The Spirit of Elim

Tuesday

My second full day of teaching!

A few highlights included:

-- Seeing the kids for the first time in five days -- it's crazy how fast you start connecting with students!

-- Leading an adapted story to two students (others were at therapies) who seemed to be pretty into it; I felt like I did a pretty good job with it!

-- Observing a student have a REALLY good day with no minutes of refusal

Charlie's Angels -- a T.V. show that came
out in the 1970's (it's pretty fantastic!)

-- Leading a Family Feud game about the 1970's

-- Doing better on transitions today than lately

-- Overall, feeling more comfortable in front of the whole class (paras included)

In our 1970's Family Feud game, I particularly noticed the need to understand the learning environment in which all of my students were a part. It helped me to better understand how individuals influence groups (IPTS 5: Learning Environment).

Before adaptive P.E. I was supposed to tell a para that we would be starting a student on the bike by the classroom and then taking her down to the gym from there (just as we've been doing for the past few weeks). Transitioning her into the activity this way seems to work better than waiting until we get to the gym to put her on the bike. Anyway, I guess I waited too long to tell the para and before long, the student ended up sitting in the middle of the hallway, halfway to P.E. 

Example of an adaptive bike; one
of various kinds at Elim

It took two paras and myself to get her to stand up and sit on the bike while we strapped her in (oh, yes, these bikes are a little different than others you might have seen). Once she got to the gym and began pedaling/was pulled on the bike, she did much better. There weren't really any problems after that. But, I definitely learned from that experience. Particularly, I was reminded about the importance of clear and constant communication between teachers and paraprofessionals. 

Other teacher tasks in which I participated today:

-- Answering the phone

-- Eating lunch in the classroom to finish a last minute plan for the afternoon's lesson

-- Talking to a parent!

-- Planning an art lesson for tomorrow

-- Talking to a student about misbehavior in P.E.

Today, one of my students had a dentist appointment, so she came to school a couple of hours late. When she arrived, I was called and asked to come get her from the front office. When I got there, I met her mother and had a short conversation with her. I later recalled the ideas discussed to my cooperating teacher. Essentially, this student's mother wanted us to start working on brushing her daughter's teeth. Apparently she has been working on this skill at home, but it has not been going very well. The mother mentioned that she would like us to start working on it with the student at school, starting tomorrow. 

She also talked about continuing the student's work on tasting foods (she's usually g-tube fed) with the speech therapist. When talking with this parent, something felt strange, particularly because I knew we were having a lot of trouble working on food tasting with this child. I essentially just told the parent I would talk to my teacher about it and agreed with her own idea to bring up the requests at the IEP meetings. As a student teacher, I know a little bit about this child's goals and what she has been working toward in meetings, but I don't know nearly as much about the care for this child as my teacher does.

My suspicions were later confirmed that the parent was indeed 'manipulating' me by asking me to work on these things with her child. Apparently, the ideas have been brought up in meetings and conferences before. My teacher was not exactly happy about the whole thing. She reassured me that it would have happened to anyone else that would have walked down to get the student (except herself, of course). I wasn't really worried about any of it; I really just thought the whole thing was interesting. This is basically my first encounter with parents. 

Pazzo!

Other: Pajama day at Elim today! This is spirit week :)
Tuesday Tweet: If you had any superpower, what would it be?

Wednesday

Well, I forgot to do the attendance today until after 9:15. Strike one.

Sports theme at Elim today

Luckily, that was no indication of how the rest of the day would be. We had a split goal work/sensory activity today before and after snack. Since the student who I work with on goals was in therapy, I was essentially just doing other busy work (filling out notebooks, cleaning, updating the white board with announcements, starting planning for my supervised lesson tomorrow, etc.). As a student was leaving for speech, he began with his refusal behavior -- rolling his eyes, shaking his head, looking at the floor, refusing to stand up from his chair -- so I watched as his para made it a few steps out the door with him before he stopped again. Since I had nothing else really going on, I went to help. Fortunately, after the next two minute wait period, he listened as I urged him to stand up, walk to the bathroom, and be cooperative there.

He had a rough day throughout the remaining four hours of school with a resulting seventeen and a half minutes of refusal by the end of the day. 

In PT, I guess one of my students was soaked through his diaper so instead of helping to transition to recess, I helped the para lift and change him. The poor student was coughing the whole time. He looked miserable.
I guess even his arm braces were wet -- we just weren't sure what they were wet from, but we anticipated the worst.

Also today, one of my students was having another rough day; she was extremely loud especially when we were reading after snack time. My coop says sometimes, instead of letting students do whatever they want for social time, she tells everyone to read a(n adapted) book to read with a partner. I was reading to two students and this child got so excited that she started shouting, screaming, and hitting the book as I read. We didn't think she was frustrated or upset because she seemed to like the book (she even signed 'more') but she was just completely out of control. She had to be separated and sit down to cool off for a bit. I guess they've been having that problem for a little while now.

