The Joys of Jello

Monday
Today was actually pretty awesome. After a long, restful, and much needed weekend, it was difficult to transition back into a school week. However, my lesson went really well today -- I'm starting to really get the hang of those little morning meetings now -- and I even got to do a few more little activities today too.

Instead of going to recess now (which was usually pretty entertaining, don't get me wrong) my teacher said I could start staying in the classroom and using the time for planning. And since I actually need to start planning, I decided that would be a good idea. So, I used the time to prepare for tomorrow's morning meeting, look over the AT SMARTBoard activity that I'll be teaching tomorrow, and the News-to-You Current event list for my Thursday lesson. Can you say: productive?

Some of the actual pictures I used with a
student when working on his goal

I also worked one-on-one with a student today on his IEP goals. My teacher had a prep meeting for an IEP so she thoroughly explained how I would be working with the student on two of his goals while she was gone. I'd seen it done before, recorded data for the process, and read enough out of books to understand the idea, but actually doing it myself was a different story. The student tends to slack off when my cooperating teacher isn't the one working with him, so needless to say, I had my work cut out for me. I had some strategies under my belt though, such as reminding him of his choice for free time, and redoing the task should he not put his best effort in. I had to ask a couple of paras a few questions and then followed up with a few more questions to my coop. teacher when she got back, but overall it went really well. It was amazing to actually be doing the work that I've learned so much about for the past four years. I was so proud of how well the student did and how hard he tried.

Tuesday
I taught the morning meeting again -- to a full class this time. It went fine, I guess. I'm getting accustomed to what is expected of me and I'm trying to tailor my responses, tones, and words to each student with whom I'm speaking. I'm realizing that this is pretty important in this classroom. It's not that you work more or less with a particular student or treat them differently per say, you just need to differentiate based on their abilities and especially based on how they communicate.

I also got hit hard with a ton of homework from my seminar class yesterday, so I spent some solid time looking through goals, objectives, and benchmarks today. Our current 'project' requires us to spend massive amounts of time learning about the classroom environment, students, and resources, etc. Because I'm in a special education setting, my situation (similarly to other students in my class) is a little different from theirs. For instance, while they are focusing on one area of material -- science, math, literacy, etc. -- I'm focusing on two students and their IEP goals.

I also got to teach a lesson in the AT center today, though. The material is already made and set up, so all I had to do was teach it! What a difference from a gen ed setting. That's one thing that I'm finding about Elim: the curriculum is pretty much set and prepared which leaves me with extra time for fine tuning, writing lesson plans (min favorit), and looking ahead. Since I'm not yet teaching all day, I have quite a bit of free time to work on future plans for lessons in the week.

So, I'd say it was a pretty successful day. I learned a lot -- as always -- and got to spend another six hours with seven amazing kids. No complaints.

Other highlights: observing an adapted P.E. class, getting a different student from the bus in the morning, getting sneezed on at lunch, successfully programming a child's Augmentative and Alternative Communication device, and noticing kids' reactions as they watched popular 1950's television shows.

Wednesday
Leading morning meeting today went pretty well again. I'm starting to get a better idea about how to respond to random events in the classroom. For instance, today, one of my students was sleeping during our 9:30 meeting; he literally got to school and fell asleep -- not something uncommon at Elim, but a little bit for this student maybe. Anyway, instead of just passing him up and letting him skip the lesson, we tried to wake him up a little bit to get some responses from him. His para shook him a little bit, turned his fan on, and put his hands in water. It helped for a minute or two but then he just reverted to his nap. So, after a few tries, we just passed over him and let him finish the work later on during the day.

I worked on my substantial amounts of homework from my seminar class today too. I need to look at and refer to two students' IEP documents in order to fill out this form I need for the TPA project we're working on. Anyway, it's pretty obnoxious, although I'm sure I'm learning a lot from it.

The new behavior incident report that Elim uses -- this was discussed in our
staff meeting on Wednesday

I also helped a student with his sensory activity today. The students were supposed to explore a container of jello -- feel it, smell it, taste it, look at it, you name it. Unfortunately, little did I know, the kids were not into the activity. Apparently they just don't enjoy that type of thing. So, it was a bit of a struggle. I had another para helping me and we tried to just ease him into the idea of jello and he eventually touched it -- a huge success!

I also had an all-staff meeting today after school. It was weird being there, among the Elim staff. It was pretty interesting stuff and I tried to apply it to my time at Elim as best I could. It was interesting to hear the concepts being discussed at an all-staff meeting.

Thursday
There were two kids out today due to sickness -- which means we only had five in class. Of those five, four have colds; needless to say, the paras and I are hanging on by a thread. Despite the cold I've developed, Thursday was a pretty interesting day.

