Just Breathe

Ever have those days where you accidentally ask "what else can go wrong?" and then not five minutes later you reply "oh, that"? That is a good description of how yesterday felt. For the past few weeks our school has been using a "school wide" reinforcement system to reward positive behavior. However, when I attempted to participate I was informed that it was not appropriate for my children because they would not understand it but that they would be more than willing to assist me in developing a positive reinforcement system that I could use in my classroom. Um, I can reinforce my children it was the inclusion I wanted. So yesterday at the special education team meeting this reinforcement program was discussed and I mentioned that I had not been allowed to participate. Let's just say that no one else appreciated that either. The team leader volunteered to discuss it with the principal and less than an hour later preschool is included. However, I have the distinct feeling that while the administration has no issue with our inclusion those running the program below them do and so it is a begrudging inclusion. Oh well. Then we had a minor situation with a feeding pump that had me ready to throw the beeping "error - error- error" thing out the window. Finally after 15 minutes of trying this and that we emptied the feeding bag, washed it, flushed the tubing, and reset everything. Apparently that made the machine feel better because then it worked. It is of interest that there was no blockage in any of the tubing, no clumps in the feeding bag, and nothing wrong with it other than a bad attitude. Finally while outside on the playground Houdini managed to pull out her trach while being supervised. She is darn fast. The same movement used to cover her trach and talk slips into a pull-out-the-trach movement before you can stop it. So we made a trip to the school nurse to have it reinserted because I felt that the playground was not the best location for such an undertaking. I then received a lecture from the school nurse for allowing her to remove her trach and not providing proper supervision. UGH! Why doesn't she try my job for a day? She seemed to threaten that if it happened again any time soon (which is like saying if she sneezes any time soon) there would be serious reprocussions. I felt like crying because I am doing the best that I can and you can not always hold my children to the same expectations as children who are typically developing. For this child, removing her trach once in 5 days was great. It is all perspective and relative. So I ended up talking to the principal after my class left and was reassured that I would not be in any trouble if she removed her trach again because the only person to discipline me would be her (principal) and she would not do so. She also reminded me that I am a teacher, not a babysitter, and that I need to make my decisions based on what is educationally best for my children. Of course I need to make best effort to keep them safe but I am not child care and I am not a nurse. That was so reassuring. Because I had seriously considered the circus, or McDonalds. Some days it seems like a cage full of lions would be a relaxing vacation compared to teaching. Yet in the end I wouldn't trade my job. There are eight precious reasons waiting for me each day. Eight sticky, wet, slimy, warm, soft hands and eight sets of beautiful, piercing, seeking eyes and eight amazing little souls.

Lost Lunch

On Friday I discovered three guaranteed ways to lose any chance you may have had at eating your lunch, or any other lunch. I should explain that on days when I have a home visit almost immediately after school I tend to take my chances and buy a school lunch. This requires me eating with my very adorable children as they eat lunch which is always an adventure because while cute they have yet to develop anything resembling table manners or hygeine. Part of each meal involves retrieving children from under the table because for some reason lost to me food eaten off of the nasty preschool floor tastes infinitely better than the same food presented on a nice clean plate or a relatively clean table. Entertainment devised by the children on some days consists of dropping food and then laughing when someone else scrambles to the floor to eat it. Yes, three and four year olds have wicked senses of humor. Anyway, the three guaranteed ways to lose your desire to eat.
1) Open the container that your lunch is in and take a bite. Then position the container so that when the child seated behind you who has a trach coughs they spray your entire lunch with the bits of slime that emerge. As a bonus you may also be slimed.
2) Feed the children green cookies before lunch and then allow them to eat their lunchs. Then have one child take a few steps from the table and vomit. Vomiting green cookies is something that I could have gone all of my life without seeing and been perfectly content. Although he gets points for not getting any on himself...if only I could say the same for the floor.
3) Return from taking the comiting child to the nurse's office (where you have to sit with him holding the bucket until his mother shows up and informs you that his little sister has been sick for the past few days with the same thing - resist the urge to hit her) and suction the trach of the coughing child from #1. Discover more green treasures and dodge slime with minimal success. Try to remove green treasures and slime while convincing an unhappy protesting child that this really is for her own good and without contaminating anything.
If that does not slow down your appetite you have a more robust appetite than I possess. I did not feel queasy, I just no longer was interested in the lunch that i had once planned on eating nor anything else for a while. I also did not eat anything green that day...or the next day. Yuck!!!

