Two years after I'd started here at school,
they had just started getting special needs kids into school.
And I was told before I had him, he was in first grade,
that there was going to be young boy coming into my class,
and he was going to come with an aide because he was very disfigured.
And, he had never talked.
They didn't know exactly what was going on with him.
But he would be here with an aide.
And could he sit with a first grader?
So I said, well, we're getting ready for a musical, a little music show.
It's called, Sounds a little fishy to me. I said, sure.
You know, we'll, we'll do what we need to do.
So he came in with the aide.
Now we're at that spot in our music learning or in the,
in the program where all of the classes were together,
we were practicing the songs with the choreography.
So, you know, I'm sure he thought I looked pretty strange
as I was a fish doing these little fish faces, and he's trying to figure it out.
You know, his mouth was over here. He's oversized.
It looks sort of like an elephant boy, maybe two, three fingers as nubs.
They were nubs. But those were his fingers in both hands.
And huge kid for first grade.
So everyone sort of came in, looking at him scared,
but he watched everyone else do the little fish actions.
He watched me.
The next day, we had another combined rehearsal. He came in with him again.
This time I noticed that he was trying to move his hands with us.
And the aide looked at him too.
And he was very quiet. He was very still, didn't get out of a seat.
She said, that's the most I've ever seen him involved in anything since he's been here.
I said, why don't you, tomorrow, when they come in,
why don't you just leave and see how he does? If I need you I'll buzz for you.
She said, okay.
So she leaves the next time.
This, this is the third class period.
This time he is trying to do the actions with us and you can see he's moving his mouth.
And he was behind really behind.
I mean, he couldn't get caught up with us cause he was just not learning it.
But he was trying to do what he could.
And I went to a special ed teacher who was a good friend of mine.
I said, Sally, what can you tell me about Jeremy?
Because he's singing in my class. She said, he's what?
I said. Well, I think it's singing, he's moving his mouth.
And I kind of hear something over there, but I think he's singing.
She said, could I come in and watch? I said, sure.
So next rehearsal came in and she sat in the front with me.
And here's Jeremy. Now he's really getting good.
He felt right at home with a fish faces, I'm sure.
But uh, she's watching and she's just overwhelmed.
She just fill up, she fills up with tears.
She said, I'm going to call his mother.
So she calls his mother.
The mom makes arrangements to be in class.
The next time, we're closing in on the show here,
mom and special ed teacher Sally sat there and watched.
And the mother just cried and cried.
And I'm going to get emotional on this too,
because that was the first time she'd ever seen that.
As it turns out, Jeremy was very smart.
And that was the first time that he had made the connection verbally.
I mean, he muttered things at home,
but something touched him in the music world.
He'd never had that before.
She'd never really experimented with that, with him before.
And he blossomed.
Now, he had to communicate a lot through a computer for a while,
but they found out that he had a lot going on inside that
they just hadn't been able to touch.
By the time he was in fourth grade, he could play the recorder.
Better than some of my recorder players that did have all their fingers.
Now you had to put it on the side of his mouth and his fingers
he used a little differently, but he could play B A G.
And by the time he was in fifth grade, he was a pretty good little drummer.
I understand that by the time he was a senior, he had a girlfriend.
But you know what, gosh, who ever,
who else would have had the chance to be part of something like that?
If we don't feel like the special ed kids have something to offer,
and all of those first graders recognized what Jeremy had done too.
They didn't know what his educational background was.
They just knew there was a kid over there that was trying his hardest
and they were a part of making that happen for him.