Short Days

[This entry was written some months back, before I started as an "Intervention Specialist," but I think it is worth including even now.  Some day perhaps I'll have enough of these descriptions to publish a small book.]

This past week we had final exams, so the class schedule was a little different than usual. We had two two-hour period in the morning, and school let out at 12:45. I subbed for a teacher who was ill, and who had already given her students their final the week before. I had nothing to give them to do, so I let them do whatever they wanted to, as long as they were orderly and reasonably quiet. I put a suggested list of activities on the board: Finish any work they still had for this class, do homework for other classes, read, talk, listen to their ipods. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I had two classes each day, all of them different students from the others.

As for the fact that the students had all been given their finals the week before, I can only conclude that the teacher had planned to take this time off and wasn't really ill. Maybe I am wrong, but I think much of the time the students spent in these classes was a waste.

However, my impression of this teacher, even without meeting her, is quite favorable. As a substitute teacher, one can walk into any regular teacher's classroom and tell what kind of teacher they are.

In this room, there were a large number of posters made up with various scientific data and information on them that students would need for problem-solving. There was a large poster telling the students that they were expected to aim at a goal of 80% correct MINIMUM. But most important, there was a lot of material on the walls and shelves that made it clear she held her students accountable.

For instance, there was a bookshelf containing good quality loose-leaf notebooks, one for each students, containing every quiz and test the student had taken. I was forced to compare this with a collection of notebooks I found in another teacher's classroom last year where the notebooks were all torn and dirty, and where some students had entered a few of their assignments and others had done a more comprehensive job of the same. Particularly interesting this past week were wall charts with every student's name and every test and quiz, and with a colored star next to each quiz, except for a few that the students had not taken. This was visible evidence of how the student was doing, something they could see to remind them of the quality of their efforts. When I discussed the classroom with a friend who knows the teacher, I was told that this was typical of her conscientious approach. She wanted everything from the students she expected of them, and she made sure she got it.

I also got the impression from the students that most were quite bright. One student said 80% were intelligent, and there was an element of about 20% who didn't care about their grades.

All in all, I could see that this teacher was doing an excellent job, even if she wasn't there for a few days.

I encountered three interesting students in her classes, and I'll describe them for you.

Since the beginning of 2012, I have been what is called an "intervention specialist."  I have worked with severely disabled students, usually in a classroom setting that includes one main teacher and several assistants like myself, trying to teach students basic skills that will help them survive as independently as possible when they grow older.  Most of the time this has been with middle school -- junior high school -- students.  They are junior high school aged students only because of their age, not because of their abilities.

For instance, with one student I spent a lot of time trying to teach one particular student how to count from one to ten.  We often went over and over the sequence of numbers.  For reasons I cannot explain, the student had one through seven just fine, but could never add eight to it.  Instead, he always went "seven . . .nine."

In the school system where I have been working, there seem to be three main types of people working daily all day long in the classroom.

First, there is a fully credentialed teacher, a specialist in teaching this type of student.  From what I have seen of these teachers, they have certain personality traits in common: great attention to detail, enormous patience,  great enthusiasm, and general unflappability.  These teachers are especially trained, and are very good at what they do.

The second type of person in these classrooms are the "intervention specialists," a job title given to someone who has a college degree and who does what I have been doing.  The intervention specialist's job is simply to assist the teacher -- in other words, to take directions from the teacher and do various things that need to be done.  This may include taking a student to a "mainstream" class somewhere outside their normal classroom.  Or it may include sitting next to a student and helping them read a simple text.  Or it may include working with a students on math problems, getting the student to focus and work on the problems in front of him instead of paying attention to other things going on in the classroom.  Sometimes it may include sitting with a student in the cafeteria and literally feeding them.

The third type of adult in these classrooms are known as "aides."  For some reason, aides, who do the same thing as "intervention specialists," are paid several dollars an hour less than "intervention specialists."  Some of these aides are incredibly skilled, certainly far more skilled than myself.

I think, for instance, of a student named Charlie, who was so severely handicapped that he could not speak, and spent a lot of his time simply sitting in his chair and compulsively jumping up and down.  Sometimes he made little noises as he did this.  Charlie's ability level was extremely low.  He could take a toy suitable for a very young child and fit different shapes into slots that matched the different shapes.  If one held a book open in front of him, sometimes he would look at the pictures quietly for a minute or two.  But when he came to the classroom he couldn't do much more.

One of the things these children are taught is to keep clean by washing their hands after going to the toilet and before meals.  One particular aide in that classroom, Ralph, is someone whom I really regard as a miracle worker.  He is a middle-aged African-American man who at times seemed quite stern, but who successfully worked very hard to teach Charlie a few basic skills.  For instance, he took Charlie from a state in which he had to be led to the sink and have water turned on and off for him so he could wash his hands to the point where he could be told to wash his hands by himself.  Charlie became able to get up, go to the sink, turn the water on (which he had not been able to do previously), push a liquid soap dispenser for soap, wash his hands, turn the water off, dry his hands with a paper towel, and then return to his seat, all by himself.

Some parents with severely disabled children (the politically correct term these days, I think, is "challenged") work very hard to improve their children's skills and enrich their lives.  Others, when the child gets home, just park their kid in front of a TV set and ignore them unless it is time to feed them or put them to bed.  Charlie's mother gave a good show of being concerned about her child.  For instance, she wanted something most teachers do not provide, a written summary of how Charlie did every day in his school activities.  I began keeping a special notebook with daily entries because the classroom teacher in charge didn't have time to do this.  Charlie's mother, however, did almost nothing to help Charlie once he was at home.

I don't think she was even aware of the miracle that Ralph had achieved with her kid.

Four or five times I have walked into a classroom, have started a class and have been told by a student  -- usually a young female -- right off the bat and without provocation, "You know, we hate substitute teachers."  This is part of high school culture.  It has evidently been part of high school culture for many years because when I've told middle-aged friends that I have been substitute teaching, most of the time they comment that when they were in school they used to give their substitute teachers a hard time.  My usual response when confronted this way is to say as casually as possible, "I didn't come here for love.  If I wanted love, I would get a dog."