Forgetting

We curse and mutter in frustration when we forget something – where we left the car keys, where we left the car (which row did we park in?), what time the meeting starts, your own telephone number, a special anniversary. Forgetting is a vexing and annoying problem that we would love to, well, forget. There are all sorts of products advertised that promise to improve your memory from pills to video games – if only you can remember to do them. Yet sometimes forgetting is a precious gift. Sometimes forgetting is the most amazing, wonderful thing of all. It is forgetting that allows us to move on from every insult and injury. If we remembered in detail every excruciating second of pain, both physical and emotional, most of us would be reduced to recluses afraid of our own shadows. Just about everything worthwhile in life involves some sort of pain but once we achieve it we forget, over time the pain dulls. Were this not the case we would all be only children. There is also the blessing of forgetting things like “impossible” and “can’t”. The amazement of discovering that suddenly you are doing something that you were convinced you could not because you forgot the limitations. Forgetting the rules, forgetting concepts of difference or sickness, forgetting fears rooted in the past and discovering the joy of the moment. If they do create a potion that allows for perfect memory, I will be last in line to receive it. Hopefully that way by the time it is my turn I will have forgotten what I was waiting for and have gone off in pursuit of something that better.

I don't have any balls?!?

One of my students uses a voice output device (here is a sample of a simple voice output device Go Talk 20) to communicate a large part of the time. We use it a lot during learning activities and he is learning to identify objects by color (i.e. purple crayon, red block) and say complete sentences (I have a purple crayon. I want a purple crayon. I see a purple crayon.). He recently started working on a new device that we are testing out that allows a lot of choices to be presented to him. Previously he could only have eight items presented, which meant it was limited in what he had to discriminate between when I asked him a question and in what he could request. So I brought along his new device and his items that we had been working with on his home visit on Friday. We were plodding along working on colors and objects (he was not in the mood to cooperate - I don't blame him, after being in school for 3 hours I don't think I would appreciate having the teacher show up at my front door with more work either). He picked up his device and began to insistently push the picture symbol for the toy ball that we had played with in class. Without thinking out of my mouth tumbled the words "I'm sorry, I don't have any balls." Oops. I froze, not knowing if his mom would want to laugh as badly as I did or if she would not appreciate the humor of the situation. Later when she cursed as she tried to put the cover on his self-opening scissors (which is a lot harder than it sounds) I swallowd another round of giggles. Maybe it is a good thing he can't imitate what we say? At least that day it was!!

Snow day the Second

The snow day rituals are complex and require strict adherence. They are also a little unique to each individual and each region. For example some people will tell you that you must throw your ice cubs outside on the road or driveway while others insist they must be dropped into the toilet. Others require sleeping with a paper snowflake underneath their pillow. Virtually everyone agrees on doing a snow dance and sleeping with one’s pajamas inside out (and sometimes backwards if possible). So last night I did my version of the snow dance – trust me when I say it was perhaps the most ungraceful thing ever done. I tossed a few ice cubes in the toilet because I refused to go running outside in front of neighbors tossing ice cubes on the ground. I turned my pajamas inside out and backwards. However, I did not sleep with a snowflake beneath my pillow because I am one of the world’s most aggressive sleepers and it would not have stayed there very long anyway. So this morning I peeked outside and saw snow on the ground. Granted, the grass is also still visible but there is snow on the ground. I turned on the television and watched the incredibly long list of schools that were closed slowly move across the screen. On the first channel my school was not listed but that did not seem right at all, so I changed channels to the more reliable channel that I usually watch. Once again I watched the incredibly long list of schools that were closed parade slowly across the screen. Ever slowly…ever slowly…YES!!!! It may be just an inch or two of snow (and two is being generous outside my back door) but we are closed!! Inside out pajamas, ice cubes in the toilet, graceless snow dance – whatever works!!!
I really needed this snow day because my adorable, sweet, precious little germ infested children have gotten me once again. Over the weekend I had an issue with a sore throat that may or may not have been related to their lovely little germs. However, now I have a major cold that has taken over every available space in my head and chest that I am quite certain was given to me by one of the many snotty-nosed, coughing little darlings whose parents insist on sending them to school sick. I can’t seem to convince them that if their child is sick we really do not need them at school. We are not learning molecular biology or nuclear physics here – it is preschool, I promise if your child misses a few days it will be just fine. Especially with children who are medically fragile in the class I can not afford to have so many germs running rampant. And parents might want to consider that getting the teacher sick so often isn’t a benefit to their child’s education either. Then in that situation their child is in school but their teacher is not which rather defeats the purpose, especially because in special education a substitute is unlikely to know their IEP goals or how to incorporate them, etc. I do have a great assistant who does wonderfully when I am gone but it is best when everyone is present to teach. I miss my children when they are absent, but not enough to want them in school sick. Not when it could really harm another student or really make everyone miserable.
However, today is a snow day and I plan on enjoying whatever I can from it even though my best friends are Robitussin and Kleenex. It is a free day, an open day without responsibility because there is nothing I have to do today. I foresee reading cuddled under my favorite blanket while drinking hot tea, curling up on the couch and watching whatever old movies I find on TV, and anything else that happens to sound good to me. I love snow days!! And they are talking about another chance of snow next week – so my pajamas will be inside out and backwards again, I will recreate my ungraceful dance steps, and my toilet will be assaulted with ice cubes in the hopes of another beautiful, free snowy day!!

Hazard Pay

Remember all of the concern over global warming that dominated headlines and news broadcasts earlier this winter? The cherry trees were blossoming in December and so that was a sign of global warming. It was the warmest winter on record and certainly that heralded the oncoming horrors of global warming. So why now, when most of the country is well below freezing and shivering underneath layers of clothing and huddled inside houses where furnaces can not keep up with the cold, have these dire warnings disappeared? Perhaps because it is darn hard to convince someone that the earth is getting warmer when they are absolutely teeth-clanking freezing cold? Perhaps because a little warming sounds rather nice right about now? No matter what schools across the country are closed because it is simply too cold to expect children to stand outside in this weather and wait for a school bus, or even worse trodd through the freezing, biting cold to school. While I realize it is not quite as cold here as it is further north the wind chill is sufficiently below 0*F. Yet the school districts have not considered closing schools or even delaying them by a couple of hours to allow it to warm up to a slightly more humane temperature. Normally as a teacher you feel sympathy for your students out in the cold as you run from your heated car to the heated school building. Not so much in my case. Since my children can not independently navigate from their busses to my classroom I have the joy of getting each and every one of them off of their busses and gathering them like little chicks before we all venture together down to the nice warm classroom. Normally I like this because I get to greet them all as they arrive at school. However, it is COLD!! This means I will be spending a rather significant period of time out in the cold this morning gathering children and sheperding them inside only to dash back outside to get more of them. And have I mentioned that my precious, beautiful disaster HATES being cold? To the point that he screams the entire time we are near the door because he can feel the wind every time the door opens? We should be a fun bunch this morning all shivering and bundled up with a background of screaming and some whining from my new little one who does not understand waiting yet. I think this deserves a little hazard pay. At least some hot chocolate waiting for me in my classroom when we all straggle in, cold and upset and bedragled. And if it is going to be this darn cold, could it at least snow??