When Maria Bertila
started working in special education she was given the job, not because she
wanted to work with students with special needs.
But because her
husband was principal’s son and he wanted her to keep her job.
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| Maria Bertila's students holding different activities they have done with their teacher. |
And the only way was
by making her the special ed teacher.
At least, until there
would be a chance to change her back to a regular classroom.
Not a very promising
start, but a normal start for most of our teachers here.
It was either that, or
because he can’t do anything else, let’s try with special education and if that
doesn’t work, it’s out with him.
Besides that promising
start she was pregnant and she had over 20 students, ranging from voluntary
mutism to intellectual disability and a variety of learning disabilities, to
tackle.
The other teachers saw
the special education classroom as the collective trash bin.
A place to send the
students they didn’t want to have in their classroom.
The noisy one, the
hyperactive ones, the ones that disturbed the classroom or just couldn’t keep
up with the rest of the students.
There was confusion
about if the students should be with her the whole day or just for the subjects
they were having trouble with.
And then her instinct
kicked in.
She started to fight
for her students, find ways to actually teach them.
Ways that they would
understand.
She took students that
wouldn’t talk with anyone, who wouldn’t look you in the eye.
Students that were aggressive,
in precarious situations at their homes and surrounded by substance abuse.
Students that everyone
else had deemed a hopeless case.
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| Ecuador's flag |
And found ways to
teach them their letters and numbers, to get them read and write.
But most of all, she
found ways to make them understand that they were people.
That they mattered.
