What My Amputation Taught Me About Radical Honesty in the Classroom

The 2025 fall semester was one of the most difficult of my teaching career. I’ve taught through heavy workloads, student crises and institutional pressures before, but this term carried a different weight. It was a semester when my body worked against me more than with me, when the daily realities of being an amputee shaped my work in ways I couldn’t hide or minimize. And honestly? Being an amputee just sucks sometimes. It is exhausting, frustrating and humbling in ways that are hard to explain to people who haven’t lived it.

But as the semester unfolded—and unraveled—I found myself learning something new about student success, something deeper than any framework or retention model. I learned that the most powerful thing I can give my students isn’t a perfectly organized course or flawless delivery (though I aim for those). What I can give them is a real human being who is also trying, failing, adapting and continuing. And that, I’ve realized, is exactly the lesson many first-year students at the University of Kentucky need most.

Living and Teaching With a Body That Has Its Own Agenda

At the age of 16, I fractured my leg on a dusty football field in southern Ohio and subsequently contracted a flesh-eating bacteria. Seventeen surgeries, a medically induced coma and a six-week hospital stay later, amputating the leg became a quality-of-life issue. At that age, life was all about football games on Fridays and homecoming plans. This was my introduction to what adversity means.  

Every day as an amputee requires calculation—How far am I walking? How many times will I need to stand? Is the socket going to hold? Is the swelling going to get worse?—and no matter how well I plan, my prosthetic sometimes has other ideas.

That fall semester, those challenges hit harder than usual as I dealt with prosthetic complications that left me limping into classrooms and arriving early just to take a break before students arrived. My leg hurt more. My mobility was unpredictable. On good days, my prosthetic blends seamlessly into my stride; on hard days, it feels like I’m tethered to something mechanical and unyielding. There were stretches of class when I could feel the familiar friction building beneath the prosthetic, the quiet signal that I’d pay for it later. Still, I kept teaching. The classroom is where I feel most purposeful. My vulnerability with students about my disability isn’t separate from my passion for teaching—it’s intertwined with it. I stay because this work matters to me, and because honesty in the face of difficulty is one of the most powerful lessons I can offer.

I was teaching first-year students who were facing their own challenges— academic pressure, loneliness, homesickness, financial stress, mental health concerns. They needed support, guidance and consistency. I worried: Am I giving them enough? Am I modeling what I want them to learn?

But then I realized something important: modeling struggle—real struggle, not the polished “overcoming adversity” story we like to tell with the benefit of hindsight—is part of showing them what success looks like. College is not a linear climb. Neither is life with a disability; this past fall semester, they got to see both unfold in real time.

Why I Choose Radical Honesty With My Students

I am open with my students about my disability—not for sympathy, not for inspiration, but for clarity. My life is shaped by my amputation every day, and pretending otherwise does a disservice to the very people I am trying to teach.

When I tell my students, “I’m having a rough week with my prosthetic,” they listen. They connect. They understand that adults struggle, too. And it creates space for them to say:

“I’m overwhelmed.”

“I’m falling behind.”

“I don’t know how to fix this.”

“I’m trying, and I feel like I’m failing.”

That honesty breaks down the myth that success requires perfection.

Instead, it shows them that success often requires acknowledgment, adjustment and support. Students routinely tell me, often quietly after class, that my openness makes them feel more comfortable facing their own challenges. They see that resilience is not about ignoring pain or pretending everything is fine—it’s about learning to work within the reality you have.

Turning My Lived Experience Into a Teaching Tool

Over time, my disability has become more than just part of my personal narrative; it has become one of my most impactful teaching tools.

• When my leg malfunctions, I talk about improvisation.
• When pain slows me down, I talk about pacing ourselves.
• When something breaks and I must fix it midday, I talk about problem-solving.
• When I fall behind on grading because of medical appointments, I talk about transparency, communication and prioritizing. 

Students don’t just hear about resilience—they see it. They watch me adjust assignments on the fly, shift classroom setups so I can maneuver better, sit instead of stand when the pain demands it or even shift a class to an online meeting modality. Because I name these things out loud, students don’t interpret them as weakness. They see them as evidence that adaptation is legitimate, responsible and sometimes necessary.

Experiences like this also raise a broader question for institutions: How often do we design policies and expectations around an idealized version of faculty and students, around some alternative classroom reality unmarked by interruption, limitation or unpredictability? More flexible approaches to attendance, modality and course design don’t lower standards; they acknowledge reality. 

What I Hope Students Learned From Watching Me

Most college success conversations focus on study skills, time management, campus resources and social integration—all important. But this semester reminded me that some of the most essential lessons are more human:

• Setbacks are not failures. Sometimes your prosthetic breaks. Sometimes your mental health dips. Sometimes you don’t perform at the level you expected. These moments don’t define the trajectory—how you respond does.
• Adaptation is a skill you can learn. Students often think resilience is something you either have or don’t. But resilience, much like managing a prosthetic, is something you learn over time through trial, error and reflection.
• Asking for help shows strength, not weakness. I rely on doctors, prosthetists, colleagues and campus staff. Students should rely on advisers, tutors, mental health services and faculty. No one succeeds alone.
• Being honest beats being perfect. My students do not need a flawless instructor. They need a real one. A human one. Someone who understands imperfection because they live it daily.
• Crisis can coexist with success. I had a hard semester—one of the hardest. But I still taught, mentored, adapted and grew. Students can have difficult semesters without losing the potential for success.

A Message to Fellow Educators

Higher education often encourages faculty—especially early-career or non-tenure-track instructors—to present themselves as invulnerable, endlessly capable, unaffected by personal struggles. But that facade comes at a cost. It disconnects us from students. It isolates us from colleagues. And it burdens us with expectations no one could realistically meet.

I’m not suggesting we overshare or turn classrooms into therapy sessions. But there is power in selective, thoughtful transparency. A simple statement like “I’m navigating some challenges this week and you may see some adjustments” tells students that flexibility is normal, communication is healthy and challenges are survivable.

Our humanity is not a hindrance to our teaching—it is one of our greatest pedagogical tools.