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My Special Education By: Rea Bochner Aish.com http://www.aish.com/sp/pg/My_Special_Education.html
I fell into teaching by accident. After graduating from college with a degree in Film, I spent six months in Hollywood and realized I liked my soul too much to sell it out to celluloid. So I packed up and headed back to the East Coast to figure out Plan B. As I was only qualified to make movies and wait tables, I would have to go back to school if I didn’t want to starve. My mother was a teacher and had a couple of ins for me at the local university. So there I went, where I majored in special education. This career path, though guided less by passion and more by paycheck, turned out to be a life-changing one. It opened me up to a world I never expected. There I found people of superhuman compassion and character and ideas that challenged the way I viewed the world. I worked with children who both inspired and infuriated me, families who amazed and perplexed me. One family in particular made a significant impact on me. In Israel, I formed a close relationship with one of my teachers, Rebbetzin Tavin. She had a megawatt smile and personality to match. She was warm, accessible and real. One Shabbos, I went to her home for dinner and I was amazed by what I found there. Despite the fact that Rebbetzin Tavin had a large number of children in a relatively small apartment, there was a palpable sense of peace in her home. All of her children were gracious, happy and polite. They readily helped their mother serve and warmly spoke with all the guests. But the most amazing thing about these children was the love and care they gave to their special needs brother, Binyomin Dovid. At five years old, Binyomin Dovid was a light-haired angel with a smile as bright as his mother’s and an exuberance that was contagious. Binyomin Dovid also had Down syndrome. Having worked with many families of children with special needs, I was accustomed to seeing resentment and sometimes even verbal or physical abuse between siblings, usually due to jealousy, shame or embarrassment. But there was not a trace of it in Rebbetzin Tavin’s home. Older siblings carried him, younger siblings played with him. It was clear that everyone in that family adored Binyomin Dovid and were proud to have him as a part of their family. They saw all the beautiful things he was, instead of despairing over the things he wasn’t. They recognized they opportunity they were given to raise such a special soul, and encouraged every member of their family to do the same. In the light of their love, Binyomin Dovid was given the freedom to shine.
Red Flags I returned to America and continued on in my career. I cared very much about the children I worked with, but at the end of the day, I sent them home to their parents and went about my business. Because they weren’t my children, it never became truly personal. Deep down, I was relieved that raising a special needs child was not my full-time job, though I would never have admitted that to anyone.
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