Monday, November 22, 2004
i need a raise
The following is a true story. It will be long, potentially rambling, and I hope more than minimally entertaining. So my dear reader, as your doctor I recommend you do what I have just done: wash down a double dose of ibuprofen with a double vodka tonic. Then sit down, relax, and just let it flow. . .
Around noon today I find myself standing outside in the pouring rain. I look back through the window of my classroom and see the television that typically serves as a really big monitor for student computer activities. It's on the radar channel. I watch as the blotches of orange and red move closer and closer to our location on the map. I think it's pretty cool in a geeky way, if not a common sense one, that I'm standing outside in the storm while watching it on the TV radar.
"Why, oh why, oh Good Doctor Noyz," I'm sure you are asking yourself, "are you standing outside in the pouring rain watching the radar channel on television in your classroom"
Well, my dear reader, that is indeed an excellent question.
I am waiting.
I am waiting for a student with extreme autism of some infamy and repute (see here and here). He was not having the best of days.
By student I mean a twenty-one year old six foot tall two hundred some pound man. He is all muscle and has grown up in institutions. That means he's squirrelly. By autism I don't mean the cute Dustin Hoffman Rain Man kind.
A teaching assistant and I have already spent the last hour or so patiently waiting for him to decide that he was tired of lying in a pool of his own urine and change into some clean clothes.
This behavior was his response to a direction to start to work. He sits and feeds old school records into a paper shredder in the classroom. It is a vocational activity that is a well established part of his daily routine. When he is on task, he is an amazing and meticulous paper shredder. Very interesting to watch.
He is obviously not ready to shred paper.
He is, however, ready to go home. He screams something about "bus" and bolts towards the door. When my teaching assistant blocks his path, the student falls to the ground and begins jabbering nonsensically. You can sometimes make out words and phrases, but most of what he says is known only to him. He does this frequently when faced with opposition to one of his ideas. I consider this to be a symptom of an undiagnosed and therefore untreated psychiatric disorder. There are at least four or five people in that one body. Sometimes they argue. And sometimes one of them decides to piss on the other ones.
We wait for him to decide that he was ready to change his clothes. When I ask him to change his clothes he responds by throwing a chair at me. I dodge, but as it is difficult to accurately predict the exact trajectory of a chair when thrown by a very agitated individual with autism who is hardcore freakin', I do not get completely out of the way. AAAGH! A glancing blow below the belt.
One of the basic philosophies I have about working with kids with disabilities, particularly non-verbal or mostly non-verbal kids, is that all behavior has a communicative intent. Every action has a message. The challenge is to interpret the message. Once you figure out the message, you can begin to work on changing undesired or inappropriate behavior by teaching a better way to communicate the message. If you are only trying to change the behavior you are in effect silencing the individual. I am also a something of a disciple of gentle teaching. Liberal hippie crap, yes, but I will always lean towards the liberal hippie side and I've seen it work more times than you can shake a stick at. But I am beginning to digress. . .
So, the message I get is "When you throw a chair at me you are telling me that you are not ready to change out of your urine soaked clothes." I get that message a lot. A tossed chair frequently serves as an assistive technology communication device for this young man. The message changes depending upon the context of the situation.
He also has some verbal language skills. His screams of "no, no, NO! GODAMMIT!" punctuate the tossing of the chair.
Ten or fifteen minutes slowly tick by. Finally, with a little help he changes his clothes, sits down and works for about five minutes. Then it's time to go. His bus is here. He only comes to school for half a day. It's all he can handle and sometimes that's pushing it.
My teaching assistant and I grab a couple of umbrellas and go with the student out into the rain. We cover him with the umbrellas as best we could. We hop to make the fifty or so yard walk to the bus without further incident.
No such luck today.
About ten yards from the door, on a wooden walkway with waist high hand rails they built to make the steps of the backdoor ADA compliant, the student drops to his knees. The walkway runs the length of the building. It has a ramp in the middle. He points and screams at the bus, "The lady! The lady!" He wants the lady bus driver that brought him to school in the morning to get off the bus and come get him. I calmly ask him to get up. There is no lady bus driver on this bus.
Without getting up, the student starts kicking and swinging. He looks a fish flopping around on a wet boat dock. A very big, very irrationally angry, out of control fish. My teacher assistant and I step back out of range of the blows while leaning over as best we can to continue to shield him from the downpour with the umbrellas. This of course, exposes us to the rain.
After a few minutes of this, he tires and calms down. He curls up in the fetal position and starts crying in the rain. We continue to stand out of range, just in case. I frequently wonder what the neighbors think when they witness this sort of spectacle. At least so far he has not removed his pants. As they are now quite wet I begin to wonder how much longer it will be before the pants come off.
Waiting, still waiting. Patience is the most important quality. With this young man acting to quickly will get you attacked.
Waiting. He pulls himself up on his knees. Patience. . . don't say a word. The best analogy I can come up with is imagine having to defuse a ticking bomb everyday. Everyday the wiring changes so you don't have a clue which wire to cut first. The wire you safely cut first yesterday might be the one to blow you up today.
