Educating

November is National Adoption Month and I try to do something positive each November. This year I decided to approach a guidance counselor at Hayley’s school about educating the teachers about positive adoption language as well as some of the educational challenges that adoptees can face in the classroom.

One teacher asked me why Hayley’s mom get rid of her - ahh, no one got rid of anyone.

Another asked where is her real mom - Gee, I’m right here and her first mom is a couple hours away. We are both real.

A teacher once told me he didn’t know how to deal with a project problem that I challenged him about because it didn’t have anyway for us to include her birth family in it - to his credit, he took my suggestions and changed the project

The same teacher said he’d never had a student who was adopted in his class in the seven years he was teaching. I told him I was sure he had, he just never had a family that was this open about it. Three kids in that very class turned out to be adopted - and one of the mother who adopted mentioned it because she saw stuff about Hayley’s birthfamily in her project.

My goal here is for teachers to be more sensitive to adoption, to use language that respects all parts of the triad and for them to be comfortable with children in open adoptions.

It took awhile but I got a call back from the guidance counselor who said she has run it past the principal and would love to talk more.