Marion Kennedy graduated Duke in 2009. As a Teach For America corps member, she is currently working as a 7th grade Special Education teacher in Chelsea, MA - part of TFA's Greater Boston Region. Please enjoy Marion's perspective on the TFA experience, as well as teaching Special Ed!
Why I joined Teach For America:
I was born, raised, and educated in Durham NC, a town with areas both of affluence and of desperate poverty. I am so deeply grateful to my parents for not only providing me with a fantastic education, but for also instilling in me a sense of social responsibility. They taught me that an education is an individual’s most valuable possession. Through their values, my observations of just how unjust the education system is in Durham, and my own study of this country, I knew upon graduating from college that my career mission is to help ensure that all children, no matter what zip code they were born into, deserve a chance at success. Naturally, I was drawn to Teach for America’s mission and joined to help solve America’s greatest problem: education inequality.
My experience as a Special Education teacher:
I am currently in my second year of teaching 7th grade Special Education at the Wright Middle School in Chelsea, MA. As I applied for Teach for America, I thought there was no way I would want to be a Special Educator. However, after a trying first year, I grew to love the position more and more. The role is unique in that I get to know my students so well; it truly facilitates closer relationships than any general education position.
That being said, my role as the 7th grade inclusion teacher is very different from that of a normal classroom teacher. I co-teach two homerooms in their English, Writing, and Math classes as well as teach remediation math and literacy workshops. I am responsible for supporting 10 children who have a moderate disability (ADHD, Communication, Literacy based disabilities are all common) that affects their ability to access academic content. Just as each one of my scholars has a unique personality, so do their disabilities manifest themselves in unique ways. However, every single child I work with has two things in common: First, despite being teenagers, at best, their math and reading skills are at around a 4th grade level. And second, and they are disheartened and disinvested because for their entire lives, they have felt like failures. When I decided to switch my placement over to SPED, I was told that this is basically the stuff TFA dreams are made of: closing the achievement gap within the achievement gap. It could not be truer. I work with the kids who have fallen through the cracks the most, are the most disheartened, and the lowest performers.
However, through my experiences it has become so clear that these kids are just misunderstood. They simply learn differently. It is so awesome to have a job where I problem solve to make education work for these kids, and to consequently see them succeed. I provide daily accommodations to lesson plans, alternative ways of learning, and modified curriculum to my students in each of their classes. My position as their special education teacher forced me to problem solve, preserve, and extend my creativity to a degree I could have never imagined in order to facilitate my student’s achievement. Everyday is different and brings on new challenges. Figuring out how a child can learn best can be extremely frustrating, but when those challenges are tackled correctly, I cannot even describe the sense of accomplishment and pride I feel over every single success of my students. My children are brilliant; they just need the right academic support to show that. At the end of my first year, seeing Cristofer, a boy with severe behavior problems and a communication disability that impairs his ability to take the words from his head and put them onto paper, tell his buddies to “Shut up I’m trying to pass this essay” and proceed to write a full page of perfect English was indescribable. Whether it was moments like that, or a student turning in homework for the first time, or my students’ collective 79.8% mastery of all math standards last year, being able to share the excitement and watch their growing confidence made every trying moment of the year worth it.
My second year is off to a fantastic start. My goal for the year revolves around both academic success, and for my students to take ownership of their own education and accept each other’s, and their own, differences. So many of them feel as if school is just not a place for them, and I am persistently seeking to change that. I wake up everyday working towards the goal of fostering a classroom community that can change their perception of themselves and their capabilities. My students hear me repeat “smart is not something you are, smart is something you become” and “own your actions, own your future.” They laughed at me at beginning of the year when I told them I wanted 80% mastery of math standards. Two weeks later Robert, a child with very low cognitive ability and a communication disability that interferes with his ability to read text, said to me after the first math test, “Miss, maybe I will go to college”. Moments like this or seeing Gary, a kid with attention issues who acted like he cared more about his faux-hawk than his homework, stay after school to get his English work done for the next day, tell me that all the hard work is completely worth it. Slowly, my kids are making progress and building the self-confidence many were so lacking of in August. I have worked to create a welcoming place where peers accept differences, and our class works as a team to reach our goals. This has been crucial because many of my kids need different accommodations to help them learn, for example Jorge takes his tests on a laptop and Marcus needs to make himself an “office” to do independent work by putting folders up as a fence around his desk. To be successful, my kids need to take a little bit of a different path in their learning. By explicitly teaching that differences are acceptable and we must support each other, my kids are doing a great job working to push each other further.
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