I took this assignment because Diane ACCIDENTLY CLICKED APPROVE while she was looking at the website. I arrive at the school and am immediately mixed in with maybe 4 staff, 2 other subs, and about 8 very young, severely autistic kids. God bless the staff and the parents with this challenge, but the tantrums, yelling, spitting (2 of the kids obviously enjoyed this Covid recommended activity) was overwhelming. I almost bowed out at noon, and again at the end of the first day. But I had committed 3 days. So I returned on Day 2 and 3. Thankfully, it got better and better. The wonder of watching these heroic staff members apply their training and expertise to help these kids was inspiring. The kids became more likable to me the longer I stayed. It was the spitting which freaked me out more than anything. Having a maskless kid spit on me was quite jarring. But I simply learned to step behind one of the staff members or even another sub if a spitter approached. Seriously, I did. I texted a sub who is doing this long term for several days after the assignment to ask how my autistic friends Aayush, Sato, and Selena (names changed) were doing. I admire all teachers, but I think the young staff members in charge of these kids are at the top of my list.
I’ve heard of the debate whether special needs students should be mixed with other students in mainstream classrooms. My sense after 3 days is this is not a binary choice or an easy answer. This school attempted to bring these kids into regular classrooms, and teach them other material at the back of the class if the special needs kids were not disruptive to the class. I could see these are trained educators who could calculate when it was advisable, when not, and how to do it. I could also see the autistic kids seemingly fascinated wathcing portions of a class, and I witnessed some members of the class come back and say hi to the autistic children. These were first-graders. We need to trust our educators. They are not perfect. But they are smart and highly trained and experienced. And they care.
On Day 2, I was attending one of the special needs students at the back of a full first grade class. I was trying to teach him to count by dropping beans in a cup, and hoping he stayed quiet so I could relax for 45 minutes. Next to us was a young black first grader. The teacher (who was superb with the class) handed out an exercise on paper for the first graders so they could match verbs with nouns. She missed the young girl next to me because we were in the back corner. The girl raised her hand for about 2 minutes while the teacher started the exercise, but she was not seen. It was a large class. I got up, got a copy of the exercise, and gave it to the young girl. She quickly caught up on the lesson. I looked at her paper near the end of the class, and it was perfect. There was something about this girl. No fidgeting, no talking, complete attention, perfect work, perfect penmanship. I’ll wonder for a long while how she is doing. Will her life circumstances enable her to continue her excellence in school? Will the frustrations of racism discourage her? Will the consequences of global warming have any impact on her educational progress? I truthfully feel that my generation did her no favors with the world we are leaving to her, but that’s another blog. At the end of the class, this little first grader looked at me and said “thank you”. I replied “you did really well – keep on doing that every day”. I’ll likely never meet her again, but I’ll remember her.