Angel Aguilar

March 1, 2021
Behavioral Observation (EDU 211)
Professor Sullivan
“District 75, The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love”- Reflection

This article made a lot of good points in regards to special education and getting the

proper education and supplies needed to help them succeed in their daily lives. The beginning of

the article reminded me a lot of the book, Savage Inequalities, especially in the beginning, when

they mentioned the environment, they are living in. For example, the one child Jorge, who is in a

wheelchair, could not go school because of drug dealers who broke the elevators. That brings

into play how one challenge is teaching students with disabilities the best way that can help

them, along with the everyday problems in an urban community, through crime, and financial

struggles.

One thing that stood out to me was how detailed the teacher described her students from

three decades ago, it goes to show how a teacher never forgets their first class and all the lessons

learned from it. The author then writes walking back into the school again after all that time that

she was gone and seeing all the change that have occurred. When she describes the new books,

and technology, and even just setting goals for the students as all these extravagant changes it

made me think about a lot of the kids in my school that would take what we had for granted. We

were lucky enough to have a good number of teachers that showed up every day and cared about

our education, and that can not be said for these kids in urban areas. Even new books, after

reading Savage Inequalities, knowing that students did not have even close to enough books,

encyclopedias, and supplies they needed, along with schools that were falling apart is even more

of a reason to be grateful.
 Not only did this article describe the physical changes but the author includes lessons that

can help every teacher going to education. One example of this is to not take what the kids say to

you at times personally because they could be upset with someone else. In this area especially a

lot of these kids have so much that kids their age should not have to dealing with. This makes

them more irritable and shorter fused, making it even more important to not take things to heart

because if you get frustrated with them, they lose another person on their side. Another example

is to constantly give them words of encouragement and listen to them when they are trying to

express certain emotions. If a student opens to you, or anyone and they are not feeling like they

are validated they are not going to want to communicate, or it is going to make it very hard to do.

Words of encouragement could also bring up a student moral, and increase their productivity and

motivation, thus creating a positive learning environment.

An additional thought this article provided was to continue to work on ability and not on

the disability. Often a student who is labeled is often glued to that label. The worst mistake a

teacher could make is lowering the academic level of a student because of their disability if they

cannot handle anything harder than what is given to them. In my psychology and education of

the disabled it is often suggested to challenge the students, because that is the only way to help

them grow. One more thing that stood out to me and I could relate to is that sometimes the lesson

or the classroom could look like chaos but there is a method to the madness. More often that not

I have a cluttered room, or agenda, somehow though that I am able to figure out all the things

that I need to do for the day or for the week. This is because the messy organization I have that

makes no sense to someone else makes perfect sense to me. This is also seen in certain lesson

plans. Not everyone can learn the same way, so there might be a million different techniques or
methods going on in the classroom, but each student is learning in the ways that make the most

sense to them.

To conclude, there was a lot of information that every teacher should hold closely to them

while traveling through their journey of becoming a teacher. Not only to better themselves as

teachers, but to learn the best ways of reaching every one of the students they have to inspire.