A Reason to Communicate

It has been a long time since I last posted. I will likely be able to update more regularly now. My first semester was a struggle. It took all my energy to get to know my students and get everything planned for the next day. I felt like I was treading water.

Christmas break was wonderful. I had a great time with my family in Montana. I also did some planning and was able to make some changes to my daily schedule. Even though we haven't been able to implement that schedule very often due to the recent bad weather as well as standardized testing, it seems to be working well.  I thought I'd take this moment (now that I have some extra energy) to share some fun success stories from my class. I'll probably do several longer posts in the near future to give more details on some of these.

• One student has learned to tie his shoes and another is close
• One student has been attending art class and another just started science class today
• Two students have learned to zip their coats
• One student has memorized his lunch number and now enters it independently in the cafeteria
• One student has moved from a communication device that had 84 choices to one that has over 500,000 options.
• Four of my students can now add single digit numbers
• One of my students has moved from no functional communication to being able to express 9 or 10 words using a communication device. 
• One student has learned how to shred paper, including independently going and getting the paper that needs to be shredded. 
• All my students have participated in a low ropes course multiple times
• One of my students hugged another student today (this is huge for a child with autism)
• One of my students has gone from being able to read zero words to being able to read over forty words and write sentences using his words. 
• One of my students is able to clean the tables in the cafeteria after breakfast

I'm sure there are some I am missing, but we have been working hard. I am so proud of my students and how far they have already come. We still have a lot to work on. I thoroughly enjoy going to school every day and am thankful for the other staff in our school, especially my aides. I am also thankful for my students and their parents. We have a lot of fun each day even though we are working hard. I am looking forward to seeing what the rest of the school year will hold.