Autism

I don't know too much about autism.  I think most of my knowledge comes from reading The Babysitter's Club story.  I do know more than that, but still, not that much.  So when I was placed in an autism classroom today I was surprised that the sub coordinator hadn't told me on the phone.  She said I'd be in a 4th/5th classroom.  Surprise!

A lot of people were out today and that ended up meaning that I subbed for two different rooms.  In the 4/5 room there were two aides and the teacher was out sick.  The kids were fine and doing well with just the aides so they sent me down to the pre-K classroom.  In the pre-K room two of the three aides were out sick and the teacher was experiencing the final throes of a stomach bug.  It was myself, the sick but present teacher, and an aide.  Three adults, six children.  Great ratio, right?

Wrong!  Not only are these kids incredibly young (between 3 and 5), they're autistic, and it was one kid's third day in school ever.  None of them had clear speech, all had attention problems, most had control issues, and the new kid was definitely out of his comfort zone.  I spent the day simply trying to get the kids to pay attention to the task.  We went to occupational therapy and the new kid screamed the entire time because he had to sit in a chair and wait his turn.  It was pretty exhausting.  Lunch was really hard because they don't want to eat, they throw food, they try to get up and walk around, they eat too much food at once, etc.  Any problem imaginable happens at lunchtime.  One kid had control issues and would get up and run around the room, looking for doors to slam shut.  If you've never been in a special ed room it's hard to understand how much commotion is constantly occurring.  Special ed teachers deserve a huge amount of respect.  They teach these kids control, speech, respect for others, routine daily activities, and any number of things regular teachers take for granted.

It's also hard to substitute in a special ed room because I've never had any training for situations like those that occurred today.  Do I restrain the kid?  Do I help him?  Do I fix the problem myself or make the kid fix it?  Do I force the kid to eat his pretzels?  It's hard to know the answers to these questions without understanding the rules of working with special ed kids.

The teacher was really sick so it was an easy day.  We ended with a movie because she just kept getting waves of nausea.  All day I was wiping snotty noses and I'm sure I'm going to reap the rewards later with a nice, awful cold.  Just hopefully not the stomach bug!