My teacher is guessing that maybe the student needs more time to exercise throughout the day. She generally likes walking (on the treadmill) so I suggested that the para take her there during sensory today. Apparently she did four minutes of it, loud as ever, and the para had to hold her hands down the whole time. I guess we'll have to keep thinking about that one.

Finally, I taught an in-class art lesson today. I brainstormed (with the help of my coop and my roommate -- who just happens to be a graphic design major) several different objects I could collect around the classroom to use for painting to explore different textures and designs including: a tooth brush, a whisk, a spatula, two badminton-like rackets, spiked balls, etc. The paras were surprisingly on-board and seemed to think it was a great idea. What's even better is that the kids really appeared to like it. A few tolerated the activity by trying it for a few minutes which is a huge success in my book. The completed projects look pretty cool. They might even look a little abstract, if I knew exactly what that meant...That was a fun lesson.

What a day.

Other: Sports theme at Elim today! (Go White Sox)
Journal Entry: If you were in a movie, what would the movie be about?

Thursday
Today was crazy.

One of my paras wasn't in today so just about the minute I walked in the door, I was confronted by a pretty huge decision: should we ask for another para (from a different class) to come help us, or should we stick with what we have and make do?

After a few minutes of thought, I decided that it wouldn't do much good to ask another para to help us -- essentially what this means is that he/she will just be asking me what to do ALL day anyway. Since I don't know the particulars of this child (bathroom routine, goals, behavior recording procedures, bus information, etc.) I figured it would be silly to attempt to answer his/her questions. So, I made a decision in the first few minutes of my day that would impact the whole structure of the class today.

I taught a lesson today involving LEGOs. It was a News To You article from a website that Elim often uses. I thought this particular article could be kind of fun to read so I chose it and planned my lesson around the idea. It was actually fun! I had students tell their staff one thing they already knew about LEGOs before we began reading. While we worked through the article, I had students searching for the words 'you' and 'stop'. After reading, we answered a journal prompt about LEGOs before watching a video about the toys that directly related to the article we read. The kids seemed pretty into it.

Right afterward, one of my students refused to transition to recess so we followed his behavior plan, waiting two minutes before asking again if he is ready to walk to the assigned activity. He only collected about nine minutes all morning -- not too bad -- but he gained more in the afternoon, bringing him to a grand total of 23 minutes of refusal. This was not his day.

One of my other students became aggressive during one of SMARTBoard activities. Instead of nicely selecting the song she wanted to play, she began hitting the board with the pointer tool we use in class. Not entirely sure what to do about the situation, I grabbed her hand, told her that the behavior was unacceptable and walked her back to her seat. Luckily, she only behaved this way three times today; with her para out, it could have been a whole lot worse.

Besides that, other occurances today included:

G-tube feeding; done by 3 of our students daily

• Filling out two incident reports (two students came off their buses with scratches -- one on her neck, the other on his left forearm)
• Learning how to give one student her water during snack time; not so easy when it's done by g-tube
• Seeing the crazy hats that students wore
• Taking a student to the bathroom -- she's known for behaviors there; luckily, one I figured out which diaper to put on afterward, it was completely fine
• Getting evaluated 
• Playing a 1970's music review jukebox game

Well, I definitely practiced both patience and flexibility today. 

Other: Crazy hat/hair day at Elim

Journal of the day: Describe an adventure that you've been on or one that you'd like to go on.

Friday
Today was surprisingly pretty average.

The students swam in the morning and seemed to enjoy it. I helped a student get ready for the pool and despite being told how to help him, it was difficult to determine whether or not he was trying to get ready by himself or if he really didn't know how to dress himself. I talked to my teacher about it later and she confirmed that he probably doesn't know how to dress himself because his parents do it for him everyday.

After swimming, I came back down to the pool to help the paras and students transition back into the classroom. Everything seemed to be going alright until one of the paras couldn't find a student's swim suit. It turns out that another student's grandma (who was swimming with him that day) accidentally took his suit home along with her grandson's. I asked my teacher what to do and she seemed a little flustered by it. She explained to me that even though the problem wasn't really our fault, the child's parents would still probably be frustrated, even angry, at us teachers. This kind of struck me. It was another instance of parent/teacher relationships that I have very little experience with yet. I ended up writing a note home to the child's parents explaining the situation and reassuring them that we will get the suit back as soon as possible. We'll have to wait and see how that one goes.

Otherwise, the day was pretty uneventful. I taught a Bible lesson about Palm Sunday in the afternoon. It went fine. My coop teacher recorded me because I have to write a reflection on my teaching. That was a little unnerving. I just don't like the idea of videotaping and watching myself. I guess it's to better understand how I can improve my teaching, though, so I'm not against it

Other: Elim school spirit week (blue and gold)
Journal of the day: Name one place that you would like to visit over the weekend.

It's been quite the week.