I realize most readers won’t care about this article, and it probably has no effect whatsoever on your daily life. But I’m just writing it for me, and as you can tell by the headline, I’m taking the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) tomorrow.
I find myself strangely serene and calm. I’ve been trying to attend to other obligations like my job of being a special education teacher, writing, editing, and more, but find myself incredibly unproductive. For about two hours, I just sat here on my new couch. At some points, I mindlessly played NBA 2K21 on the PS4. At other points, I just sat here watching The Newsroom while I tried to muster the energy to do anything else around the house — dishes, laundry, or anything else.
I have found myself traversing my day-to-day obligations like a zombie for the past two days. I stopped studying three days before the test. I was not going to make much progress three days before the test. I took about 15 practice tests, put my nose to the grindstone while I was training for a summer job, teaching and working around 60 hours a week, and more. I needed this time to be a zombie and just passively absorb information or entertainment instead of creating or actually doing anything.
A less mature version of myself would have pushed myself to go out of my comfort zone and push. But now I know my mind prepares myself for big, high stakes events, and makes me rest even when I want to be on “conquer the world” mode.
Of course I want the test to go well. For law school, the LSAT is crazily high stakes. But it’s also just a test. And the world isn’t going to end if the test doesn’t go well — I might have to take it again, which would suck, but it’s not the end of the world.
The reason why I wanted to go to law school was to become a better teacher, not to leave teaching. That is why I am only applying to evening schools so I can stay in the classroom. When I was in the weeds of studying, I lost sight of my “why” behind why I was undergoing the process and studying in the first place. I was marred by doubt and a lot of pressure from my family. They care about career, reputation, and prestige, and who doesn’t want a son who can make them look good by being in law school? But even law school pales compared to the previous plan of being in medical school. There is a lot of pressure, but I’m finding it hard to care about that pressure as much as I used to.
Today, I got a reminder of why I’m doing this in the first place. One of my students logged onto my class to make up a final. He struggles a lot with reading, writing, math, and every academic area due to his cognitive deficits. He has been reading on a Kindergarten level every year of his education until the ninth grade. I’ve wondered over and over how he could have been passed along through the system when he still can’t match some syllables to words, but at the same time I doubted whether retention would have been a great solution either.
He is smart and understands grade level texts when I read to him. He is very sweet, polite, and conscientious of others’ feelings and emotions. I like him and we get along very well, but it’s still my job to teach him how to read, and every time it feels like we’re making progress, the information is not retained and we’re back at square one — making me feel like I’m failing him and inevitably causing him significant frustration. There are moderate disabilities, and then there are severe disabilities. Even in the setting I teach in, which is self-contained, the most restrictive setting, he has the most severe disability I’ve worked with.
In education, there’s a term called the “warm demander.” That’s the ideal, picturesque teacher, someone who is kind, caring, and nurturing of students, while also maintaining high expectations and standards and pushes students beyond what they believe themselves to be capable of. I used to be all “warm” without having many of those academic expectations, but recently, I realize I’ve been all “demander,” sometimes maintaining a cold and detached attitude towards the job and trying to push my students a bit too hard. I am not very strict, nor am I critical of my students — that’s not my style, but I do push them to stay on task and making progress towards their assignments.
This student asked me to lighten the pressure a couple of times throughout the year. I didn’t know whether I pushed him more than other students, but I feel like I subconsciously did because a goal is to get every student in the 9th grade reading on grade level, and he has more significant deficits than most students. Today, I administered a final to some of my students, and I just caught up on administrative work like grading, documentation, and billing. As a special educator, I have to work with my students’ foundational skills, as well as meeting general education demands of pacing and curriculum.
I don’t want to bombard anyone with too much education jargon, but it was quiet for about the first 20 minutes of the test. And then he came off mute on Zoom, and I heard him crying and sobbing.
“Mr. Fan, this test is too hard! I can’t do this! I can’t!”
I had seen him upset about feeling like he didn’t belong in certain classes— but I’d never seen him that upset before. I told him he could submit the test and go about his day, but in that moment I realized who I was: a teacher just like all his others, a well-meaning teacher in the system who felt like he had to be caught up, who felt like they had to give him significantly more attention than other students. And when those teachers, just like me, feel like they have to give him so much more attention and feel like he has to catch up, we end up only fulfilling the latter half of the “warm demander.” Other teachers tell me they let him play on his phone most periods since he says he understands the work, but that’s obviously not a good solution either.
I felt and still feel guilty. I sat there all year, trying so hard and yet being absolutely helpless. I thought I could be different from all the teachers he had before, only to realize they, too tried. They, too, had the same goals for him and reacted with the same shock when they realized what skills he did and did not have. And sometimes that extra attention and extra care manifests itself in frustration, the feeling that we need to be all push and no care as teachers.
We’re all human, but at some point, perhaps I and every other teacher he’s had made him feel like a burden.
I understand law school is not going to make me a stronger classroom instructor (I think only experience helps with that), but in terms of special education, it’s making sure every student is in the right placement and getting the education they deserve. A part of me accepted, after pulling teeth for months at a time, that I, or even my fellow teachers in my school, could not give this student the support he needed. And I want to make sure every student, not only this one, gets the education they deserve, because as much as I’ve grown as a teacher, this is one place where I am doing my students a disservice.
I hope this test goes well. And even if it doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world. I just hope that, no matter the result, I can keep in mind why I’m doing this to keep motivating myself to serve.
Photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu on Unsplash
Originally published on June 12, 2021 on Medium