I got to observe one student have a mini behavior on the way to the bathroom. And then I got to help that same student walk down to lunch a few hours later. Besides the fact that we could have crawled there faster than the speed at which he was walking, he managed to get there okay. But, he refused to sit properly in order for the para to hook up his g-tube feeding, and proceeded to refuse to comply for the next 15 minutes of lunch.

During that same time, as we stood up to leave for recess, as another one of my students was walking past a particularly food-ridden table from the first lunch of the day, she grabbed for some of the leftover noodles and attempted to shove them in her mouth. My paras were not happy. This has been a constant problem for this child lately: the other day, someone had left a half eaten fruit cup on the water fountain right outside the cafeteria. She scoped out her target and after recess ran over to the food in an attempt to eat it. Luckily, the staff are pretty quick and can usually stop her, but it's still a behavior that needs to change.

I also got to sit next to two students as my teacher led a whole group (so a four-student) discussion/lesson about popular songs from the 1950's -- that's the unit we're on. The kids really seemed to like it. They would ask for a turn to pick a song from the SMARTBoard, listen to the song, and tell their staff if they liked it or not. Since a lot of the kids really like music, it was fun to see their reactions to songs from that decade.

The story I used for my News To You lesson

I also taught a lesson today on a current event story. It was about two books that have won awards recently (The One and Only Ivan and This is Not My Hat). My initial idea in choosing that story was to find those books at a local library and then to read them to the students and ask them, as a journal prompt, what they thought and which was their favorite and why. However, none of the libraries around here had the books, so I just showed a youtube clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtPdqV2crQ0) about one of the books. The students actually really liked the clip; they watched it intently and were then asked to write a journal entry about their chosen topic about a book they had written.

Overall the lesson went pretty well; it ended a little early, as did one of my lessons the other day. So, clearly, I need to be working on expanding my lessons to talk more in depth about things and to get more feedback and comments from students. My teacher and I talked about ways in which I could extend the lessons with other little activities.

Friday
Those two same kids were out again today, so we had another small class. However, we also had swimming today -- something that the kids absolutely love, but quite the opposite for the paras. The process is tedious as all the kids need to be taken to the bathroom (to avoid accidents in the pool; it has happened before, apparently), changed into suits, and placed into the pool -- not such an easy task for some. And, since most of the kids in my class require a one-on-one, most of the paras have to end up swimming too; they aren't too fond of that role either.

Confession: Not Elim's pool, but you get the idea

However, the kids have a great time. For some students, the pool is a therapy; it loosens their tightened muscles and helps them to relax. For others, swimming is really just playing. But, they're actually working on important skills such as kicking, sorting (they usually have rings that they grab from the floor of the pool and sort based on color), and other movement and stretching exercises.

The swimming today went really well. One particular student who has difficulty swimming across the pool. Despite his three flotation devices strapped to his body, he strongly prefers to walk around the length of the pool, gripping the edge. But, today he was trying to swim across in order to match his ring to the correct colored cone. Everyone was pretty amazed. It's always fantastic to observe and experience those little moments of growth in a child.

On a different note, today that same student refused to pick up the pictures that he threw on the ground before putting them away and walking to recess. He does this often: he'll sit at his desk and refuse to do anything, shaking his head and saying that he 'can't'. The length of time of these behaviors varies drastically -- one day it might only be for three minutes, the next for twenty three. He does not have a behavior plan yet, but the process we've been using in the classroom is to isolate him from his peers by putting up dividers. This prevents the student from getting any attention from his peers and it gives him a chance to cool down and think more clearly. After three minutes, we show him his schedule for the following three or four activities, the last of which is always his earned reward -- watching around five minutes of a d.v.d of some sort. He ultimately, eventually, makes the choice to finish whatever tasks he needs to before earning his preferred activity.

Today the timer was already reaching six minutes and the rest of the students were at recess and a few of the paras who weren't there were on their break. So, after my teacher asked the student if he was ready to comply and he refused, she asked me to give it a shot after the next three minutes were up. I sat there, waiting for the timer to ring, thinking back to all the times I had heard and observed this process happening and trying to determine what I would say.

I walked over, showed him his schedule and after a few minutes of silence, he slid to the floor and we sat there together as he picked up his pictures and put them in a bag. What an encouraging moment: it was really cool to be a part of that process. It reminds me of the Learning Environment Illinois Professional Teaching Standard which states that competent teachers "understand factors of that influence motivation and engagement and how to help students become self-motivated." While I'm not quite at that stage yet, I hope to keep working at it.

My cooperating teacher says she doesn't know if there's a particular reason or not for his particular behavior. We've been taking data and trying to determine if it happens at a certain time or activity, but there's really no pattern. He also responds very differently to different people. One day, he'll do whatever his para says; the next, he refuses to listen to her. He goes through phases and we really can't determine a reason for why he does what he does. This makes it difficult to predict when he'll refuse to participate. For now, we're just doing the best we can.