Week 13

Nov. 4-8, 2013

I love being creative with these kids! This week, my creativity spilled out onto Austin. To incorporate something new, I had him experience the twisty slide and climbing a ladder (on the playground). It was so cool and he loved it. However, perhaps it is not the safest bet to have the students climb a ladder that high up. I loved introducing the twisty slide to Dino and watching his expression of learning about it as he went down. I appreciate his willingness to trust me to take him to new places on the school grounds. I loved how Daniel appeared he thought he was going to die when he went down the twisty slide as well, but he had the biggest smile on his face on the way back to class. What an adventure! I also loved introducing the swing to Austin and showing him how to find the middle of the swing and where to sit down independently.

I also learned about some assistive technology device (DynaVox) used a homebound wheelchair student. I attended a meeting with Bryan and some other professionals about the device. It was really interesting.

Some new things Bryan is teaching me are incorporating the use of the wheelchair with Andrew. Bryan worked independently with Andrew on this lesson while I assisted and Andrew was not too happy about this new task. He bit his own arm up so bad like I had never seen before. All he accomplished for this lesson was 2 purposeful movements on one wheel toward a projected sound source (located at a slight down slope). If I thought the playground was impossible to begin with, oh brother!

Some students who are knocking my socks off with progress are Morgan (incorporating left, right, and forward motions with controls of the head on the headrest of wheelchair), Alysia (traveling up to 200-300 ft independently with pre-cane), Carsyn (traveling up to 100 ft independently with pre-cane), Sarah (pace of walking up and over curbs is phenomenal). 

One of the biggest surprises this week was working with a student who just broke his finger. This is a wheelchair-bound student. I am glad I had this experience, b/c had it been me - the O&M Specialist (without Bryan), I would have mothered the poor kid and opted to not push the lesson. Instead, Bryan brushed it off as no big deal and motioned for me to take him anyway. I know Bryan is in his head laughing at me, but I can't help carrying around with me a mother's heart. :) Due to this broken finger, Jacob's progress has ceased quite a bit. I wonder how long it will take his finger to heal.

By the end of the week, these kids were just about done with me. Carsyn hit his head on a pole after aimlessly wailing for no good reason, Andrew just about bit me and was done with me by the end of our lesson together Thurs, Dino threw his cane at me 4 times and attempted to scratch me after I tried to get him under control, and Daniel peed all over the floor in the front office after stopping by to say hello to the lady at the front desk. Call for laughs another day, but in these moments, I was disturbingly learning.

I'm glad the week ended with an amazing community lesson in the mall with 4 students and 3 teachers. Nancy joined us to help out with the lesson. Grace, Ella, Jon, and Alex all experienced the movie theatre, its size, D-Box display, arcade, concession stand, some free icecream samples, and concierge desk. By far, this was the coolest lesson I've seen thus far. It was probably a classic lesson I would have written about in one of my classes prior to working with these real-life students. Now, I was experiencing it for real and firsthand.