Perspective

Teaching is not a job that guarantees immediate results. At the end of the day you do not have a set of sales figures, a graph of stock values, a pile of completed reports, or much tangible proof that you were successful. Depending on what grade level you teach there may be the assorted student papers but those are not what teaching is about and they are only a means to the end. The product of teaching in knowledge and growth, it is personal change of a child and that is often difficult to capture and quantify. How much is enough? To whom to you attribute it? What is mastery and understanding?
This past week I have been frustrated with myself and my abilities as a teacher. I expect things from myself that may or may not be reasonable and I demand that I live up to the highest expectations. In other words I am a perfectionist when it comes to the things that I do and prefer to do my best or do nothing. I began to feel that I must be among the worst teachers and that certainly my children were not going to benfit from their time in my class. Self doubt is a best friend of perfectionism. Then yesterday I spent some time with one of my kids that changed my perspective and made me really look at how far we have all come.
One of the newest children in my class is a little boy with autism. When I first met him about a month ago I was amazed by his energy and his continuous motion. I was also puzzled as to just what strategies I would use to bring him into the group and make a connection. The first few days he was a whirly-gig and he did not much care for the idea of a routine, or rules, or anything other than stimming (providing sensory input or stimualtion) with objects like crayons and string. I collected any object he liked to use as a reinforcer, as a reward for things like eye contact and talking and following a direction. Slowly he began to settle into our routine and slowly he began to make connections here and there. Yesterday he sat down at circle time and announced very cheerfully "Is Everybody Happy?" which is the introduction to our slightly bizarre version of "If You're Happy and You Know It" on CD. It was his way of requsting the song. We played it immediately. He is now joining in on some of the actions of most songs. He understands how to request things during circle time - both verbally and with our song choice cards. He knows the days of the week and gets them correct. He announces what day it is correctly when I ask (I prompt the other children in sign language). He correctly identifies the weather and includes things like windy. When his mother came to class she told me that he is doing this at home - telling her what day it is and what the weather is outside and that he never used to do this. Progress and perspective. Later that day we were playing with a toy that had some letters velcrod to it. I pulled one off and asked him, only half-seriously, what it was. To me it looked like the letter "u" but he responded "n" and turned it right side up. He was correct. I then began to present him with some other letters in a variety of positions - upside down, backwards, correctly positioned and he got them all. This little boy at the age of 3 1/2 can identify all of the letters of the alphabet presented in any order and in any position. I then put magnetic alphabet letters on the chalk board in correct order and he walked along them pointing to each one as he sang the alphabet song without any prompting. If he got ahead of his pointing he would correct and catch up to the right letter. Amazing!!!! Perspective. I had thought that the most I could hope for with him would be to establish things like eye contact, a simple turn taking game, a few requests in either sign or verbally, and following a strict routine with prompts. He has reminded me that there is often so much more if you take the time to look. Would I have ever known he was capable of this if I had not asked him to identify that one letter? Does this change how I view him? Does it change how I teach him? Perspective.
I then began to look at all of my children to see what I had not seen before. We may be a jumble and a one-of-a-kind group but we are one group and we have come a long way. I can see where each child has made progress and I can see where as one group we have made progress. No one is where they were at the beginning of the school year - slowly but surely we have taken steps one by one and together to reach new places. Goals are being met, skills are being learned, children are growing and developing, and we are working together to do it. Maybe, just maybe, I am not the worst teacher. Maybe, just maybe, I can do this after all. Maybe, just maybe, it is all in the perspective.

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??