I spent the better part of 2008 substitute teaching in SDC(Special Day Classes) classrooms in Cupertino Union School District. I started that year(2008) only being called for Instructional Aid positions all across the SDC board in k-5. I was fresh from positive experiences in elemetary school and Middle school as a sub and wanting to stay in my comfort zone. By the holidays I was getting frustrated and I was still working with different special needs kids almost daily. They ranged from gifted and blind, to obnoxious and rude and everything in between. I worked with a blind 6th grader who I got to know fairly well. I have run after kids out of the classroom and around a playground because that's what they were want to do all day. I have listened to teens talk openly about all the medications they are on. I have seen SDC teachers in their worst and best times(those are sometimes in the same day), and I feel deeply that these people are saints for their efforts and for their just being there.

I had so many deep experiences through the work I did in SDCs, often times hard won, that I started to realize that for whatever reason I was only being called for Special Ed, I was being graced with experience in a world that not many people can understand or even have regular access to. The Special Ed classroom is a site to behold. It can make grown adults shake in fear and run the other direction, and these are just my thoughts from k-5. I would rather never be left in charge of a SDC in high school if I can help it. It simply takes a very special person to be involved in helping people with special needs navigate the school system, life, and themselves.

Bellow is the classwork for EXC 625 at National University; my third class.