Random Acts of Kindness that Change Your Life

Life has a way of winding down the road with sharp turns and forks, smooth new pavement and bumps of well worn trails. It is often the seemingly random acts and comments of others that play through our head that make us take the turn we didn't anticipate we'd ever make.


Such was the serious conversation with the father of my best friend from elementary school - except that this comment took place while I was in college and had pretty much lost contact with my friend. He was a principal of a school, although I don't think I ever knew which one, I just knew he was a highly intelligent and caring man whose house I had wandered in and out of throughout my younger years. He asked about what I was planning after graduation, and I told him that I always wanted to be an elementary school teacher, but that since I was single and NY required a master's degree within five years of graduation, I was considering going directly on for the degree. I guess we spoke for a while, but all I remember is that he suggested I look into special education and told me that the government was giving money for graduate students to enter this new field.


So I did what any good college student does on the trail of money to pursue a higher degree - research. Of course, it was the days of having to do research in a library with real books, but I'd come to love sitting at those tables surrounded by volumes of books I had yet to read. And special education was something I'd never really heard of despite all my education classes. Well, sure enough he was right - federal grants to cover tuition and provide a stipend as well. I began the application process. I learned about the newest area of special education, labeled emotional disturbance. Once awakened to this field I saw evidence around me of how helpful this field might prove.


I made a fork in the road. thinking it was a just a circle that would lead me back to the same road - I would become an elementary school teacher, now armed with new information that would help me be a better teacher, more appreciative of the myriad of issues that prevented some children from learning. But I fell in love with the field, with the dedicated special educators and classroom teachers working hard to include students with special needs, with the parents I met who advocated long and hard for their children's best interests, and with the future special educators I helped prepare. Once traveling down this new road I discovered it was taking me new places and was not just a circle leading back to my original destination of the elementary classroom.


Until the day I was visiting a school and was introduced to a young man I didn't recognize. But he knew who I was - I was the one, he said, responsible for his being in the classroom, having responded thoughtfully to his email in which he sought information about how to proceed professionally. Perhaps it was a circle after all!