Hallelujah Chorus

A bit early for Christmas, but this video was awesome!!!!

The kids (and adults) look like they are having a blast.

Done like you've never seen before! This video from the small Yupiq Eskimo Village of Quinhagak, Alaska , was a school computer project intended for the other Yupiq villages in the area.  To the surprise of the villagers, over a half million people have viewed it!

The Biography of David Morgan

When my mentee showed me a massive 'Making History' homework assignment she had to do, I inwardly sighed.  It involved choosing a family member, sending letters to 4 people who knew the family member (and getting letters back!), an extensive interview, making a family tree, writing this person's biography, developing a timeline of the person's life, finding photos, and labeling a map of all the places the person lived.  It sounded challenging (unless you have a well connected family that likes letter writing). The anxiety of it all started to creep into my psyche.  I knew that she needed help for many reasons--computer, printer, organizing it all, letter-writing, stamps, email, family tree.......   Then, I learned that a mentor or her husband (like David) would make a suitable substitute for a family member.  Life then looked rosier!   The project was finished tonight, and is really cute.

Title page

David holding completed biography. 

 The front cover of the book is David about 1976 posing in front of his beloved MGB convertible.  Cute!
All of Culbreth will be reading his life story.

Dad's in Heaven with Nixon

I'm breaking from my blogging routine and talking about a movie.  The title is "Dad's in Heaven with Nixon"--a rather strange title until you watch the movie and understand the context.  This is a documentary---the main character is an autistic man, with the surrounding characters being his family.  The dad of the family was bipolar (as well as the grandfather), and the movie centered around multiple issues stemming from the family problems of mental illness in one family member and having a handicapped child.

If you want to watch the movie, it streams on Netflix.  There are also some great reviews on the Netflix website--one being from the sister of the filmmaker and autistic brother. 

  I've discovered that it also streams on Amazon.    One reviewer wrote: "Simply Amazing Documentary of a family dealing with generations of mental illness issues. This is a must see for any professional- teacher, therapist, clinician- working with individuals and families affected by this disease. Tom Murray pulls off a miracle by exposing the dynamics that overcame such debilitating prospects for his younger brother, Chris, through the honest and open perspective of his Mom, his siblings, and himself. Extremely enjoyable- watch this just to see who the greatest artist in the world really is! Janice Murray deserves an Oscar for the greatest Mom of all time." 

One part of this that I truly loved was that the Chris, the son with autism, grew up to be independent, happy, and an accomplished artist.  At my school, I have seen children with autism who produce great art, unusual art. One kid I know draws traffic lights and signs with incredible precision.  In this movie, Chris Murray painstakingly draws and paints buildings and skylines in New York City. I love art, and especially unusual art such as this.

One person (Patricia Robinson) blogged about Chris Murray's work:  I recently purchased Murray’s poster “Red Brick” for my office. While every artist is different, I think this work really highlights some of the strengths of autism. While the work is a cohesive whole, the details are more compelling than is often the case in more neurotypical work. Murray painstakingly represents each window, brick and taxicab. But the details don’t overwhelm, because the rhythm of the piece is so apparent. 

You need to watch the movie---either Netflix or Amazon work, or purchase the DVD!  Very inspiring and thought provoking on multiple levels,

How I spent my Saturday Night!

Here's something I thought I would never do again---go camping with 6th grade girls! Backyard camping---my backyard!

Those who know me also know that I'm a mentor.  My mentee was interested in girl scouts, so we joined an outreach troop based at Abbey Court in Carrboro.   There are lots of dedicated volunteers working with this troop, with the most enthusiastic being Meg, a college sophomore at UNC.  She thought it would be great if they could camp, so tonight, the 6th graders are in my yard (being crazy at the moment in a tent!)  The night started with a first aid lesson by Cindy (a troop leader), followed by dinner prep, a campfire starting lesson by Paige, a tent-setting-up lesson by Meg, campfire girl scout songs led by three senior scouts, and s'mores by the campfire.  (Please don't tell my husband that the lawn now has a campfire spot!)

First aid lesson

The tent lesson

The charcoal lesson

The fire building lesson

Salad, and pasta for dinner

dinner prep

Lots of noise happening in there!

So I didn't sleep in the yard with the girls. I let Meg and Sarah do that.  I took on house/living room duty (in case someone needed to come in.)  I can still hear them, though---laughing and giggling away!

