Lisa Dietrich, 31, says she has had something inside her ever since she was a little girl telling her what she was supposed to be when she got older. Lisa Ann Dietrich is fulfilling those childhood ambitions as a full-time special education teacher.
“When it comes to teaching special education it is just something I have always felt like that was the position I was supposed to be in,” said Dietrich.
As a kid, Dietrich had diverse interests in various professions as nearly all kids do. Somewhere in the back of her mind she always knew she was meant to be a teacher, but not just a regular teacher, a special education teacher.
“I always wanted to be a teacher when I was younger, but I didn’t think I would be as good with normal kids as I would be with special ed kids. I wanted to help people; I wanted to have a helping profession. But I didn’t want to just do regular education, I wanted to do special education,” said Dietrich.
Dietrich said that a memory which has stuck with her from her childhood is that of her friendship with a Down’s Syndrome boy named Joe who attended her elementary school. Dietrich explained that every week the teacher at her school would choose someone to be Joe’s “special buddy” to play with Joe at recess and eat lunch with him.
Dietrich said she remembers that Joe always wanted to play out in the playground for a really long time, but often his “buddy” would leave him when it was time for lunch and a lunch room aide would have to go out to bring him in.
Dietrich says that whenever it was her turn to be Joe’s buddy, she always stayed with him when it was time for lunch instead of leaving him like the other kids did. “I really liked him and he really liked me, so I would always stay with him on the playground and not go in when everybody else would go in, even when we were supposed to go in,” said Dietrich.
Dietrich had a compassion for Joe and thought of him as a friend instead of a kid with special needs. “I would always wonder why, when other people would be his buddy, they would leave him on the playground. It really bugged me that people would do that and I just didn’t understand why they did,” stated Dietrich.
Dietrich says that she made her final decision to major in special education shortly after her graduation from high school. While attending a local community college for two years, she began to work as a home health aide for a family with two special needs children. One of the children, a 4-year-old named Katie with cerebral palsy, had a particular impact on Dietrich’s decision to continue working toward her special education teaching license.
“Working with Katie and taking her to therapy gave me the exposure that helped affirm the direction I had chosen concerning working in special ed,” said Dietrich.
Dietrich then went on to transfer to St. Cloud State University and received her degree in Special Education. Following graduation, she took a position as a special education teacher at White Bear Lake High School where she teaches 11th and 12th graders.
“As a 11th and 12th grade special ed teacher, I spend the majority of my class time trying to prepare the kids for when they have to go out into their communities to get jobs and help them prepare for those types of life skills,” said Dietrich.
Dietrich said that teaching practical life skills to her kids is one of her favorite things to teach because she knows that it is likely to be the most beneficial to their futures. Dietrich regularly takes her classes out into the community to teach them social skills that other high schoolers have gradually learned over their lifetimes. For example, Dietrich described an upcoming field trip where she will be taking one of her classes to the local movie theater to see “Old Dog.”
“I like to bring my kids into the community so they can practice things such as paying for a movie and learning how to wait in line for the popcorn,” explained Dietrich.
To Dietrich, teaching special education students is not just a job, but a personal learning experience as well. “You really realize when you’re a special ed teacher what you take for granted, especially when you see how hard it is for these special education kids to learn and remember things,” stated Dietrich.
Seven years as a full-time special education teacher has not diminished her enthusiasm for her chosen profession.“Teaching is exciting for me and it has made me a better person,” said Dietrich.
She sounds very cool.
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