Old Math

Courtesy of one of my students, an excellent likeness.

One of the classes today had a substitute teacher, a soft-spoken Anglo with blond hair. A student, not the brightest bulb in the refrigerator, decided to impress his classmates by swearing at the substitute in Spanish. Turns out the sub speaks Spanish fluently….

There are dramatic shifts in the weather where I live, fronts will roll in and the temperature will drop 20 degrees in a day. Many teachers and aides accept it as wisdom that you can predict a change in the weather by the behavior of kids - squirrelly behavior, tantrums, etc. all presage a change in the weather. My own observations would support the theory.

G., the stubborn fellow with Down Syndrome, has accepted me as the person who takes him to and from keyboarding class - so much so that he refused to leave the class today when I left early to do an origami lesson with another class. The other aide in the classroom was unable to move him out of the room when class was over. They called my name over the school PA and I came in, told him "Let's go" and the problem was solved. At other times of the day he has locked onto other people and refuses to budge without that particular person. Routine is everything.

The last few weeks have been very busy and I have been fighting vertigo so no blogs. I will try again.

The severe needs class has been part of the busyness. We started the year with 17 kids, diagnosis ranging from autism, cerebral palsy, emotional problems, etc. A kid too difficult to handle in any of the other district schools is likely to end up in our program.

Seventeen middle school kids with severe problems is a large class, plus we started the year short two paraprofessionals. As soon as the second came back we gained a new student, E., who requires strict supervision. Probably E. does not have any organic problem, she suffers from SLS, or Shitty Life Syndrome. Abusive father, victimized mother, homeless, etc., it is a very prevalent syndrome. As a result she has learned to be manipulative, a chronic liar, occasionally violent in a spectacular fashion.

I have two main duties. One is working with a 6th grader with severe attention problems. I sit in class with her and keep things in focus. Otherwise she will literally bounce out her chair and disrupt the whole class. She is making good progress.

I am also gradually taking over in a keyboarding class for a para who is having a neck fusion surgery soon. The main issue here is a boy with Down syndrome. Like many with this affliction he is adorable, gentle and monumentally stubborn. Any change in routine results in non-cooperation. By working with him more and more each day we can avoid the problems a sudden changeover would entail.