Week 6

Today. I blog in honor of my dear friend, Christine.

Her father passed away today. 

He was diagnosed with bone cancer earlier this year and has fought a very long and painful battle.

Christine reminds me very much of myself.  She is from a very close family that prays together, celebrates together, cries together, and comforts one another in times of need.

Christine never missed a beat during her father's illness, not at work and not at home.  Each day, she came to work, drove home,  made dinner for her family, visited her father in the hospital, completed her school work , and helped her two sons with their school work and extra curricular activities.  She's missed two days of school since her father was diagnosed, both days were for her older son's college visits. 

Christine was the first to congratulate me when I became the tech coach, and she has supported me, as her coach, more than any other teacher in the building.  In fact, she tweeted about me and how much she appreciated having a DLP coach just this morning, right before her beloved father passed away.

I blog about her, because of the human element we face daily with all of our teachers, our students, our support staff, and ourselves.  In the midst of all the new changes in her personal life and at our school, Christine chose to be positive and proactive, embracing me as an extra set of hands to help her, rather than looking at me as an inconvenience. 

Christine and I have know one another for more than 20 years.  I've always admired her.  She cares for the lowest functioning students in our school.  She is a behavioral plan genius.  She began her special education career under the tutelage of a remarkable principal, who was, himself, a special education/emotional support teacher.  He encouraged Christine to try new things with her ES students.  Christine and I were the first to introduce the concept of "co-teaching" to our middle school.  I would invite her ES students to my science lab to do the "fun" things, like dissecting frogs, making slime, or building models of cells.  Twenty years ago, special ed students were still in a self-contained classroom for all classes, rarely having e a chance to interact with other students doing cool things like science labs.  We made it work, and it was a tremendous learning experience for each and every one of her students. Christine has always been firm, but compassionate, with her students, and she has always been a leader in our building.  I'm very fortunate to work with such a wonderful teacher and friend.

We, as coaches, need to remember that there will always be baggage brought to school/work each day.  We have to be understanding and supportive in more ways than we can imagine.  I was scheduled to work with all of the teachers on staff today to get them using Google Keep.  Christine asked me to come up with a way she could remind staff members to complete behavior charts for her Emotional Support students.  She didn't want to constantly have the responsibility of sending e-mails or calling individual teaches at the end of the day to collect the data.  I showed her how to use a Google Sheet "Add Reminders" extension from the Chrome Web Store, and after taking quite some time to set it up, I investigated Google Keep and adding collaborators.  This was significantly easier to do, so I presented it to her and made a "how to" screencastify presentation for her to watch at her own convenience.  I asked her to let me know if it would be an option for her or not.  This morning, she met me with tears and open arms, thanking me for showing her how easy it would be to set this up and share it with the staff.  She tweeted about it, told me how happy she was, and asked me to help her set up a Google Form in the same way for another student.  I visited every classroom this morning, making sure the Keep extension was added correctly, with notifications set to "ON." 

During our lunch break, Christine told another special education teacher how easy this process would be for all of them.  As the department head, Christine plans to have me attend her next meeting and share this application with all members across the district.  She thanked me and told me how grateful she was to have this all in place, just in case she would have to monitor her students behavior from home, if anything happened to her father.

We had a few minutes left in the lunch period to relax, eat lunch, and share some truly touching stories about Christine's father.  She told us how she would meet her father at the door on pay day, reach in his shirt pocket, and pull out his paycheck.  A young teacher eating with us laughed, not knowing what a real paycheck looked like, since we all have direct deposit now.  As the lunch period ended, just Christine and I remained in the room.  She personally thanked me for making her life a little easier at school these past few weeks with the shared tech tips and tricks.  She explained to me how rough things had been at home, with her mother, and with her father.  I hugged her and told her I was happy to be there for her. 

A few minutes later, Christine received the call that her father had passed away. 

I was so very glad to be there with her, in that moment, to comfort her, to cry with her, and to support her in any way I could.