He's on his feet. I ask, "Are you ready to go to the bus?"
Wrong wire. . . BOOM!
He pushs past me and runs down the walkway away from the bus. Shit. I take off after him. He gets 10 yards or so and I pass him. I just want to stop his escape. So I stop. He can no longer go forward. My teaching assistant is right behind him so he can not run back. The student starts swinging as I turn around to avoid being struck in the face. Bam, bam, bam. He pounds on my shoulders, back, and ribs. Contrary to what you might expect, I back up and I move closer, into the blows. I've learned from past experience if you move away he just comes after you. I've also learned that it shortens his swinging distance and decreases the momentum and impact of his hits. Which is not to say it does not hurt.
I shout, "I'm okay!" to prevent my teaching assistant from intervening. I'm trying to de-escalate the situation by not getting anymore people involved. He is behind us both. The student can't go anywhere. The student will burn himself out in a the seeming eternity of a few seconds and fall down. It's part of the pattern, its just what he does.
He resumes the fetal positions and his crying.
Around this time I have a revelation. I must confess it is not an entirely new revelation, I have had it before, but not quite in this context. That really seemed to drive it all home.
I am getting paid the same salary as a special education teacher with the same years of experience who works at an elementary school teaching reading to cute third graders with learning disabilities at an affluent wealthy elementary school across town. I am getting paid the same salary as a special education teacher with the same years of experience who has been on and off a "growth plan" for poor job performance.
And I'm being assaulted by a grown man who doesn't mind lying in his own urine in the middle of the biggest "Wrath of God" type storm we've had all year.
I need a raise.
After another few minutes the Principal walks out, "Are you ready?"
"Well," I say, "he's soaking wet, it's raining and about sixty degrees. We can't let him lie here much longer." By this time a half hour or so has passed. If it were clear and seventy three degrees we would wait for as long as it took. The weather created a situation where we did not have the luxury of waiting nearly as long.
"Alright then," he replies, "let's do this."
In another minute we are joined by another one of my teaching assistants and the two biggest teaching assistants on campus. They also work with aggressive and violent kids with autism.
"On three. . . one. . . two. . . three. . . "
Everybody holds and safely secures a limb or other body part. Six properly trained men lift the student and we walk him down the walkway, across the playground, out the gate, up the steps, and into a seat on the waiting bus.
As we sit the student down in the seat he looks around at everybody and smiles. We just got played.
Yeah, I need a raise. And a hot bath. I'll bet I don't get either one.
Tomorrow I will be back, ready to do it again. It's what I do.
|
Around noon today I find myself standing outside in the pouring rain. I look back through the window of my classroom and see the television that typically serves as a really big monitor for student computer activities. It's on the radar channel. I watch as the blotches of orange and red move closer and closer to our location on the map. I think it's pretty cool in a geeky way, if not a common sense one, that I'm standing outside in the storm while watching it on the TV radar.
"Why, oh why, oh Good Doctor Noyz," I'm sure you are asking yourself, "are you standing outside in the pouring rain watching the radar channel on television in your classroom"
Well, my dear reader, that is indeed an excellent question.
I am waiting.
I am waiting for a student with extreme autism of some infamy and repute (see here and here). He was not having the best of days.
By student I mean a twenty-one year old six foot tall two hundred some pound man. He is all muscle and has grown up in institutions. That means he's squirrelly. By autism I don't mean the cute Dustin Hoffman Rain Man kind.
A teaching assistant and I have already spent the last hour or so patiently waiting for him to decide that he was tired of lying in a pool of his own urine and change into some clean clothes.
This behavior was his response to a direction to start to work. He sits and feeds old school records into a paper shredder in the classroom. It is a vocational activity that is a well established part of his daily routine. When he is on task, he is an amazing and meticulous paper shredder. Very interesting to watch.
He is obviously not ready to shred paper.
He is, however, ready to go home. He screams something about "bus" and bolts towards the door. When my teaching assistant blocks his path, the student falls to the ground and begins jabbering nonsensically. You can sometimes make out words and phrases, but most of what he says is known only to him. He does this frequently when faced with opposition to one of his ideas. I consider this to be a symptom of an undiagnosed and therefore untreated psychiatric disorder. There are at least four or five people in that one body. Sometimes they argue. And sometimes one of them decides to piss on the other ones.
We wait for him to decide that he was ready to change his clothes. When I ask him to change his clothes he responds by throwing a chair at me. I dodge, but as it is difficult to accurately predict the exact trajectory of a chair when thrown by a very agitated individual with autism who is hardcore freakin', I do not get completely out of the way. AAAGH! A glancing blow below the belt.
