It's Monday...

Today was Monday, I hate Mondays. After two busy days “off” I always feel farther behind on Monday than I did on Friday. Then to top it off I have a 7:30 a.m. staff meeting which, by the way, usually goes until 8:30 which is same time the buses are pulling up in front of school.

So today was a typical Monday until…I saw Mike coming up the sidewalk, unlike my other three students who have the same opinion of Mondays, he is not walking but running up the side walk with a big smile on his face. He is really happy to be here, not just happy – he is excited. Its Monday, there is no reason to really be excited right?

Then I start thinking about it and realize that Mike doesn’t really have the same concept of Monday and all the burdens that adults carry with the beginning of the week. Mike’s life revolves around a schedule, things happen in a certain order and when things are going according to the “schedule” all is well in his world.

Lesson Learned: It’s Monday, and "that’s okay" because that means everything is going according to schedule.

Maybe I will stop dreading Monday and start embracing it. Maybe if rather than slowing walking the sidewalk dreading the pile of work on my desk and meetings that I have to attend, I will run (well okay maybe walk quickly) with a smile on my face. Why, well not only does it mean everything is the way it should be but also becasue Monday's really aren't all that bad, it is Library and Movie Day after all!

Choose your words carefully...

It's Thursday afternoon and unbelievably all four of my students are sitting quietly at their desks. How that miracle happened I am not sure, but the staff and I were not going to complain. We were using the break time to catch up on the endless paperwork that is generated from my classroom daily.

About five minutes into the break we hear the familiar sound of Velcro being pulled apart coming from Tim's workstation. We all turn to look at Tim becasue we know that a request is coming, and silently we are rejoicing because this is spontaneous communication.

Tim walks up with a very proud look on his face. The communication exchange happens and Tim proudly reads the strip "I want big little".  Oh no, Huston we have a problem...what in the world is "big little". Since I don't have know clue what Tim wants I revert to the basic "show me" response. Tim give me a big smile and goes to the bears sitting on the shelf at his workstation. I tell him okay and he happily takes them to twirl between his fingers.

I go back to the other staff in the room and explain the exchange. We are perplexed - how in the world does he associate the bears with the label "big little".  Then we remember...

A few months ago the speech teacher and I were working on teaching the concepts of big/little to Tim. We had used the bears and said "give me big/little" and "which one do you want big/little". At the time we were so ecstatic that he had mastered the concept. In retrospect I now realize that the "concept" that we actually taught him was the bears where named "big" and "little".  

Lesson learned: Choose your words carefully becasue everything as the potential to be taken literally.

I wonder what other "concepts" I have taught Tim. Does he really know hot/cold or is the faucet in bathroom called hot/cold; is the airplane called "up" and the car is really called "down"; Tim is probably wondering why I keep calling is favorite toy "red bear" rather than "little". Oh well, that's something to worry about another day.

Today I am going to celebrate that not only did Tim spontaneously communicate, but he requested exactly what he wanted, the way he had been taught, without any assistance. It doesn't get much better than that.