Ronna Robbins thrives in her challenging role as a special education teacher at the Washington Careers Center in Detroit’s inner city. The center is part of the Detroit Public School System and serves the educational and vocational-training needs of 350 special education students, ages 16 to 26.
"There’s a warm atmosphere at our school,” Robbins explains. “We have wonderful principals who are very positive, very caring and very visible. They walk the halls, connecting with both the students and staff.”
Robbins has been a teacher at the Washington Careers Center for seven years. Her students, who have moderate to severe disabilities, also face tough challenges like poverty, alcoholism and crime. One of her students shared with her a photograph of what he looked like before he was shot while sitting on his front porch. Today, he uses a wheelchair.
“There’s abuse, there’s neglect and there’s poverty in our students' lives,” she admits.
Despite these challenges, Robbins says she loves being at the school precisely because of the students’ significant needs. It’s what has kept her from taking another job in the suburbs.
“These students have been brought up to literally fight for what they want and need,” she explains, “so we try to channel that fortitude and strength into more appropriate behavior. These are wonderful students.”
Robbins grew up in suburban Skokie, Illinois, a world away from that of her inner city job. She was an outgoing child, who was born extremely nearsighted. She remembers getting her first pair of glasses at age two, which she laughingly describes as “coke bottles.” Robbins believes her vision challenges have provided her with unique insight.
“I understand some of my student’s challenges well,” says Robbins. “I have muscle problems with my eyes, so I appear visually impaired. People who don’t know me sometimes stare and back away. They think that I can’t see them.”
A childhood encounter with a kindergarten classmate who was deaf started Robbins down the road to becoming a special education teacher.
“I was like a magnet drawn to him,” she explains. “I wanted to help him and be friends with him.” In junior high school, she had a friend whose parents were also deaf. “I was so intrigued that they could still lead normal lives,” she explains.
Robbins received a bachelor’s degree in special education for the visually impaired from Michigan State University in 1975. She begins her teaching day with a 45-minute commute, then greets as many as 50 supportive students on her way to the classroom.
“A heart feels a heart,” Robbins says, warmly. “I’m supportive of my students, I’m comfortable with them, and they reciprocate.”
Her classes include students with various disabilities, but her homeroom is reserved for students with visual impairments. She also writes and oversees their individualized education plans (IEP).
“Everybody works at his or her own pace,” she says.
“A few years ago, I helped secure an X-ray developer work study program for one of my former students who is blind. She helped this same student obtain a leader dog named Foster, the first dog allowed in a Michigan classroom. The student, who graduated several years ago, is just one of many who keep in touch with their former teacher.
Robbins has taken students to Washington, D.C., as part of Close Up, a program that gives students an opportunity to experience the workings of the United States government firsthand. She takes students to the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in downtown Detroit and joins other teachers each year to take students holiday shopping. For many of her students, Robbins says, these field trips provide opportunities for experiences they might otherwise never have. She admits that parent involvement at her school is not what she wishes it were.
“Some parents don’t have transportation and some of our students are mothers, so their parents are watching their children while they attend school.”
The reality of her students’ daily challenges only motivates Robbins to increase her efforts on their behalf. “I try to make school as positive, as rewarding and as enriching as possible,” she says, “and I try to provide them with as many experiences as I can.”
“When people hear what I do, the first thing they often ask me is, ‘Isn’t it depressing working with these special needs students?’ I tell them, 'No. It’s heartwarming and rewarding and so enjoyable.'”
She admits it takes a special person to do what she does. “That’s why they call it special education. Every student is unique and every student has abilities,” she continues. “I’m just trying to tap into those abilities.”
For over sixteen years, Judy Winter has written about the challenging lives of others, as well as her own as the mother of a child with cerebral palsy.