size matters

my current caseload is only at 65% of the maximum number of students it is recommended i work with, and i have been able to DO MY JOB for these first weeks of school. i have had time to consult with the preschool teachers and parents.  i have created systematic home practice programs for most of the kids.  i have started one kid with a step by step device and trained the classroom staff on how to use it with him.  i have been able to do some 1:1 pull out sessions to teach new skills and then had time to help the child generalize these skills in the classroom.  i have been building relationships with all my new little students on the autism spectrum. i have been busy as a bee working on visual supports for communication--see some examples of my fine iphone photography above for those students who just don't understand what those picture icons are all about.   i have been able to plan out activities and make materials ahead of the day of.   i have been taking daily notes on progress towards goals.   i have even had time to eat lunch!

it would be fantastic if my caseload stayed this low, but it won't.  it won't, that is, unless some of the  students can move on to less restrictive settings.  we will see how it all unfolds.  it is exciting to feel like you are doing your job.  it is exciting to see little people moving forward into the unlimited world of symbolic language.

last day

another last day of the year. at times the year seemed interminable, but overall my little students made amazing progress and i am proud of them and will miss them. one little boy said goodbye and then, as his dad tried to drag him out of the room, launched into a detailed explanation of all the different kinds of explosions that will take place at his backyard explosion party that i will be invited to. mentos and diet coke. baking soda and vinegar. some chemical i have never heard of. the explosions will go THIS HIGH. like mount saint helens up to the SKY. this little guy entered school having daily 45 minute tantrums if he did not get the BLUE THING and is now able to say, "it's ok, i like blue a lot but sometimes i have to have other colored (fill in the blanks)." he used to avoid other kids but will now sit next to his little buddy making playdough volcanos together and say "awesome" and mean it if his friend shows him a playdough island with a tunnel through it. if i get the invitation to the explosion party for sure i will be there.

reality is hitting about my daughter going to mandarin immersion kindergarten in the near future and i am in obsessive worry overload, especially as she is going through an especially "out of her body" phase and seems pretty out of whack and disregulated. hey, maybe she is having a hard time because her mom is overly worried...could it be? i just read her brother's report card and instead of feeling proud of his second grade achievements, which include speaking, reading, and writing in mandarin, i worry about my daughter not being able to hack it.

sometimes i feel like a terrible mom.

anyway, maya has been asking me lots of questions about what is important lately:

what is more important, a house or food?

what is more important, your house or a big building?

what is more important, your kids or your car?

what is more important, how a bandaid looks or if it covers your boo-boo?

what is more important, your kids or watching tv?

what is more important, going to work or your kids?

what is more important, your pet or someone crying?

what is more important, love or eating bednight snack?

my son asks different questions: (this is yu-gi-oh talk)

who would win, explosive magician or battle fader?

who would win, volcanic doomfire or cyberdark dragon?

who would win, voltanis the adjudicator or mystic swordsman?

who would win, guardian sphinx or injection fairy lily?

there are people on the radio talking about ascending and declining civilizations. republicans fighting democrats. here in our city there is a battle going on over what kids should go to school where and why.

it takes all kinds to try and figure out this world. what is most important? how do we decide? is it getting the color blue all the time? winning the yu-gi-oh game? i like how maya is thinking and i want her in a school which encourages the search for this kind of wisdom. it feels like too much to ask lately but i want to know we are moving forward towards determining what is important for all of on our big blue marble. otherwise, what??

it's an art, not a science

i work in a preschool special education classroom, and dealing with undesirable behaviors is pretty constant. kids not following directions, not staying with the group, not being safe, difficulty sharing, yelling, grabbing, knocking over towers, and some hitting--all in a day's work. of course most of the time our students are just wonderful and adorable. during the past two months, however, one of our students developed some pretty severe aggression toward the other kids. hitting, throwing hard and heavy objects, poking, kicking, pinching, making scary faces and sounds--up to 30 times an hour. his primary teachers and i came together as a team and devised a plan for what we decided were attention seeking behaviors: completely ignore all the negative behaviors, heavily praise the good ones. this did not fly with some of the assistant teachers, who thought it would be impossible to ignore the bad behaviors,and did not feel comfortable refraining from saying no and telling our student he was doing things wrong. but the plan was if he hit someone we would attend to the hittee. if he was about to hurl a block at someone we would just take the block from his hand with a neutral expression and move right on. this involved a lot of creative defense and comforting of the students while simultaneously trying to create lots of opportunities for our little aggressor to get positive attention. we had tried giving him positive attention before but not ignoring the negative stuff.

