One of my early jobs (at 20) was as summer teacher assistant in a private school for emotionally disturbed kids. Sonia Braverman had started this place out in the Valley for rich parents whose kids had been tossed from regular school for odd or socially distrubtive behavior and evident mental retardation.
The class size limit was ten kids. It was an exhausting, emotionally difficult job and thank god it was only a six hour class day. I was assigned two boys to tutor and give personal atttention. Part of the time we did practice in speaking, handwriting, word recognition, and spelling. I liked the Down's kid. He was easy to work with and enjoyable to watch him learn, even if it was slow going. The other boy was labelled hyperactive. The real issue was somekind of unbounded anger, which I sure recognized. He must have been mis-handled, and needed an entirely different kind of patience. It was sadness really because this kid was basically okay, but he was headed for bad fuck ups when he got bigger.
I went through weekly reviews with the master teacher.
So I have a lot of sympathy for special ed teachers.
CG