A Special Ed Day

I was back in Ms. H's moderate to severe special ed class. (When I was last there, I had some car trouble.) 

The first block. Ryder was punching in the air. I was far enough away that I didn't get hit, but I was close enough that one wrong move and I could. I gently mentioned maybe not punching the air. But Ms. S, one of the instructional aides, informed me that Ryder used to punch walls. Punching the air was way better. Agreed.

Ryder had a pretty constant monologue going. Sometimes I could follow his train of thought, sometimes I couldn't.

Ryder wanted to write "superhero" on his paper. Ms. S said he could write it on the back. Later in the day, he wrote it as his last name (although he knows his last name and could spell it when he was prompted to put it on his paper). 

There were worksheets (on the calendar, on telling time, etc). There were activities. Ryder was a little hard to direct, but he eventually got his stuff done.

At lunch, he disappeared into the bathroom and returned in a Batman costume. I had seen him in this costume on previous occasions, and as no one commented on it, I gathered it was a usual thing. Ms. S later told me Ryder gets to have lunch in the costume. Whatever works.

But by math class, Ryder was kind of done. There was a coloring worksheet that he was in a hurry to complete, but I could not get him to do it properly. I directed as best I could, but he wouldn't slow down enough to follow directions. But it was the afternoon of the Thursday before a four-day weekend, so we were all a bit burnt out.

After that, we got to do "fun Friday". (We had a science lesson in the lesson plans, but the IAs said Ms. H had texted them to shift us to a wind down for the weekend. That was fine by me.) Ryder got to hum along to whatever songs he was listening to on his computer. (They got out a Nintendo Switch and connected it to the big screen TV in the classroom. Several students enjoyed that.) 

It was a pretty standard day in that kind of classroom. I've definitely had worse. 

You want to see a bit of their math lesson? We started class with two videos. These were the same two videos I showed the last time I was in class. (They do a lot of repetition. It helps them learn certain concepts.) After the videos, they had other work. But the tunes are kind of catchy.