Effects On The Heart

My job requires me to move around quite frequently to different schools, so I may work with students for a short amount of time, train staff, and then move on. Many of the students that I work with are non verbal, and so most often I do not know how my abrupt departure affects them. At the beginning of the school year, I worked with a first grade boy diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. He is an extremely intelligent and verbal child, who always let me know exactly what he was feeling and thinking! I only worked with him for 4 weeks, but he touched my heart, and telling him that I was leaving was difficult. Since I left, he has been sending me e-mails, and they can be quite heart wrenching. He asks why I left, and if he did something bad to make me leave. He apologizes for any misbehavior, and so when I write back I always try to reassure him that he didn't do anything to cause me to leave. I tell him that he is doing great on his own, and that another student needed my help. The e-mail he sent me this week asked me if I missed him, and if I could come and visit him, so this morning I stopped by and sat with him before school started. We chatted about his favorite subject, the Titanic, and he told me that he printed out the picture of me that he had requested I send him. We took a couple of selfies together on my phone, which I told him I would e-mail, I walked him to his classroom, and gave him a high five before I left. He is such a serious little man, but he looked me square in the eyes, gave me a huge grin, and said, "I knew you missed me!" 

Ahhh, my heart!

Artwork by~ Deborah Wenlock