An Unplanned Lesson (Fall 2000)
By Arnold

 

As a first-year teacher in a third- and fourth-grade resource room, you learn to be flexible. And you learn that your lesson plans will not always go as you plan them. Well, today I did something that was not on my lesson plan. When I met my students for the first time earlier this week, one of my students asked as I stuttered, "Why do you talk different?" I was shocked and did not know how to respond, so I was comforted when a little girl suggested, "That's just how he talks, maybe he was born that way" and beamed a smile from ear to ear. I just responded by saying, "Yeah, I was" and was hoping that was where the topic would end. I was not prepared to come out to my students as a stutterer, so I did not feel like tackling it on my first day teaching.

 

Today in class, another little girl asked me politely in private, "Why do you blink sometimes when you talk?" Again, I was surprised and caught off-guard, so I did not know how to respond as her big brown eyes looked at me with curiosity. I paused for a few seconds before saying, "I'll explain in a few minutes." At that point I knew what I needed to do.

 

Before moving onto another activity, I waited until I had everyone's attention. I asked for my students to raise their hand if they had noticed how I speak differently at times. I raised my own hand as I watched all of these shy little hands rise into the air. At that point, I did it. I said, "I am a person who stutters." After that, I told them about how I have stuttered since I was their age, and how I never spoke when I was growing up because I was always afraid of being made fun of. I also talked about how when before I went to speech therapy, I could barely get a set of words out, and how now I can speak more fluently. I did a lot of things with my students, including writing the word "stutter" on the board and writing their guesses of what it meant. I wrote everyone's suggestions on the board. Then, we all took suggestions on how I expected everyone to respond when I stuttered. All of the students and I made a list of things to do when I or anyone else stuttered, and the list included ideas such as being kind and patient, and not laughing or poking fun. A lot of students talked about their relatives and friends who stuttered and some talked about how they used to stutter. One boy raised his hand and said, "I stutter too and that's why I'm afraid to talk at times." And it felt good to tell him that he didn't have to be nervous anymore, since our class now
knew what it was and how to be kind when a person stuttered.

 

As I wrote the list of guesses my class made of what stuttering was, one of words they had me write on the board was "speech problem." It felt so good when I erased the word "problem" and said, "I don't look at it as a problem, because it's a part of me. I don't look at it as a problem because I don't let it hold me back, which is why I am now a teacher."

 

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