Today

Every once in a while you have one of those days that is indescribable. Here are some of the things that happened in our room today:

• A student who's Dynavox V Max Wheelchair mount has had a part on back order almost had the V Max smash to the floor when the clamp-on Deassy mount started to rip the molding off the classroom table, at that time I decided to borrow a spare part from another student and get teh V Max properly mounted. Not as easy as it looks so I enlisted the PT. She struggled with the set up for an hour, since Deassy never sends directions with their parts we ended up downloading some (no internet at our school so I had to use my network card), but they weren't very helpful, finally we spoke to a wonderful man in customer service at Dynavox (thanks Eric) and got everything up and running (nearly 90 minutes later), just in time for the student to need to get out of his wheelchair, get freshened up and have a position change (bummer)
  
• Next one of my students was having some, um, distress in the gastrointestinal area, this same student loves cars. When questioned if he needed to go to the restroom to help out his gastrointestinal issues he answered, "Car!" In one of my sillier moments I responded, "You want to poop in car?! Ewww! That is gross, just gross!" My student lost it, pointed to "yucky" on his lap tray communication board and then he laughed for ten minutes. All it took the rest of the day for him to start laughing again was for me to say, "Gross, just gross!"
• At lunch time one of my students who does not eat by mouth gets to choose if he goes to "look at girls" in the cafe or if he will stay in the classroom with me and play switch games or listen to music or books on tape. Today he chose to stay in the room and to use a switch to flip through the tracks on Windows Media Player (put the mouse over the next track button and set the switch interface to "click") he very much enjoyed changing the song anytime I smiled or sang along (especially if I sang along) and letting it play if I told him I hated it, however, to my surprise he listened to the entirity of the Martin Luther King Jr. "I Have a Dream" speech. Perhaps he just loves great oratory? I am considering downloading other great speeches.
  
• Later I informed one of my students that we have set up for a representative from Empowering Access to come see her with a Tellus AAC device she became so excited that she literally could not move, she stood in her walker"saying", " Por Me? Por Me? I love you! Por Me? Me? Oh! I love you!" It was too adorable.
• At the end of the day the same student as the last story needed was asked if she wanted to walk to the bus or ride in her stroller. She has limited articulation skills and for the most part knows her limits, she did not want to use her walker (although she could say it) and she did want to go in the stroller (although she cannot say it) so instead she said, "Blue". I thought that was particularly ingenius. Nothing is more blue than a Convaid special needs stroller.