My Specials

Why do I find the children I work with extraordinary?

They come to school.

                Some in frumpy clothes with loose threads at the wrist,

                dampened from sucking on the edge of their sleeve.

    Hair disheveled , the smell of smoke lingering on them like another layer of difference that

    “normal” kids can sense.

They come to school.

                Awkward, st-st-stuttering and stumbling over their words

                once you manage to get them to speak.

                Their eyes clouded with confusion or indifference sometimes spark and

                their smile reaches their nose, crinkling their face like rays of happiness

                and you know that they got it.

They come to school.

                Not to learn the “normal” curriculum.

                They are there to learn how to read social cues, to understand when someone is joking or being

                serious.

                They are there to try to eat more foods than just pop-tarts. The goal at first is to kiss the

                crackers, to get the dry crumbly texture on their lips. If they master that,

                the next achievement is to lick it, to get the sweet exotic rush of cinnamon on their tongue.

                They are there to learn how to sit on the cold, dangerous, foreign potty without screaming

                for ten seconds.

                They are there to learn how to deal with the noise of children laughing, children talking,

                children yelling, without folding into themselves completely.

They come to school.

                With weak immune systems.

                When they catch a cold, it can mean being out sick for a month. Stuck in bed with parents

    having to take time off to care for them.

                It can mean a hospital stay with the aroma of anti-bacterial’s and bleach as the main

                perfume.

                It can mean the cold morphing into something much worse and dying.

And yet… They come to school.