The other day, I found myself pressing my pointer and middle fingers against my chest, right over my heart. I could feel the exact spot, which kind of caught me off guard. I paused for a moment and just tried to soothe myself. I think I’ve been carrying the weight of work for a while now, and I haven’t really been able to balance it with home life. So I just sat there for a bit, rubbing my heart.
Even though June is close enough that I can see it, so is my endless list of things that need to get done before our last day of school. In Special Education, “cuts” isn’t an abstract word, it shows up in minutes not funded, support not available, needs that don’t disappear just because the budget says so.
I keep wondering: is this fair? Not in a dramatic way, just in the quiet moments when a student waits longer than they should, when I triage needs instead of meeting them, and when I go home carrying stories I can’t put down.
I see how underfunded and overstretched our system has become. Most days, it feels as though we are being set up to fail. These students are not going home and sharing how these shortfalls are affecting them. We are all doing our best with far too little. But “making do” should not be the standard for students with exceptional needs. They deserve more than a patchwork of support. They deserve a system that allows them to thrive.
And yes sometimes, there are small wins:
- Student enters the classroom without distress
- Student transitions between spaces
- Student uses adaptive equipment
- Student self-regulates after escalation
- Student uses a communication device (AAC)
These don’t fix the system, but they matter. They remind me why I stay, even when staying feels complicated.
I’m learning to hold two truths at once: I am committed and I care deeply, but I must learn to implement limits. I can show up, but I can’t be everything. Maybe summer isn’t just an ending to this year’s madness, but rather a permission to set some of this weight down, even temporarily. I don’t have answers. But I do know that the work is real, the strain is real, and so is the need to keep myself well within it.