SWD

Two summers ago, I worked as a day camp counselor for a church near my home. The camp included elementary ages students from kindergarten to kids who were going into the sixth grade that next year. About a month into the program we had a student start. I got a chance to talk with his mom, and she informed me that her son, we’ll call him Max had Asperger’s Syndrome. I was not very educated about this disorder and therefore was not expecting it to be that big of a disturbance on the rest of the campers and their experiences. She told me that it was only a mild case and that the only major thing that would be helpful would be if there was going to be a change in the schedule, I should let him know ahead of time so that he could adjust. That was not necessarily the case. We had multiple incidences over the course of the next 2 weeks in which this student had to be taken home early because he got violent with other campers. One day it was raining outside so we were playing board games in one of the rooms, and he was playing really well with another camper, but when he lost at “Guess Who?” he proceeded to jump on top of the person he lost to and try to pull out his hair. Another day, Max wanted to swing on the tire swing, but there were already students on it. So, he went to the student who was pushing them and bit him so hard that he started to bleed! Unfortunately, Max couldn’t stay with our program after that situation. The part that was so upsetting to me was when we had to confront Max’s mom and let her know that he would not be allowed to come back. She started to cry and told us that this was the 5^thcamp that summer that he was kicked out of. She didn’t know how to handle her own son, and didn’t have the resources to figure out what environment was best for him. As a counselor I was frustrated because she did not inform us accurately of how much this disorder really affected his life, but as a person, I was hurting for her because she didn’t know what to do, and proceeded to tell us that school was a similar situation. I can’t begin to imagine being a teacher and having this happen. Max’s mom just needed information.

respect

I really enjoyed having the panel of students come in and talk to our class about the LGBT club on campus. The most important part of hearing them talk was hearing their own stories. I think that for many people, it is easier to think about the “hot issue” of gay rights as an overall group, but they do not think about individuals. Just like within the classroom, each of our students will be an individual. They will not only be seventh grade language arts students, or first graders or sophomores in high school. Each one of them has a personal story to talk about. Each one is learning about themselves, and other people. Therefore, it is our duty as teachers to stop the injustice that happens in our classroom. One of the students was talking about one of the best things we can do is take control over our own classroom. We cannot tell our students what to think, but if possible, we can help change HOW they think, how they interact with other people; we can teach them about respect. In my opinion, our students need to respect not only us, but also each other to have a functioning classroom. The argument that some people have used “there is no way that we can change what they do outside of class” doesn’t hold up for me. I know that things that my teacher has said have changed my life. Even if it is not every student that walks into our classroom that has a little light bulb go off in their head, we can impact students. It is our decision whether it’s for good, or for bad. I really appreciated the group of students coming in and discussing their stories with our class, and I think it is more discussions and questions that they responded to that can get us thinking about how we can better prepare ourselves for what will be walking into our classrooms, and how we can best respond. More than anything, it is our opportunity to help our students learn, about the class material, and about themselves, and hopefully provide them a space to be themselves.

life outside of school.

I lead a small group of freshmen girls here on campus. And as I was talking with a few of them over the break, they kept talking about school work, and how it was taking a back seat to other issues that were going on in their lives. It made me start thinking, how do we help our students balance their personal lives with the class work that we will give them as they walk into our classrooms? We’ve all had those days when something crazy happened the night before, a break up, a fight with parents, or a friend desperately needed to talk, so you didn’t get as much sleep as you needed. So how can we best prepare our students for college life? When you have so much freedom, and so many opportunities facing you head on, and you have to decide whether to stay up all night watching a “Friends” marathon, or to start writing the essay that is due the next day at 5:00? Some situations we have to be compassionate about what is going on, but at the same time, college professors aren’t nearly as accommodating to hearing that we broke up with our significant other and its still really bothering us, so we didn’t study for the test as much as we should have. Or is that even our place? Is that something that each student has to decide on his or her own? I guess this would pertain mostly to high school, but it is still something that we have to deal with. How about those teachers (we’ve all had them…) that give you so much work that you and all your friends talk about saying “does he/she not realize that we have a life outside of his/her class? There is no way I’ll be able to finish all of this…” While I don’t want to be “that teacher” I still want to challenge my students; I want to be known as a difficult teacher, but you come out of the class knowing a whole lot more than you did when you first came in. But where is the balance?

observation...

This past week, I went and did part of my hours for the end of semester paper. I went and observed in a high school language arts classroom. It was an interesting mix of classes because I observed an inclusion class, a gifted class, and a class that had a few students who were diagnosed with EBD. I really enjoyed my time there because I got the chance to experience how to teach the same material to three different levels of students. The students were just starting to read Of Mice and Men and the teacher started the class by asking the students what they knew about the Great Depression era in U.S. history. I really liked how she did that because it allowed the students to share what they did know, while also giving them valuable background information that they would need in order to better understand the setting and the situations of the characters. I was a little surprised that she had the same lesson plan for all three classes because I would have thought that they would change dramatically for each level of students. Overall, I learned a lot about how to manage classroom settings for different groups of students. While each class was remarkably different, it was still very important that each class covered around the same material. It was also surprising just how different each group was. Once class was loud and another was rather quiet. Each class had an entirely different personality, and I loved that the teacher that I was shadowing had a complete understanding of how to interact with each type of classroom. This helped the classroom to run in a much smoother manner because of her ability to be a different kind of teacher for each classroom, and at times a different teacher to individual students within the same class. This kind of variance was also helpful in the overall atmosphere.