) but the good ones were excellent and when some one would say what a special person we were, I would respond that I hoped all educators were doing the same thing.....discovering who a student was, were they were and taking those strengths and guiding them forward. During the last year that I taught (I had gone back into the classroom from 13 years in administration) I had an observer from the public school my class was located, come and spend a day in my classroom. She was one of their administrators helping out in the SpEd department and had a background in Learning Disabilities. The students from her district in my classroom were all on the autism spectrum somewhere....
She quietly turned to me in the afternoon and said, I never understood what really went on in your classroom and what anyone with "students like these" did. You really do believe in their potential and in the possibilities...... And that is the gift that all "teachers" really need to share. I know that my son and daughter were blessed to each find a couple along the way that gave them enough "fuel" to last them through the ones who didn't.
My dad always had chickens and other birds and my son started calling it chickening up when my dad shut up the chickens every night. We don't have a chicken on the place but we still call it chickening up in the afternoon when we feed. I have a bottle of wine in the fridge that I need to drink but I'm not much on drinking alone. I need someone to lead me astray. 
