One Day Teach For America Alumni Magazine

From the Field

One Teacher’s Special Education

For Tanisha Knatt (S. Louisiana ’99), her corps placement in special education became a lifelong calling.

One Teacher’s Special Education

By Tanisha Knatt (S. Louisiana ’99)

Although I had worked as a mental health specialist for three years in a residential treatment facility for severely emotionally and behaviorally disabled kids prior to joining the corps, I was nervous when I was placed as a special education teacher in South Louisiana. I had no concept of what it would be like to teach students with special needs.

My placement school was the lowestperforming middle school in Baton Rouge. My 10 seventh grade students lacked the most basic skills in reading and writing. One pivotal moment came when one of my students trailed off during a reading lesson. When I went over and asked where I’d lost him, James looked down at the text and pointed to the word “if.” After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “I don’t know what sound ‘f ’ makes.” That moment set me on my path in life. I made a promise to James and myself that he would read before the end of that school year.

The rest of my class wasn’t much further ahead. We went back to basics. I started teaching direct-instruction phonics with sight words and letter flash cards. Stunningly, my class had not received textbooks because, the school told me, “They can’t read.” When my students talked about past years, a common refrain was “My teachers didn’t teach me. I just had to color and be quiet.”

Looking back, I suspect that few of my students had true learning disabilities. Rather, their teachers had simply given up on them. As we filled in the gaps in their learning, the kids really did start to shine. Not every day, but more often than not. By the end of that year, James and his classmates were reading.

My previous experience with severely behavior-disordered children helped me understand that my students’ behavior was separate from their learning ability. They got in trouble for inappropriate behavior but not for getting answers wrong—a big change for many of my students.

It wasn’t easy. My students brought a lot of outside baggage that affected their academic achievement. I had kids who were 16 in the sixth grade and had children of their own. In my first three years of teaching, I attended the funerals of two of my students.

The best lesson I learned through all of this is that the kids—no matter what challenges or exceptionality they may have—can learn. Parents, teachers, and administrators sometimes get stuck on the numbers and miss the progress, especially the kind that No Child Left Behind doesn’t recognize. I stayed at that school for four years, leaving only after the group of special ed students I had “looped” with since sixth grade passed the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program test in eighth grade. They were the first group of special ed students to accomplish this in the school’s history. Last year, most of them graduated from high school on time.

From my corps experience, I found not just a job but a career. Nine years later, I am still teaching students with special needs, and they are still making gains. I also serve as the special education department chair at my school in Georgia, providing professional development and supervision to a staff of 15. Along with overseeing enrollment, eligibility, and curriculum, I advocate for the due-process rights of students with special needs.

I am also still in school myself, working on a doctorate in educational leadership, which will enable me to have a positive impact on even more students than I actually teach. I make it a point to particiate in every available professional development opportunity and attend conferences to stay up-to-date because in teaching, and especially in special education, the laws keep changing and best practices keep evolving.

When I complete my Ph.D. this summer, I’ll begin looking for a new kind of leadership role—leading adults as an assistant principal, and, someday as a principal. As I get closer to being out of the classroom, I know the shift will be difficult. I’ll miss the direct interaction with students, but I know that in my next role, I will be able to empower other teachers to work with kids to achieve great things in the classroom. What my service looks like will continue to change, but the mission is the same.