Awesome Guy

Not the Right Classroom Setting? Think Again.

In my work to help implement inclusive co-teaching classrooms, teachers will often say to me about one child or another, "I just don't think this is the right classroom setting for him."  Every time, I ask them, "Why not?" It is very hard for most people to imagine how special needs can be met in a mainstream classroom.  While he does not provide all of the answers, Dan Habib takes the issue head-on in his remarkable movie, Including Samuel.  Below is a description of the film and a short trailer, both taken from the the website, http://www.includingsamuel.com/home.aspx:

Before his son Samuel was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, photojournalist Dan Habib rarely thought about the inclusion of people with disabilities. Now he thinks about inclusion every day. Shot and produced over four years, Habib’s award-winning documentary film, Including Samuel, chronicles the Habib family’s efforts to include Samuel in every facet of their lives. The film honestly portrays his family’s hopes and struggles as well as the experiences of four other individuals with disabilities and their families. Including Samuel is a highly personal, passionately photographed film that captures the cultural and systemic barriers to inclusion.

The film has been screened at universities, national conferences, public television stations and independent theatres across the country. Including Samuel has also been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, Good Morning America, as well as in the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. The film won the Positive Images in Media award from TASH, an international group committed to the full inclusion of people with disabilities. It has also screened at the Sprout Film Festival at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston International Film Festival, the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival, the Moscow International Disability Film Festival and won the “Excellence Award” from Superfest International Film Festival in Berkeley, CA.

Mercy Corps, an international global aide agency, is translating the film into Arabic and will screen it throughout Iraq to support that country’s nascent disability rights movement. The film will be re-released on DVD in October, 2009, with audio description, extras and translations in multiple languages.

Autistic Tendencies

 
We went to see Dr. Moshe, another neurologist, to get a second opinion.  We wanted him to confirm Declan's diagnosis of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, or more truthfully, for him to deny it all.  The nurse walked us into an examining room and asked us to wait for the doctor.  The shelves in the small, quiet room were filled with toys.  I scanned them looking for something that might appeal to Declan.  I passed over the cars and trucks, the legos, the action figures as usual, not without the pang, the fleeting and silent wish that he would, like most little boys I knew, be unbearably drawn to such a blatant display of boyhood crushes.  On his own, however, Declan sat beside the plastic purple dollhouse that rested on the floor beside the doctor's desk.  For a moment, I was encouraged that he chose a prop for pretend play.  An educator, I knew that pretend play was one of the most important developmental stages for children to enter, and in my opinion, should refrain from leaving until they were good and ready.  As Declan opened the tiny door of the house, I chimed in, "who's there?" trying to get something going.  Declan closed the door.  He was not interested.  Instead, he repeated the action, opening and closing the door, over and over.  The only shift in his play occurred when he moved his body in order to look at the door from another angle, moving so far to the side that he had to look out of the corners of his eyes.  There was something about looking at the door in this way that was satisfying to him, but like most of what was occurring these days, it was a mystery to us why.  

Dr. Moshe entered the room, introduced himself, and shook both of our hands.  All three adults stood talking above Declan, who continued his play on the floor below.  As we shared Declan's historyagain, now feeling more like a script, Dr. Moshe observed Declan.  Even when responding or asking new questions, his eyes never left Declan.  Then suddenly, as if bringing to our attention an untied shoelace, he stated, "he's autistic, you know." 

Brendan and I later learned from his neurologist, Dr. Orrin Devinsky, and from Dr. Cecelia McCarton, founder of the McCarton Center for Autism, that Declan did not, in fact, have autism.  Instead, the doctors that knew him well asserted that he had autistic-like tendencies, and that they were likely due to the seizures he was experiencing.  "Make the seizures go away," we heard, "and the tendencies will go away too."  Yesterday, I came upon the movie Autistic-Like.  I have not yet seen the entire movie, but am grateful to listen to and know the other voices out there that share similar experiences.  Meet Erik Linthorst and his family:

For more information about Autistic-Like, visit the website: http://www.autisticlike.com/

Floor Time

I remember the first time this young man walked into our apartment, his shoulder-length ponytail, his glasses, his easy smile.  He instantly removed his practical shoes and calmly introduced himself to his new, inattentive student.  Two-year-old Declan was playing on the living room rug with his favorite toys, a collection of small, plastic, birthday cakes labeled with numbers on the side.  He was, as usual, stacking the cakes in number order and knocking them down, over and over.  Loren sat next to Declan, and in the most non-threatening way, as if to offer a new dog his hand, watched the game.  Then subtly, in tiny baby steps, he entered the play.  First with his voice, “Oh! They fell,” then with his hands, passing back stray cakes that rolled away after the fall.  When Declan’s trust grew and Loren was able to enter the play more fully, I was astonished, even a bit appalled, to see him break the pattern.  As if I had been indoctrinated into Declan’s rigid rules to the cake game, I uttered, “He doesn’t…” and then stopped myself as I watched Loren boldly do something different.  Declan eyed this new stranger with pure disgust as he rolled a cake on its side down a book he had propped up like a ramp against a nearby ottoman.  “No!” Declan instructed.  “That’s just wrong,” he seemed to want to say, but a piece of him, I could tell, was curious.  More importantly, and Loren was a master of this, it appealed to Declan’s sense of humor, and eventually, he was able to allow a smile to break the barriers of the rules despite this criminal act.   

