up.

"I wish it be red or green," she said.

"Red or green? That would look funny!"

"My sister look like a white baby when she be born. I tell my mama she ain't no white baby."

She paused a moment and looked down.

"I be ruinin' my mama's life. That's what I is: Ruinin' Mama's Life."

I tried to tell her that she wasn't ruining anyone's life, and that her mama loved her. My words had no effect on her.

"Mama cry sometime," Jolene said. "She say I be ruinin' her life. You know my sister be born with all her body parts? She have two legs, two arms, two hands, and two feet. She be born that-a-way."

"Well, look at you, Jolene. You have all your body parts, too. You have two legs, two arms, two hands, and two feet."

"Now I do cause I bigger, but I be born with half a body. Mama say I wuz missin' my parts-- Hey, look at that Mr. Howard! Why he actin' like a bump-on-a-log?"

I laughed. "Is that what he's doing?"

She jumped up. "I askin' him if he bein' a bump-on-a-log."

She marched to the other side of the gym, each step deliberate, like a new walker. In a couple of minutes, she came back and sat next to me. I asked her what Mr. Howard said.

"I ask him if he standin' like a bump-on-a-log. He say he guessed he wuz. I ask him wuz he bored, and he say he wuz."

She sat quietly and stared at him.

"I wish he go to my class and play video games for awhile. I don't want him ruinin' his life for me."

The bell rang. Mr. Howard yelled for everyone to get dressed. Jolene jumped up, put her fists to her face, and moved toward the dressing room. I walked over to Mr. Howard and told him what she said.

He laughed. "You never know what will come out of her. It doesn't mean anything."

He may have been distracted, but his comment stung. Her meaning was clear to me. She's not so different from the rest of us. She wants to feel loved; she wants to feel valued; she wants to be a blessing, like her sister, and not a burden. I came away realizing that one cannot tell from appearances and I.Q. scores the depth of feeling or understanding within a person. This knowledge expanded every time I worked with special needs kids, and it flowed over to every area of my life. In a nutshell, they teach me to be a better person.