"For Mom"

Today we rounded out the week with a seasonal craft the last 35 minutes before packing up and heading out the door for the weekend. The students were all handed green construction shamrocks to decorate with the glitter, sequins, tissue paper, bingo daubers, markers, googly eyes and other materials that were on the table.

One of my students was waiting patiently at his desk for someone to come help him with the project while I finished up writing the daily notes home to parents/caregivers. Soon he said, "Hey, Kate". We were all a little surprised, this young man typically does not combine a greeting and a name in a phrase without cues, nor does he typically call out for someone, being more the type of person who gets up and goes to who or what he needs.

Given this was a first I went over and sat with him and after chatting for a bit, asked, "You called me over here, what do you want?" He took a minute or so to consider how to express what he was thinking, finally reaching out and holding up the green paper shamrock, "For mom!" he said.

My eyes welled up and we set out together to make one heck of a shamrock, with glitter, green bingo dauber dots and shamrock sequins on it. We worked on sequencing, pincher grasp, colors, the concepts of more/less and opening and closing containers while we worked on the project, but we both knew that all that work was, "For mom!" I made sure I wrote out the story on the back for his mother to read.

The communicative intent of calling me over and telling me he wanted the craft to be "for mom" was remarkable and a major step forward. The cognitive ability to predict that something he was about to work on in school could make a difference in his world after school was even more remarkable as was the understanding that he could ask for help in the way he did. The kindness in the desire to make his mother happy and proud made my heart sing.

That is why I am a special education teacher. That is what makes the paper work, the administrative hassles, the days where I go home with someone else's lunch on my shirt, have my hair pulled or wrench my back with all the lifting worth it. When a student can communicate something he has never been able to communicate before, when he can engage in an activity and extrapolate the meaning in it to his own life, when he can connect what he is doing at school with the important people in his life at home I know I have chosen the right path. Happy St. Patrick's Day indeed. Everyone one should be as lucky as I am to work with such amazing students.

The Power of "Yes"

Tonight I was reading Maternal Insticts: Flying by the Seat of My Pants which is one of my favorite blogs by a parent of a child with disabilities and Niksmom's recounting of Nik learning how to sign "yes" and thus answer questions about pain brought back one of my favorite teacher memories.

About 10 years ago I taught a very small intensive special needs class in an urban elementary school. One of my students, a 10 year old boy, came to me with a history of sleeping all day, every day, at school and an estimated "developmental age" of six months. This little boy came from a Spanish speaking home and lived in the housing projects in the city. He had a severe seizure disorder, cerebral palsy, used a wheelchair and was non-verbal. As we settled into a routine in our classroom that September and October I noticed that he often laughed or responded in an obvious way to humor, especially joke questions like, "Is you mother's name Tallulah?" (It wasn't.)

One day we were in that nebulous part of the afternoon when everyone has their coats on and their bags packed, but the buses have not arrived yet. Jokingly I asked my student if he could open his mouth to catch a fly in the room. He did. I stifled my gasp and asked him if he could look up. He did. I repeated my question and he again looked up, laughing now. I went into the hallway and grabbed the first person I could find, the OT, and asked her to watch us. I again requested my student look up. He did and then he laughed. I asked him if there was anything else he could do. He stuck his tongue out just past his lips and grinned at me.

The next day I asked my student if we could pretend looking up meant "yes". He looked up. I proceeded to ask him a variety of questions and he accurately responded to all of them using his new method of raising his eyes to say "yes". Actually he missed one question, "Is your mother's name Tallulah?" (Which he thought was the best joke ever.)

Over the next few weeks we worked to refine this method of answering "yes" and I was hesitant to call his mother (who was not named Tallulah) in for a meeting, in case he wasn't ready to carry his new communication over to his home life. One morning the phone rang and his mother (through a translator) asked why her son was rolling his eyes at her all the time. We knew we had accomplished generalization and filled the mom in on what all the eye raising meant. She was excited, but dubious.

A few weeks after that we received another early morning phone call from my student's mother. She was crying and before long the translator was crying as well. The mom was explaining, "Last night my baby was crying. He was sick and I didn't know what was wrong. I started asking him questions. Do your toes hurt? Do your legs hurt? Does your bottom hurt? Does your stomach hurt? When I asked about his stomach he raised his eyes and stopped crying so hard. I gave him some stomach medicine in his tube and he was better. He stopped crying. This is the first time I could help my son because he could tell me what was wrong. Thank you so much. Thank you for making it so my son can tell me what he needs from me."

Once we heard what the conversation was about we were all crying. A few months later my student added a slight head shake for "no". Then he learned how to use partner assisted scanning in a more formal way and then to use simple scanning software with a switch to make choices and spell out messages. All of this from an afternoon of joking around. His picture still hangs on my wall (taken with his hero Rick Hoyt) to remind me of the power of "yes".

Possibility

Today one of my students, who has been in my class for about ten weeks, starting using an AMDI Tech/Speak, not only that but the student started using it well, very well. This kiddo is a shining example that the right classroom, with the right supports and the right behavioral intervention can lead to unbelievable possibility.

The student has never had a consistent communicative intervention, various low and moderate technology interventions have been tried and abandoned. Prestigious communication clinics contradict themselves twice a year on what to do next. The last recommendation was for a key chain based picture card system, yet this student needs the least possible movement in technology she uses. She needs for it to stay still no matter how often attempts are made to move it or throw it. The ability to move something is so distracting for the student that a pull off Velcro symbol system, a communication book system or a key chain system would be a set up for failure. This student loves movement from cars to bikes to a gait trainer. This student loves to be in movement by walking, throwing, grabbing, and just wiggling. Appropriate positive behavior supports, use of teaching technique like seductive removal and movement could be a reward and not a distraction. In short, we make it so things don't move, so that when she moves if is a positive thing, not a negative thing.

Thus we started with a static display communication board mounted permanently on the tray of the wheelchair and the table. Minimal teaching, with use of the prompt hierarchy and plenty of positive reinforcement lead to success. Then I decided to spend several hours restoring an old, abandoned Tech/Speak that has a tendency to play messages even if no one was touching it. The Tech/Speak was long out of warranty and required hours of re-soldering wires and careful cleaning of the inside and outside of the device. Thankfully it worked and the device was restored to full usefulness. Overlays were created based on the student's static display boards (the Tech/Speak in the picture is from a link to Monroe Public Schools, not my classroom) and previous successful icon training. The Tech/Speak was mounted to the wheelchair tray to make it unmoveable (using straps and my all-time favorite assistive technology hardward store clamps).

Finally, today, the student was able to access the Tech/Speak effectively, essentially the first time it was presented. Greetings, comments, responses, refusals, inquires - all no problem for this student with the "new" Tech/Speak.

That's what happens when a TEAM of people, from teacher to paraprofessional to SLP see the possibility in students instead of the problems.