A little levity
Isn't it wise to remember the fun times?
Every now and again, I remember some moments from my times with kids with disabilities that bring a warm feeling and a smile. Here are two of them that I just recalled.
At a school where we taught in Pasadena, all the teachers regularly took the kids to a nearby park for lunch. After they ate their lunches, the kids would play games, swing, balance on tetter-totters, roam around, and etc. Then, we’d all escort the kids back to the school. One day, a fellow teacher reminded one of the kids who was playing in the sandbox that it was time to go back to school. The boy (let’s call him Peter) said he’d be ready really soon. As Peter continued to shovel sand from a pile into a hole, Don (the teacher) said, “Peter, you can stop now. It’s time to go.” Peter replied, “Just a minute. I have to fill in this hole with sand.” Dan asked, “Why do you need to fill the hole in the sand?” Peter explained, “I want to hide it. Tomorrow when we come for lunch I can find it again.”
AI-generated image for prompt “child sand pail shovel digging.” Pat and I had four children living with us in a family-style situation. We were the “teaching parents” in an early 1970s experiment in deinstitutionalization. The four kids (7- to 14-years old; two boys, two girls) had previously been residents at Camarillo State Hospital. The house where we lived was located in an orange grove agricultural area of California, One evening as the six of us drove along, all packed into our Toyota sedan, Pat was pointing out the gorgeous rising full Moon to the east of the country road. One of the kids (these days we’d probably say he was high-functioning on the autism spectrum), piped up: “Is the moon run by electricity?”
I think almost every teacher, parent, and others who have lived or worked with kids—with or without disabilities—have similar stories. One hardly needs the reminder, but even if one realizes that our kids are real, living, developing, thinking little humans, these sorts of events prompted me to underscore that observation.
I had thought about the second of these remembrances, but the memory was accented by the fact that I came upon a new ‘stack that may promise similar observations by another writer: Over on Laughing in Special Education, Miss W. promised “a potentially amusing collections of stories and resources…”
Maybe some readers of Special Education Today have similar stories. If anyone’s willing, please share them in the comments.
I had a 4th grader in one of my student teaching experiences. He would call me "Big Boss" - I'd ask him to work on his math or whatever and his reply was "OK, Big Boss!" One day, he made some kind of silly comment and I said "OK, smarty pants, let's get to work!" His reply was "Yes, I'm Smarty Pants - I'm smart and I wear pants. Get to work Big Boss!"
This post led me down memory lane, I will share two with you. I was visiting a preschool classroom for children with autism as part of my monitoring duties at the state education department. One of the little boys in the class kept staring at me, I'd smile back to his pondering, unchanging precious little face. Eventually he made his way over to me. Looking at me with intense eyes he asked "Are you a man or a woman"? Puzzled, I answered "I am a woman", he then, looking very confused, asked me how I could be a woman if I have hair on my chin! After leaving the class, I immediately looked into laser hair removal. The other story is sad and beautiful. There was a young man in my 6th grade class who was considered a student with Asperger's (the label at that time). In the middle of our science lesson, he stated that he wants to be an astronaut. I asked him why, he replied so he could see his dad who is in heaven. I will never forget him or the wonderful conversations we had. He used to make these amazing figurines out of rubber bands. I often wonder about him, he's old enough now to have a family of his own.