“I am in a well-resourced district—in some parts. There is a dean of students who I can connect with if I'm having behavior struggles. I can call in a school counselor and have them observe my class and let me know what I'm missing if I'm struggling with behavior stuff.”
“Some years are definitely harder. I think in those years it's my other colleagues who help me (…) At one point, I really didn't know what to do and I couldn't find any of my normal people. So I just roamed into a random special ed teacher's office I haven't talked to that much and tried to brainstorm ideas with him. I think it's that we're a community that tries to work together to help—you aren't typically actually alone. We are working together to try to figure out those issues. And if the people I'm working together with are being positive and solution-oriented, I feel like there's hope in finding ways to navigate those challenges.”
“I think a lot of it is resources. When I worked at [my previous school], they did not have as many resources and my classroom was pretty much unmanageable (….) The composition of the class was haves and have-nots and the school was on the have-not end of the (…) funding pool, and there wasn't support. If somebody was being incredibly mean to another kid in the class or having a meltdown, there wasn't necessarily someone there to help out.”
“Being in a district that does have a more full spectrum of supports, we're one of the rare districts that still does self-contained instruction. And we create pretty magical spaces for kids (…) They really feel like they belong and can be themselves and be honest about their weaknesses and things that they need to work on, and take risks. And I just see those same kids just putting their heads down and doing as little as they can throughout the day when they're in a completely standards-oriented (…) classroom where the gap between their abilities and the instruction is so huge that they check out. And then that's depressing.”
“We have challenges [in my current school], but we also have the resources to manage those challenges for the most part, and the support. It takes a long time and it's bureaucratic, but if I say, ‘Hey, this kid is just really not thriving in this context; I think for their safety and for other people's safety we need to consider something else,’ there is a process to do that and administrators recognize that.”