My 6th grade U.S. History students are incredible

First a little background: I am not a social sciences teacher by trade, I’m a music teacher. I’m at my 3rd school in a somewhat small district this year and I was asked to take on two sections of 6th grade American History. I’m so glad I said yes. <br><br>I have learned many things this year, and one of the most important is the following…. 6th graders are the best, second only to 5th graders.<br><br>All of my kids have special needs of varying degrees. Many of them are starting to realize they are not like their older siblings or their friends in gen ed classes. They are at that age where many are cracking jokes constantly, several have started to develop strong feelings for their peers, and some are starting to question authority. <br><br>Most of them have never liked history before, and I can see why. For my higher level students, history is a list of dates and events. For my lower level students, it’s tons of words on a page. But that’s a post for another day.<br><br>I have just been so touched by the compassion and love shown by my students for one another. There is a student in one of my classes, we’ll call her Emma, who has extreme cognitive impairments. She is non verbal and answers questions with gestures and facial expressions. <br><br>One of my other students, Josh, has severe auditory processing disorder. He is a very smart student but has a hard time following my multi-step directions. He has started writing them down for himself which is a great strategy. One day I asked him what he was writing and he said, “I write down what you say so I can remember” I asked if that helped him and he said yes. Then he offered to write down the directions for Emma who was struggling to follow. This has become a consistent dynamic between them now. Emma really seems to enjoy having her own personal note taker and Josh likes having a job to do. <br><br>Another student, Rachel, just turned 12. She is a very quiet student and I was not aware that she had not previously had a birthday party for her 12th birthday. When I sang her happy birthday as the bell rang to end our class, she cried and hugged me saying no one had ever done that for her. I felt awful that I didn’t do more for her. The next class, Josh came up to me and said “We should have had cupcakes for Rachel’s birthday. Why didn’t we have cupcakes?” I didn’t respond right away because I was caught up in the moment a little, but then I apologized for not getting her cupcakes. As Josh was packing up to leave, he said, “Next time we’ll have cupcakes” I told him that sounded good to me. <br><br>I just sit and watch this dynamic between my students and I am so proud of the kind and compassionate young adults they are becoming. Every day I’m reminded of how lucky I am to get to work with this age and population. They have challenges every day but they never let that get in the way of being there for one another. I hope they stay this way.