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Posts Tagged ‘Students’

In the Student Seat

Posted in WONDER, tagged Autism, In the Student Seat, Learning, Special Needs, Students on October 5, 2011| 2 Comments »

This week I am back in the classroom, as a student. A colleague and I are taking a course on Autism, and it has been amazingly fascinating! We are learning lots, wanting to try it all out and feeling a sense of information overload!

It has also been an opportunity to feel a bit of empathy for the students I work with. I find I fade in and out of consciousness, I struggle to stay focused, I am easily distracted, fidgety and I almost fell asleep in class. I watch the clock, and I really wish I was in the back row, so that I could play with my iPhone. I am doing all of this, as a ‘typical’ student. (Other than my self diagnosis of ADD) I have no learning struggles, I am in a course that is of interest to me, and is taught at a level that I can comprehend and learn. Yet, I still struggle to pay attention.

At one of the many times I was fading off into my own mental ‘La La Land’, I found myself wondering what happens in the mind of a student with learning struggles, while they struggle to pay attention. How exhausting it must be for them, when they have diagnosed struggles in learning, and the material they are being taught is beyond their interest, or beyond their understanding, or beyond their developmental ability.

And we wonder why they sometimes have issues of bad behaviors!

Speaking of bad behaviors, the main point that I have retained this week is that behaviors are communication. So, if the students with special needs are behaving ‘badly’, maybe what they are communicating is ‘I can’t do this anymore’, or ‘when are you going to start talking my language’, or ‘I am so frustrated, because I just don’t get it, and I feel so dumb.’

Maybe they work so hard, all day long, to hold it together at school, that they go home and unravel … where they can just be who they are, without having to conform to a community and culture that is as foreign to them as moving to Siberia would be for us.

I think that despite struggles to get my readings done (because the IS an exam), I will finish this course with fresh eyes and ears, to see and hear and understand the hearts of the students with special needs … a worthwhile week!

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Missing the Past-Excited for the Future

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged Change, Future, Rememberig the Past, School, Students, Wonder, Work on September 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Working as a support staff, in a high school, everything about what is my job can change from one year to the next.

Last year I worked fifty percent, this year I work one hundred percent. Last year I worked with three students, in grades ten, eleven, and twelve. This year I work with five in grade nine, and one in grade eleven. Last year I worked off campus part of my time, this year I work only on campus. Last year worked with my three students, primarily out of class. This year I am in class almost all the time, and assisting all students who need it. Last year two of the students I worked with graduated, this year there will be no graduates among the students I work with.

It was like starting a new job when school began last week (and I am sleeping solidly because of it)!

Since the start of school, I have to say I have been missing last year, and all that was familiar about it. I miss the quick, cheeky tongues of the the older students, I miss interacting with business people to set up work experience opportunities, I miss the interactions with the parents (moms) of the students, I miss the challenge of out-witting the older students who lived to be late to class, or look at life through a half-full cup … I simply miss the individual students … period.

It would be so easy to say … last year was so much better than this one. As is always the case, what we know is more appealing, more comfortable than what we do not know, and what is unfamiliar to us. It would be so easy to start looking at the school year through a half-full cup …

But, a new broom sweeps clean! And my undiagnosed ADD thrives with change, novelty and challenge.

I have been getting to know the personalities and habits of the new students that I work with. I have been able to see how unjaded high school freshmen are to their senior counterparts. I have been getting to know classroom teachers, whose classes I have not been in before (or for a long time). I have been challenged in having to think out of the box in classroom settings, according to what assists the students needs best.

In all of this there is an excitement to this new year! There is a blank slate effect that I get to be there with the students as they begin their high school career.

The other day, one of the students said, “Mrs. Wheaton, will you work with us until we graduate?” And, on the inside, I smiled, because the thought of that excited me immensely. The thought of providing consistency to students who often thrive in consistency gave me something to hope for … for them, but for me too. But, the nature of this job is that change is inevitable, and there are no guarantees of what next year, let alone three years from now, will look like. But, for now, I know that it’s going to be a great year!

And my focus is to begin with the end in mind, so I will work with them as though I will see them through to graduation. And, together, we can learn so much.

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