Wednesday, March 23, 2005
a typical morning
(another adventure in the ongoing saga of my need for a raise)
Wednesday morning. Around 10:30.
My class had recently returned from Adapted Physical Education Class (gym class, like you remember, minus the embarrassment of the locker room, with activities modified to meet the needs of individuals with disabilities). My student's practiced for the upcoming Spring Track and Field Special Olympics Games. (Ah, Special Olympics. . . If you have never been, I recommend it highly. It has a Pythonesque feel that is very entertaining.)
We were outside, enjoying a perfect spring morning, until our practice was cut a few minutes short because one of my students was obsessively picking up pebbles from the playground and eating them.
Time to move on to the next activity on today's schedule, Uno. We play every Wednesday, after P.E.
Uno is a great game for folks with disabilities. It is very easily modified to meet the needs of pretty much anybody. It provides lots of opportunities for working on social interactions, waiting for a turn, etc. and a variety of other goals. One of my students is working on picking up a card and putting it in a basket for his turn. Another student is working on color recognition, a third on numbers and counting. I am quite pleased if another student makes it through a game without eating a card.
Myself, four of my students, and two of my teaching assistants are seated at a round table in the middle of the classroom. On my left, one of my big teenage boys with autism has decided he is tired of the the game. He is alternately throwing the cards at me and hitting my arm as he screams his monosyllabic protest, "Uh-Uh-Uh-Aaaagh!"
Without missing a beat or acknowledging his behavior I calmly redirect him to the game, "Count the cards. . . "
On my right, a student sits happily in his wheelchair in his self absorbed world, holding and shaking a key ring with old keys with his one arm and hand that he can use functionally. Cerebral palsy has claimed the use of his other arm. He loves shiny jangly things. He just does. He is at best apathetic or at worst completely oblivious to the game going on at the table. For his turn, I snatch the keys from his hand. When he reaches for the keys I block the reach with a card. He grabs the card, drops it in a small basket and I give him back the keys.
The student on my left is still screaming and throwing cards.
Across the table, perhaps sensing an opportunity due to the distraction of his classmate, this student tries to jump up and away from the table. One of my assistants stops him with a gentle hand on the shoulder. He sits back down and begins to two-handed smack and beat the crap out of his own face in frustration. As my assistant's grab his hands to prevent injury (he's given himself black eyes in the past) and try to talk him down, a fourth student makes his big move.
He reaches out from his wheelchair and with his almost literal superhuman upper body strength grabs the table and begins to pick it up. As the cards slide to the floor I realize that although to an outside observer this might look chaotic or completely out of control, I think the game is still going rather smoothly and relatively well. Because it is. This happens nearly every time we play Uno.
We pick up the cards and resume play.
My fifth student is not playing Uno. He quite honestly just can't handle it. For so many reasons: severe autism, undiagnosed schizophrenia, oppositional/defiant behavior, and so on and so on and so on.
He should be shredding paper as part of his regular daily routine. He typically likes doing it, and the obsessive/compulsive function of his autism makes him rather meticulous at the task.
But not right now.
Right now he is curled up in the fetal position on the floor about five feet behind me. Totally naked. Screaming something mostly unintelligible about "the bus the bus". Apparently he wishes to go home. My teaching assistant who is supervising him asks him a question I didn't quite hear.
I heard the answer just fine. "No!" he screams as he lunges forward. My assistant jumps back as the arm of a naked man swings wildly. He misses my assistant but connects with a box of magazines on a built-in bookshelf beneath the row of windows that make up one wall of my classroom. The magazines virtually explode off the shelf onto the floor. The very naked and now very upset student jumps up. He pounds against the glass and pulls at the blinds. He is in a panic, a pure animalistic fight or flight fury.
My assistant graps an arm and the student half falls and half just plain sits down on the floor, surrounded by the magazines.
He remains in a panicked, fight or flight state. He grabs magazines off the floor and wildly throws them in all directions. He can't go forward. . .
I turn from my seat and stand up just in time to block him from going under our card game at the table. Another unintelligible scream begins as he pounds on my feet and legs with his open hands, scrambling to get around or through me. He is a naked whirling twirling screaming kicking hitting machine on the floor at my feet. My feet and legs begin to ache from the beating, but I hold my ground as my assistants quickly move the other students and the table to safety on the other side of the classroom.
After a seeming eternity of this, but in reality probably less than a minute, he stops, exhausted, returns to the fetal position and just whimpers. His eyes and face are soaked with tears, his face between his nose and his chin is a mess of saliva and mucous.