One of the basic philosophies I have about working with kids with disabilities, particularly non-verbal or mostly non-verbal kids, is that all behavior has a communicative intent. Every action has a message. The challenge is to interpret the message. Once you figure out the message, you can begin to work on changing undesired or inappropriate behavior by teaching a better way to communicate the message. If you are only trying to change the behavior you are in effect silencing the individual. I am also a something of a disciple of gentle teaching. Liberal hippie crap, yes, but I will always lean towards the liberal hippie side and I've seen it work more times than you can shake a stick at. But I am beginning to digress. . .
So, the message I get is "When you throw a chair at me you are telling me that you are not ready to change out of your urine soaked clothes." I get that message a lot. A tossed chair frequently serves as an assistive technology communication device for this young man. The message changes depending upon the context of the situation.
He also has some verbal language skills. His screams of "no, no, NO! GODAMMIT!" punctuate the tossing of the chair.
Ten or fifteen minutes slowly tick by. Finally, with a little help he changes his clothes, sits down and works for about five minutes. Then it's time to go. His bus is here. He only comes to school for half a day. It's all he can handle and sometimes that's pushing it.
My teaching assistant and I grab a couple of umbrellas and go with the student out into the rain. We cover him with the umbrellas as best we could. We hop to make the fifty or so yard walk to the bus without further incident.
No such luck today.
About ten yards from the door, on a wooden walkway with waist high hand rails they built to make the steps of the backdoor ADA compliant, the student drops to his knees. The walkway runs the length of the building. It has a ramp in the middle. He points and screams at the bus, "The lady! The lady!" He wants the lady bus driver that brought him to school in the morning to get off the bus and come get him. I calmly ask him to get up. There is no lady bus driver on this bus.
Without getting up, the student starts kicking and swinging. He looks a fish flopping around on a wet boat dock. A very big, very irrationally angry, out of control fish. My teacher assistant and I step back out of range of the blows while leaning over as best we can to continue to shield him from the downpour with the umbrellas. This of course, exposes us to the rain.
After a few minutes of this, he tires and calms down. He curls up in the fetal position and starts crying in the rain. We continue to stand out of range, just in case. I frequently wonder what the neighbors think when they witness this sort of spectacle. At least so far he has not removed his pants. As they are now quite wet I begin to wonder how much longer it will be before the pants come off.
Waiting, still waiting. Patience is the most important quality. With this young man acting to quickly will get you attacked.
Waiting. He pulls himself up on his knees. Patience. . . don't say a word. The best analogy I can come up with is imagine having to defuse a ticking bomb everyday. Everyday the wiring changes so you don't have a clue which wire to cut first. The wire you safely cut first yesterday might be the one to blow you up today.
He's on his feet. I ask, "Are you ready to go to the bus?"
Wrong wire. . . BOOM!
He pushs past me and runs down the walkway away from the bus. Shit. I take off after him. He gets 10 yards or so and I pass him. I just want to stop his escape. So I stop. He can no longer go forward. My teaching assistant is right behind him so he can not run back. The student starts swinging as I turn around to avoid being struck in the face. Bam, bam, bam. He pounds on my shoulders, back, and ribs. Contrary to what you might expect, I back up and I move closer, into the blows. I've learned from past experience if you move away he just comes after you. I've also learned that it shortens his swinging distance and decreases the momentum and impact of his hits. Which is not to say it does not hurt.
I shout, "I'm okay!" to prevent my teaching assistant from intervening. I'm trying to de-escalate the situation by not getting anymore people involved. He is behind us both. The student can't go anywhere. The student will burn himself out in a the seeming eternity of a few seconds and fall down. It's part of the pattern, its just what he does.
He resumes the fetal positions and his crying.
Around this time I have a revelation. I must confess it is not an entirely new revelation, I have had it before, but not quite in this context. That really seemed to drive it all home.
I am getting paid the same salary as a special education teacher with the same years of experience who works at an elementary school teaching reading to cute third graders with learning disabilities at an affluent wealthy elementary school across town. I am getting paid the same salary as a special education teacher with the same years of experience who has been on and off a "growth plan" for poor job performance.
And I'm being assaulted by a grown man who doesn't mind lying in his own urine in the middle of the biggest "Wrath of God" type storm we've had all year.
I need a raise.
After another few minutes the Principal walks out, "Are you ready?"
"Well," I say, "he's soaking wet, it's raining and about sixty degrees. We can't let him lie here much longer." By this time a half hour or so has passed. If it were clear and seventy three degrees we would wait for as long as it took. The weather created a situation where we did not have the luxury of waiting nearly as long.
"Alright then," he replies, "let's do this."
In another minute we are joined by another one of my teaching assistants and the two biggest teaching assistants on campus. They also work with aggressive and violent kids with autism.
"On three. . . one. . . two. . . three. . . "
Everybody holds and safely secures a limb or other body part. Six properly trained men lift the student and we walk him down the walkway, across the playground, out the gate, up the steps, and into a seat on the waiting bus.
As we sit the student down in the seat he looks around at everybody and smiles. We just got played.
Yeah, I need a raise. And a hot bath. I'll bet I don't get either one.
Tomorrow I will be back, ready to do it again. It's what I do.
|
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