Dear Elon Musk,

I know I’m not a federal worker, so your mandate that federal workers provide five accomplishments from the previous week, doesn’t apply. But I wanted to write you and give you five accomplishments I had for the previous week for two reasons. First, for the joy of looking back at what I accomplish every week, and more importantly, to show how easy it is for anyone to do if they simply do their jobs throughout the week. It’s really quite simple.

Background

I am a teacher in Texas, and I live very close to your rocket testing facility. I teach high school Special Education students, so I won’t be giving names or too many details since they have privacy rights. With that, and with the joy and ease of doing so, here are my five bullet points of things I accomplished in the last week:

• First, I completed accumulating and assessing all the data for one of my student’s Annual Review and Dismissal meetings that are required by law. In that meeting, I was able to show how much the student had accomplished and learned over the four years he has been with us. He is about the graduate, and the data showed that as a SPED student, he has met all the requirements necessary for graduation.
• Second, in accumulating the data for another student’s ARD, I’ve come to realize that even though he has Autism, he has an analytical mind. The student can solve a Rubric’s cube in under 2 minutes. What makes this important is that we have another full year to see how we can develop that mind of his. This is truly exciting.
• Third, with another senior, I was able to help him begin to see the need for personal responsibility. He hasn’t learned this lesson yet, but over the coming three months, hopefully it will sink in and he will begin to work harder in class. I have this lesson with all my students, but have only had this particular student in my class for a month.
• Fourth, through another ARD meeting, I worked with a team to convince a student who had quit school all together to return. He has 18 credit hours and only needs 22 to graduate. We managed to convince him to return to school and persevere. This is a major accomplishment.
• Fifth, I continued teaching all my student ELAR, Math, Social Studies, and Science throughout the week. For instance, this week’s math focus was addition and subtraction numbers up to 1,000. For ELAR and Social Studies, we continue reading and learning about Black History, focusing on MLK Jr., Daisy Bates, Sojourner Truth, etc., along with the implications of the Civil Rights Movement. We didn’t do much for science this week, other that watching a video about a man in Central Texas who took a large portion of land, and restored it simply by removing cedar trees, and replacing it with natural grass, which helps replenish the aquifers.

OK, that took about 10 minutes to write. Hopefully our Federal Workers can do so as enthusiastically as I was able to do, since their jobs are far more important than mine.