6/11/2021
Topic:
Students with Disabilities
Valerie Nies
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Some years back, I had a student that was diagnosed with Asperger. At this point in my life, I am in my third year teaching and my experience as a teacher was good. My students showed growth but no behaviors that I was hearing about. Suddenly, this student showed up on the first day and I just knew this year was going to be challenging. This student would erupt and explode with such disconnect that it scared me a little because I did not want another student to get hurt. His behaviors throughout the year went from ripping my entire bulletin board paper down off my wall (and you know how hard we work on those alone), throwing things (pencils, books, chairs), and cursing such fowl words. So I read through his IEP and found that one of his accommodations is to provide him with a safe space that is only his in my room. Guess what? Yup, I bought duct tape squared him a room of his very own. I bought one of those hanging plastic clear shoe racks that hangs from the door and made Alphabet cards and Number cards and mixed them all up. It was an activity he can do as he is calming down. He sorts the numbers from the alphabets then places the number in order in each of the clear shoe pockets. It did not solve everything however, I only had 2 following incidents and he learned that he could be himself and he also loved when i added a wooden rocking chair. (GAME CHANGER) |