as these things go, the bad behaviors escalated for a while as our little guy tried more and more desperately to get attention. for the past two weeks there were a lot of crying kids, ice paks, and some serious skeptics on staff saying that this would not work, things were getting worse, we should not keep ignoring bad behaviors, this was bad teaching. it is hard to work with people who don't have patience. it is also hard to hear these doubting voices when you are trying hard to implement a plan that may or may not work.

however, the past two weeks things have been much better. some of the kids that our aggressive little guy was targeting the most have, as he probably wanted them to be all along, become his friends. instead of screaming and crying in fear a few of our more passive and scared kids have become noticeably more confident and assertive as they have had so much practice defending themselves. it is kind of amazing and heartwarming to see ( as i did today) a tiny four-year-old who would burst into tears at the mention of the aggressive kid's name actively seek him out on the playground, and take his hand, and lead him away saying firmly "you are my friend."

gustav klimt's rocker sister

there has been a lot of outside time lately. the garden is growing in the backyard, lots of little seeds sprouting up, pink and white blossoms on the fruit trees, and crazy tall greens that just keep going and going.

work has been rough lately, feeling overextended, but i am trying my best. i find myself involved in miles' school through meetings and email conversations. the teasing and bullying task force. the middle school committee. the garden coordinator political fiasco. miles is doing fine, but there is so much pressure to get test scores up that there doesn't seem to be much time to look at how to engage the kids. they keep assessing the kids to find out what skills they don't have yet that they should. i know this is important but assessment should look at not just what they know and don't know, but how they learn best.

have i mentioned these things before? i think so. project based learning. cooperative learning groups.

anway, we have been learning by getting out and about.

yesterday maya and i walked up and over potrero hill to an art class where she learned about gustav klimt and painted a huge gold background. on the way back we saw this amazing kidserve mural on daniel webster elementary. this is just a section, this thing is huge.

maya experimented with making shadows in the window of this closed down hair studio. she said she was gustav klimt's sister, who was in a rock band.
today we went with friends to the mission science workshop, a big room in mission high with a free for all of musical instruments, projectors, bones, woodworking tools, glue guns, rocks, slices of 540 year old redwood trees, live animals, dead animals, computer parts, you name it. i love this place.
maya made this cool magnet pendulum which showed how magnets can repel each other. the little hanging magnet dances around on its string.
layers of people i knew were at the workshop, and are everywhere we go, really, from the neighborhood, baby class, preschool, even pre-kid life. and outside there was an old friend, alec, looking like the cool sailor engineer that he is, with his dyke march t shirt on, headed to sunny delores park. the park was packed, a green sea of people and dogs, throwing footballs, grilling sausage, giving free capoeira lessons, playing accordion, walking on tightropes. blasting bad rock music from a fender amp, selling ice cream, drinking and smoking weed. i told the kids about how we used to go to this park a lot, and sit on blankets and sometimes play instruments, and how cassie lived nearby.

we watched as a group of people prepared to release a balloon creation into the sky, tethered by fishing line so as not to pollute. it was the size of a small room, red balloons attached to each other in the shape of a heart. the kids were patient as a very sf crowd of older women with some young tattooed women and some men, well, hey, all kinds of people talked about going around the circle and departed love ones and meditation. "the ice cream!!!!!!!!!" screamed maya and the kids ran off hand in hand to buy crappy mexican ice cream from a cart. they returned in time for the release of the heart, which floated higher and higher until it was just a small red shape above delores park, with no destination but, as miles said, "as high as the moon."

a little vent about work

i know i am lucky to have a job. and extra lucky to have work which i actually care about and sometimes enjoy. but lately i am not feeling that positivity. i am feeling pulled in a million directions and stretched out so thin that i don't feel like i am doing much good at all. a torrent of needy children coming my way, with needy teachers and parents lined up behind them. help.

i did get away for thanksgiving. we had a delicious dinner at grandma's in sonoma, and the kids were very good and quiet thanks to satellite tv. miles did manage to be obnoxious in the few minutes he was not staring at a screen and when it was his turn to say what he was thankful for stated "i am thankful there are toilets in this house because i really have to go!" ha ha, thanks little boy.

we played in crunchy leaves at the square and we visited a mossy old cemetery on the hill above sonoma on a wet saturday morning. then julia and her two boys picked us up and we went to the calistoga village inn. there we alternated between being furious with our spoiled and bratty children and feeling heavenly as our little sweethearts frolicked in the sunny warm pools for hours. on the way home we hit the calistoga petrified forest, and saw 3 million year old trees that had been knocked down by volcanic blasts and replaced cell by cell with silica, turned into stone. they looked exactly like redwoods, even the bark was intact. kitchy wooden statues stood along the path through the petrified forest, and we were all wary of the rattlesnakes and mountain lions which never seem to appear.