Sounds like fun!  (It's 9:30 as I'm typing this)

Hey! What's a social skill?

For the past few years, a trend in our school (and across the country) has been to have 'social skills' groups for those kids who can't quite understand that it's not OK to start rambling on about dinosaurs when the discussion topic might be 'states of matter', or you should raise your hand in class to be 'called on', or you can't melt down in class daily if the schedule changes slightly.  Primarily, kids in these groups are in regular education, but on the spectrum.

Recently, I had a discussion with a cute third grader who was in one of those groups.  She couldn't understand why she had to go to the 'social studies' group!  She thought she didn't need social studies!  (She most likely does need both--social studies and social skills)  That conversation led me to think---do the children even know what a 'social skill' is?  Should we enlighten them a bit?  Do they need to know the goals even if they are only in elementary school?   I think--yes. 

First steps---I created a poster.  It's a sorting poster where the students had to decide if a particular skill is academic (e.g. subtraction) or a social skill (e.g. giving a compliment).  These were written on sticky notes, and the kids simply told me what category and placed the skill in the right spot. My discovery was that some kids had no problems sorting these, while others (one in particular) had no clue.  How can you learn social skills when you don't know what the concept is?  Unless you, as a teacher, hope it's by osmosis (doesn't work for autism much!) Then next step was to generate some social skills items and academic items to add to the poster.  Again, some could, while others could not. 

 

This is obviously a work in progress for some of my students.  Enlightening, and challenging, but I'm really glad that I back-tracked to see what the kids understood!

The joy of a good report card!

I have 4 kids (now grown) but for a time, especially in middle and high school, I would anticipate the regular onslaught of report cards.  Not all were stellar---in fact some were downright terrible.  I was ecstatic when graduation time came. Gone were the self doubts, the anger at the teachers, and the attempts at bribing or tutoring the kids to get them to do the right thing (in my eyes).  In all fairness, my twins' grades were good. The boys----well, I'll let that go.  They grew up and are fine.  I  let go of report cards.

Now, I'm a mentor, and my mentee is at middle school---the same middle school, in fact, from where my boys brought home some pretty ridiculous grades. One of the main reasons that the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocate program exists is to close the achievement gap between the different ethnic groups and to help the kids graduate and go to higher education....so grades are important!  I feel the pressure, again!  To be perfectly clear here, I am NOT a tutor.  I do talk about school with my mentee, help out with things like supplying a home computer, take her to the library, and assist on special projects.  I talk to her teachers, attend school functions, go to study skill workshops with my mentee, and talk with her parents. It's a pretty cool program, in case you all want to be a mentor!

However........today was the report card day.  My husband handed me the envelope with the report card in it (the schools send the report cards to the mentor---it's very important!).  I couldn't open it right away.  It sat on the counter.

 Finally, after some self pep-talk, I opened it--the moment of truth.  ("Am I really the best mentor ever? or should I just start volunteering for litter pickup?")    My mentee's report card was great!  Maybe not straight As, but practically all As and Bs!    A wonderful first report card from middle school.  I immediately called her home and congratulated everyone!  

Thanks Alana for being such a great student! Keep on trying!

Gobble Gobble!

For those of you looking for a simple fun activity--one that can be used with special needs kids to help facilitate comprehension and communication, try paper bag turkey puppets.  The original craft is posted here.  It's basically a paper lunch bag, with construction paper features such as feathers, wattle, and beak.  I added googly eyes.  The kids love it!

For language therapy purposes, I took pictures of each step and developed a Pictello set of sequenced picture/written/spoken directions.  Here are some of the screen shots.

pictello screen shot

pictello screen shot

pictello screen shot

pictello screen shot

pictello screen shot

 The kids had to listen and/or read the directions presented on the iPad (and by me!).  They had to predict the next steps.  They had to understand concepts such as front of the bag, back of the bag, and on top.  They had to problem solve (e.g. "if you need two eyes for each puppet, how many do you need for 4 puppets?")  They had to answer simple questions.  I also supplied a simple communication board to cue the kids to request things like glue and googly eyes. The iPad presentation made this very motivating to my students.

requesting eyes with the communication board

We also read a Thanksgiving book, embellished with Boardmaker icons.  Thanks for Thanksgiving is one of my favorite books for this holiday because all of the children can relate to what is presented.  Adding icons makes it even more understandable, and at the end, I ask the kids what they are thankful for (using the icons as choices for them if they can't think of anything themselves).