I landed my first job in a public school when I was nineteen years old and a student at the University of Houston. I competed to earn a post as a teachers’ aide at Elliot Elementary School in the Denver Harbor neighborhood of Houston, Texas. Since I had attended private Catholic schools all the way through high school, I hoped to get a feel for life in a public school before I invested too much time and effort in pursuing a degree in education. 

This was back in 1968, when I was as green and naive as they come. I had hardly ventured out of my neighborhood for most of my life up until then. Aside from my third grade year when I attended five different schools and lost my father to a car accident, I was a sheltered as anyone might be. I had no idea what I might encounter in a public school located in the east end of Houston, Texas not far from the ship channel and the home where my mother had come of age. It was located in a neighborhood where the people and the cultures were different from my experiences. 

I took to the teachers and the students immediately. The school had a welcoming spirit and the outstanding educators whom I was hired to support were eager to use me for more duties than just watching children during lunchtime or running off worksheets and tests on the mimeograph machines. They urged me to interact with the students, to manage reading groups, tp tutor one on one or in small groups. I was busy all day long and I loved every minute of the adventure. I felt assured that I was indeed preparing for the right vocation. 

In spite of my enthusiasm there was one aspect of the school that made me feel uncomfortable. The students classified as having special learning needs due to both mental and physical disabilities were segregated from the rest of the school. Each morning small buses headed for a drab building in a far corner of the school property. There the special education students spent their days encased in a kind of mystery since I never really saw them or witnessed what was happening in their classrooms. They even ate lunch just before the other students arrived at the cafeteria. Somehow their plight seemed lonely and it almost felt as though they were being hidden away like some tragic mistake that nobody wanted to see or discuss. 

There came a time when an outbreak of flu left the faculty depleted to the point that I was moving from one classroom to another attempting to fill in for the absent teachers. Eventually there came a call from the special education building and I found myself walking across the lawn with my throat in my chest. I had know idea what I was going to find and how I would deal with it given my total lack of experience with such things. 

There were only a small number of students in the building and for the most part it felt as though they were mostly being watched over without a great deal of concern for making academic progress. Everything about the furniture and lack of color or a sense of creativity was depressing. Most of the students seemed almost unaware that I was even there. Now again a fight would break out or a child would begin screaming for no apprentice reason. I felt very uncomfortable in the situation and decided in that moment that I would definitely not consider specializing in teaching students with learning needs and physical disabilities. 

I eventually earned my degree after a few fits and starts. I began teaching four year olds in a private setting and while it was delightful I wanted more of a challenge. Before I had a chance to try out a public school the nuns at my church recruited me to run the religious education program. While I loved the idea of being the first ever lay person tasked to carry out that job in our parish, I eventually felt a call to finally work full time in a public school. As if someone was trying to send me a message public school positions were few and far between so I went back into the classroom via a private school where I literally taught all of the middle school mathematics. 

It was not until 1984, that I finally began working in a public school setting. By then Jimmy Carter had created the Department of Education whose main duties involved administering special programs, with a strong emphasis on strengthening the education of special needs students by creating training and guidelines to include them in regular classrooms whenever possible. Their isolation ended and even those with the most difficult problems learned in sunny rooms with dedicated specialists creating individual learning plans that allowed the children to expand their abilities and work toward being part of regular classroom interactions. 

It was glorious to see them smiling and confident and doing so well. The difference that the new guidelines and support systems made for them were breathtaking and I found myself feeling rather drawn to the joy of watching them succeed.

I will never forget an occasion when I had a room full of special needs students sprinkled in with a group of students who did not meet the specifics of a special education rubric but were nonetheless reluctant learners who needed extra time and differing styles of teaching to engage them. I was using mathematics to demonstrate critical thinking skills to them when a group of visitors from the administration building suddenly appeared to observe what was happening in my classroom. The kids rose to the occasion and showed off their knowledge and confidence in every way. Later I received a sweet note from one of the visitors commenting on how exciting it was to see the “advanced” students in action. Little did she realize that over one third of the students had been from our special education department. 

I think about this as there is a push to end the Department of Education at the federal level. I find myself feeling frustrated at the lack of understanding of what that wonderful agency actually does. I might first say what it is not. Not once did I receive orders to teach in a particular way or to use specific tools to teach a concept. What I did get from them is funding for special projects with students who need more time and variety to learn. I saw my mathematics department suddenly qualifying to receive manipulatives, calculators, and computers that enhanced my lessons. I saw with my own eyes how vibrant and excited my special needs students were. The Department of Education accomplished that and so much more. 

It saddens me that people who have never taught children a day in their lives seem to think that they know what children need better than the teachers. They see the Department of Education as a waste of taxpayer funds and somehow believe that the agency is peddling woke propaganda and deciding what and how teachers will teach. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I hope that life does not become more difficult for our students with dyslexia, autism, dysgraphia, brain injuries, learning disabilities, anxieties, blindness, deafness, emotional illnesses, Down’s syndrome and so many other difficulties. The Department of Education has made learning more and more possible and much happier for so many young people. I would hate to see all of the progress go away based on misconceptions of what the agency does. The segregated rooms in the back of the property are no more. Our most needy children are being loved and taught to be productive members of our society. What could possibly be a more worthwhile investment?