'These Are My People': Broken Arrow Teacher Praises Her Students On National Special Education Day

It takes a special person to be a special education teacher. But it's a challenge teacher Jen Montgomery is always willing to take

“These are my people, I say ‘most of my friends are three years old," she said. 

Montgomery teaches the Developmentally Delayed three-year-old program or DD3 at Broken Arrow Public Schools. She says she’s always been drawn to kids.

 “It was like ‘I just wanna hang out with the little ones’,” she said. 

And she’s been especially drawn to kids with special needs.

“They just have the best of humanity in them, they’re not capable of the cynicism that humans tend to have,” she said. 

She refers to her students as friends, and says in her classroom, the academic lessons come second to the life lessons.

“They will get their letters and numbers, we do it every day, however, my top priority is their little hearts and their social and emotional skills,” she said. 

And she teaches those emotional skills with what she calls “Feeling Buddies”.

"We use them to teach emotions, I have a friend that says ‘emotions, I love emotions’,” she laughed. 

She says they help the children learn better ways to handle their feelings.

When the kids enter the classroom, they’ll be greeted with laughter, understanding and kindness that will create memories that the kids will always remember.

And Montgomery says she loves her job so much that she wants to retire in this classroom.

“I told them you will have to pry the DD3 program from my cold dead hands and they said, ‘It's yours’ ” she laughed.