Law of Gravity

It was one of the severe special ed classes. Lunch time. While the kiddos were at lunch, their instructional aides were out supervising. But the aides get a lunch, too, so there's a bit of a juggle. They have to find time for their lunch (usually during class time) while making sure the class is manned. As the teacher, my lunch is when the kiddos go to lunch. However, there was Jason. Jason was non verbal and confined to a wheelchair. He was fed through a tube by his one-on-one aide a couple times that day. He could not be left alone. Jason's one-on-one took her lunch before the actual lunch so she could be back while the other aides were out supervising lunch. But, because of time constraints, there was a small gap of about five minutes (normally, but this was a block schedule day, so the gap was more like ten) where Jason didn't have supervision. On a normal day, the teacher took over for that time. If it was normally the teacher's job, then on this day it was mine. I...

High school science, special ed edition. We were reading a chapter on sound. We had a whole period, and just reading gets a bit tedious, so to break things up I searched for videos demonstrating sound waves. In the limited time, I came up empty, but I did find this article on sounds only young people can hear . Oooh, I had to try this. I played the 8000 Hz. Then, the 12,000 Hz wasn't working in the article, so I found another on YouTube . We could all hear those. As I am over 40, the 15,000 Hz was inaudible to me and the instructional aide. The kiddos said they heard it fine. (They complained that it was irritating, though.) And then I played the 17,400 Hz... "Wait. I can't hear that! Are you playing something?" I've had Josephine Joe in several classes. (You are probably aware I don't use students' actual names, and I haven't here. But I remember her because her first name is the feminine version that shortens to the male name that is her last name.) ...

Seventh grade special ed world history. They're studying the Renaissance. We had a few paragraphs to read. Then they had some multiple choice questions to answer. As they were special ed, we were doing them together. Question number 3: Who was Michelangelo? Very faintly, from the back, I heard, "A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ." I pounced. (The Ninja Turtles were huge when I worked at the evil toy store. And, he wasn't wrong.) I had the kiddos recall the names of the Ninja Turtles. Raphael. Leonardo. Michelangelo. Donatello. Then I informed them that the Ninja Turtles were named after Renaissance artists.  Ahem. It's a stupid random piece of trivia. I love throwing out stupid random pieces of trivia. Silly, I know...

Ninth grade special ed English class. They were doing a lesson on comparative and superlative adjectives . The instructional aide warned me that fifth period was a bit challenging. Freshman boys? That's kind of like warning me I'll get wet when it's raining. Liam did all the usual delay tactics. No pencil. No paper. Not sure what to do. Then the assurance he was brilliant and could complete the whole assignment with minimal effort. Although, when Liam finally did do some work (I was shocked), he did breeze through the first two sets of questions. (I did not check his work, so it might have been sloppily and incompletely done.) The third set of questions had words he was to put in a sentence. Number one was "funny". I didn't much care what his sentences were, but he felt the need to announce them. (Notably, no other boys in the class felt this need.) Then he got to number three. "Longer". Liam: "Mine is longer than everyone's, especially Car...

Actually, to be fully correct, this post should be titled "Connect Four for Students who are Visually Impaired", but that's just too long and unwieldy... I covered one period of the visually impaired class while the teacher was at an IEP meeting. And we managed to get through their entire assignment with twenty plus minutes left to spare. I asked what they do normally when the lesson runs short. They said they played a game the last time. The instructional aide suggested Connect Four . (There were two students in class.) In case you were wondering (I was), someone had drilled holes in all the black checkers, so one could tell by touch which checkers were which. The two girls played one game that finished very quickly. They said they were bored with it. Really? Bored? That tells me that they weren't doing it right... So, I sat down with them and went about teaching them a bit of strategy. As a child I played many strategy games with my father. (Chess. Pente .) And he w...