Game over.
|
Wednesday morning. Around 10:30.
My class had recently returned from Adapted Physical Education Class (gym class, like you remember, minus the embarrassment of the locker room, with activities modified to meet the needs of individuals with disabilities). My student's practiced for the upcoming Spring Track and Field Special Olympics Games. (Ah, Special Olympics. . . If you have never been, I recommend it highly. It has a Pythonesque feel that is very entertaining.)
We were outside, enjoying a perfect spring morning, until our practice was cut a few minutes short because one of my students was obsessively picking up pebbles from the playground and eating them.
Time to move on to the next activity on today's schedule, Uno. We play every Wednesday, after P.E.
Uno is a great game for folks with disabilities. It is very easily modified to meet the needs of pretty much anybody. It provides lots of opportunities for working on social interactions, waiting for a turn, etc. and a variety of other goals. One of my students is working on picking up a card and putting it in a basket for his turn. Another student is working on color recognition, a third on numbers and counting. I am quite pleased if another student makes it through a game without eating a card.
Myself, four of my students, and two of my teaching assistants are seated at a round table in the middle of the classroom. On my left, one of my big teenage boys with autism has decided he is tired of the the game. He is alternately throwing the cards at me and hitting my arm as he screams his monosyllabic protest, "Uh-Uh-Uh-Aaaagh!"
Without missing a beat or acknowledging his behavior I calmly redirect him to the game, "Count the cards. . . "
On my right, a student sits happily in his wheelchair in his self absorbed world, holding and shaking a key ring with old keys with his one arm and hand that he can use functionally. Cerebral palsy has claimed the use of his other arm. He loves shiny jangly things. He just does. He is at best apathetic or at worst completely oblivious to the game going on at the table. For his turn, I snatch the keys from his hand. When he reaches for the keys I block the reach with a card. He grabs the card, drops it in a small basket and I give him back the keys.
The student on my left is still screaming and throwing cards.
Across the table, perhaps sensing an opportunity due to the distraction of his classmate, this student tries to jump up and away from the table. One of my assistants stops him with a gentle hand on the shoulder. He sits back down and begins to two-handed smack and beat the crap out of his own face in frustration. As my assistant's grab his hands to prevent injury (he's given himself black eyes in the past) and try to talk him down, a fourth student makes his big move.
He reaches out from his wheelchair and with his almost literal superhuman upper body strength grabs the table and begins to pick it up. As the cards slide to the floor I realize that although to an outside observer this might look chaotic or completely out of control, I think the game is still going rather smoothly and relatively well. Because it is. This happens nearly every time we play Uno.
We pick up the cards and resume play.
My fifth student is not playing Uno. He quite honestly just can't handle it. For so many reasons: severe autism, undiagnosed schizophrenia, oppositional/defiant behavior, and so on and so on and so on.
He should be shredding paper as part of his regular daily routine. He typically likes doing it, and the obsessive/compulsive function of his autism makes him rather meticulous at the task.
But not right now.
Right now he is curled up in the fetal position on the floor about five feet behind me. Totally naked. Screaming something mostly unintelligible about "the bus the bus". Apparently he wishes to go home. My teaching assistant who is supervising him asks him a question I didn't quite hear.
I heard the answer just fine. "No!" he screams as he lunges forward. My assistant jumps back as the arm of a naked man swings wildly. He misses my assistant but connects with a box of magazines on a built-in bookshelf beneath the row of windows that make up one wall of my classroom. The magazines virtually explode off the shelf onto the floor. The very naked and now very upset student jumps up. He pounds against the glass and pulls at the blinds. He is in a panic, a pure animalistic fight or flight fury.
My assistant graps an arm and the student half falls and half just plain sits down on the floor, surrounded by the magazines.
He remains in a panicked, fight or flight state. He grabs magazines off the floor and wildly throws them in all directions. He can't go forward. . .
I turn from my seat and stand up just in time to block him from going under our card game at the table. Another unintelligible scream begins as he pounds on my feet and legs with his open hands, scrambling to get around or through me. He is a naked whirling twirling screaming kicking hitting machine on the floor at my feet. My feet and legs begin to ache from the beating, but I hold my ground as my assistants quickly move the other students and the table to safety on the other side of the classroom.
After a seeming eternity of this, but in reality probably less than a minute, he stops, exhausted, returns to the fetal position and just whimpers. His eyes and face are soaked with tears, his face between his nose and his chin is a mess of saliva and mucous.
Game over.
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