Winning Approach: Defying Trends, Teacher Gives a Special Education

By Sarah Carr, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Sep. 18–On the bottom floor of Milwaukee’s Audubon Middle School, teacher Rick Drida doesn’t miss a beat in a classroom full of some of the building’s more hard to reach students.

One girl starts to slump slightly in her chair, bending down to rest her head on the desk. Drida is there in an instant. “Don’t get tired on me, girl. That’s when the learning’s coming.”

Another boy starts repeating what sounds to the casual observer like “heymanheymanheyman.”

“You want to play some Hangman?” Mr. Drida asks, catching on immediately.

Broadly speaking, times are tough for middle school special education teachers like Mr. Drida.

The middle school population has dropped by about 42% in four years alone, as the district shifts toward K-8 schools. And last week, a federal judge ruled that the district systemically failed to provide special education services to children who needed them, paving the way for a possible upheaval.

None of this seems to matter, though, in Mr. Drida’s classroom. Visiting it provides a breather — and a sense of hope — when contemplating some of the toughest issues facing the district. Here, some of the toughest kids can soften to his touch.

It’s math time, which isn’t a very easy time for Mr. Drida’s class or for many other students.

“Holy cow,” one student says, looking at the decimals he must add. “Oh, my God.”

“He’s my God, too,” Mr. Drida says, smiling. “I’ll dance and sing for you if you do all of that.”

Excellence in education

Rick Drida’s teaching style impressed Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent William Andrekopoulos during a visit to Audubon. Andrekopoulos helped select Drida for a districtwide excellence in education award last month. “He was focused on what he had to accomplish, yet he was in the present with the kids,” Andrekopoulos said. “That was his world, his center of the universe: in the classroom, working with kids.”

During his more than 20 years at Audubon, Drida has emerged as one of school’s stalwarts: He’s the teacher for whom parents of special education students regularly ask and the one to whom new teachers look for advice.

Over time, he’s developed a unique expertise working with children who have Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism.

For Drida, it’s a career that happened by chance. An avid athlete, he earned his teaching certificate so he could teach physical education. But even in the early 1980s, schools were cutting PE teachers. So Drida shifted to special education, one of the largest growth areas here and nationally.

He believes working with special education students, some of whom are physically disabled, rekindled some of the compassion he felt caring for a grandmother who was paraplegic.

“I liked the kids,” he said. “Everybody is unique. But special education students have more of a variety of uniqueness.”

Drida is particularly satisfied when he can teach a student a skill or strategy that makes his or her life easier.

“I’m very pragmatic,” he said. “Whatever works, I try to use for the benefit of the kid.”

One former student would not speak at all when he was upset. Drida sensed that he liked to write, though, and he started instructing him to “just write it out” whenever he was angry.

He learned during his second year in a special education classroom that even during the worst times, students appreciate someone trying to help them.

That year, a student with serious cognitive problems tried to eat an orange peel he’d found in a urinal. When Drida stopped him, the boy started thrashing violently. He took the student outside and let him whack away at a bush.

After about 10 minutes, the boy returned to the classroom and touched Drida gently. “It was like he was trying to tell me, ‘It’s OK, Drida.’ If you keep working with them and trying to do right, they will realize it even if they can’t tell you.”

Teachers and administrators who have worked with Drida at Audubon say his calm demeanor is key to his success.

Because he does not get rattled, his students stay on a more even keel. It’s a style that he says helps in the classroom and with four sons at home.

“If there’s a storm raging within, I don’t think you would know it,” said Katrice Cotton, the school’s principal. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mr. Drida mad.”

Arletta Browning, another special education teacher at the school, says that often all it takes is a look from Mr. Drida to calm a child down. “I don’t know if it’s hypnotism, but I wish he would pass it on.”

For a true craftsman, hard work can look so flawless that it almost seems routine.

And so it is that to the casual observer of Drida’s math class late one recent morning, it seems preordained that all eight students will get through many of their math problems well before lunch.

Drida knows that one student needs to have a table to himself — to spread out. Others have to work completely independently. And some refuse to complete any problems out of sequence.

He knows that the student in the back of the room is challenging but “has a good heart.”

And he knows that all of the students — however strangely they sometimes express it — really do want to please him.

“You get used to these types of kids,” he said. “I didn’t really know how much I would like them.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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