I really struggled with this topic. I know I talked about how my job description completely changed at the beginning of the year when I was asked to work 1 on 1 with a new kindergarten student at my school. To be completely honest it was rough. We had consistant really bad days. I worked with him everyday for 5 weeks, and then when almost at my breakin point we finally got some input from the invisble people who make the decisions.
John was given a behavior evaluation, an ocupational therapy evaluation, and several other tests to determine the best way to work with him. You see, he has a severe case of undiagnosed autsim. He has a brother with Autism, however they are complete opposites. His brother, let's call him Dave, is very high functioning, even plays in the middle school band. I wish I could say that John is just as high functioning.
Throughout the course of this first half of school, John has made so much improvement! He talks now, although it is still very small bits ( 2-3 word phrases), he can sit down and work on academic and life skills without screaming, hitting, or spitting at you for asking and making him do so. Once we got to this point we began working on other skills, social skills. he can now go outside and play with his typicall, as we now call it" classmates as well as participate to a degree in Science/Social Studies learning time.
Then the day came when it was decided that John should start the transition to his permanent classroom setting, the non-typicall room. He started with an hour and a half per day and now wer are at half a day. This has caused some regression in his behaviors. He has started to hit and scream again, but these are things we expected and he is learning to cope with being in a different setting for the THIRD time this school year.
We did have a big celebration today with John. He is extremely sensitive to loud noises and use to refuse to walk into the school gym. This is something that we have been slowly working on. We take him to the gym before going outside to recess and he has to just walk from the inside entrance to the gym to the outside door. It's about 10 steps. This was going really well, and his behavior aide decided it was time we tried a school assembly to see how he managed. We had a school assembly today in which students who participated in our Fally Fundraiser got to dump ice cream on the principal. When classes were dismissed to the gym, we waited until most of the school had gone and then we walked John down to the gym. Once we got to the door we placed headphones ( which he had previously decided he didn't like and would take off and throw on the ground) on his head. He walked rigth into the gym with us, never bothering to take the headphones off and guess what? He sat down in his behavior aides lap and watched the entire assembly. All 48 minutes of it! We were so thrilled.
John is making great progress, and he will be in his non-typicall classroom full time starting in January. I have learned so much in the behavior area of Autism from working with him that I am forever changed. I can not wait to see what the future holds for him and for me.
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