Loren was our first SEIT (Special Education Itinerant Teacher).  He started working with Declan in our home through Early Intervention, and continued to shadow him as he went to nursery school.  He became an expert on Declan and taught us more about our son and ourselves than we ever imagined he could.  Using a clever combination of humor and Stanley Greenspan's Floor Time, Loren was able to get Declan to break out of his rigid routines and try new kinds of play, talk, and engagement with others.  The general idea around Floor Time is for the parent or therapist to follow the child's lead, and then slowly build something new into their play.  To learn more about Floor Time, visit Stanley Greenspan's site at http://www.icdl.com/

Epilepsy Awareness Month

 

Did you know that November is Epilepsy Awareness Month? The Epilepsy Foundation is running a great campaign this month to get people talking about epilepsy in order to raise awareness and to chip away at the stigma that has long been associated with the disease.  Greg Grunberg of the television show Heroes talks about it in the video below:

Notebook Babies

 
I continue to be very intrigued by the different ways we can teach children, particularly those who tend to take in information in different ways.  From a very early age, Declan made it clear to us that anything we presented visually would be much easier for him to learn.  When Declan got into the habit of getting into our bed in the middle night, we talked to him about it and explained in many ways why he needed to sleep in his own bed.  But no matter how many times we brought it up, gave incentives, took privileges away, got silly with him about the whole thing, the message just would not sink in.  Finally, one day I asked him to make a sign.  He drew a picture of a bed, then drew a red circle with a slash through it.  Below it, he wrote, "NO KIDS IN MOMMY AND DADDY'S BED."  I asked him to tape the sign above our bed to remind him of the rule.  Don't you know, he stopped the night-time visits for weeks! (Yes, it did start up again).  But the sign idea has lived on and has proven to be a tremendously useful tool.  Except of course the time when he made a sign for our dog Bruce which had the word BITING inside the red circle and slash.  Bruce ate it.

My point is, and I've said it before, sometimes we need to get the information in in different ways.  Tova, Declan and I just came across a series of short movies made by a 5th grade science teacher.  They reminded me of Brainpop, in that they use video to teach.  What is unique about these movies though, is that Tony Dusko has a tremendous sense of humor and knows what kids like.  Tova and Declan could not stop watching them! Here is a sample of one.  In fact, Tony just let me know that this very film will be airing on Nickelodeon on Wednesday, November 18 at 4:00 Eastern as part of their animation film festival! You can see more great movies on other topics such as making friends and doing homework, at http://www.notebookbabies.com/

Everyone Gets What They Need

 

Fair is getting what you need. That's what Mom explained to me this morning.  She was telling me why she was getting Declan the H1N1 vaccine, but not me (which seems funny, because I'm the one who has gotten three week-long illnesses in the past year). It does sound extremely unfair when you hear it at first. But then she finished. She told me that experts say that only kids with chronic diseases should get the vaccine, so the virus doesn't "conflict" with their other sickness. Therefore explaining the concept of this whole post. Getting him alone the vaccine is fair because he needs to get it. I don't. Another example is all the sick days I've had this year. Every single one starts with a chorus of "It's not fairrrrrr! I wanna stay home from school, too!"s from Declan. But it is fair. Because I need to stay home so I don't get anyone sick. He doesn't need to, he's in perfect health. Get what I'm saying?

~Tova

Executive Function and Motor Planning

When Declan was in kindergarten, his teachers would retrieve the class from down in the school yard, and walk them up the stairs to their classrooms.  The kids would walk in a line-like mass up the stairs, sometimes a few straggler parents bringing up the rear.  The routine was, when they got to the classroom door, the students would take their notes and homework out of their backpacks and place them in the labeled baskets sitting on the table outside the room.  Then they would take their coats, their hats, their mittens, and their backpacks into the classroom and store them in the closet.  Other tasks awaited them when they were finished, like turning over their attendance card, checking to see what their class job was for the day, and reading the schedule or morning message.  A kindergarten teacher once upon a time, I know that these are all sound, valuable routines.  And with guidance from day one, most kindergarteners grasp the routine within the first month and do it without thinking, the way a grown up might drive home on auto-pilot. 

I will never forget the day in October when I accompanied the class to their room.  The minute the group arrived at the classroom door, all of the children dropped to their knees and started to pull their folders out from their backpacks.  All of them, except for Declan.  Thinking nothing of it, I casually prompted him to get started.  "Go ahead, Dec.  Don't mind me."  But Declan stood there, as if he did not hear me.  It was odd.  He seemed aware and ready to start his day, but continued to stand there.  Then I noticed him walking through the sea of children and backpacks and into the room, coat and backpack still on his back, and he headed toward the attendance chart.  "Wait, Dec!" I reminded him.  "First you need to take your notes out."

What I realized that day, was that Declan had every intention and desire to follow the routines his teachers set out for him to do, but was unable to sequence the steps that needed to be taken to do them.  After I brought him back outside the room and helped him, I realized the information was in there; he knew what had to be done, but even the simple notion of I need to take my backpack off first before opening it to get my notes did not occur to him.  It was fascinating.  Concerning, but fascinating.  The part of his brain whose job it was to tell the hand to slide the backpack strap off his shoulder was asleep at the wheel.  It wasn't until his teachers and I found ways to sequence the routine for him that he was able to eventually do it for himself.  We knew he learned best visually, so we ended up using a student model to show Declan each phase of the task, step by step, almost like a game of follow the leader, which then led to a chart similar to the one shown above, made by a team of co-teachers that my colleague worked with at PS 41 in Manhattan.  It eventually worked, and not only did we help to foster his ability to function independently, but we also freed him from constant prodding and reminders from peers and teachers.