I'm Still Here

To recap all the drama that occurred this week would be ridiculous, so I'll concentrate on the positives.

1.  It's 6:30 and I'm not falling asleep.  (The time zone change killed me dead...and that's unusual for me.)

2.  It's 6:30 and I'm not so tired my eyes hurt.  (See #1.)

3.  It's 6:30 and I might actually be awake at 8:30 tonight.  (Even on school nights, I'm rarely asleep before midnight.  You can see where this week has been unusual.)

4.  It's Friday.

5.  Superhero made it through the week without a major outburst.  It's too early to jump to conclusions, but it's possible that he's working through whatever has been bothering him lately, or learning to regulate himself.  Either way, I'll take it.

5a.  This is correlated with the one time he did hit Bulldozer...but in a massive display of "duh" one of my aides sent him and Bulldozer into the bathroom together.

6.  Bulldozer made it through the week without a major meltdown.  He hit Aide J a couple of times on...Tuesday, I think...but he's discovered being hit is her Thing -- and as any of you who have been near kids in the terrible twos knows, if you show which button to push, a child will push it.  Repeatedly and relentlessly.

...actually, that's probably true of most teenagers, too.

7.  Aide S worked VERY well this week with just about everybody, even taking the whole class for a while while I dealt with Superhero's one medium outburst.  (See 5a.)

8.  Principal SDF called Aide J a "lunatic."

9.  Elastigirl had an AWESOME morning.  Aide J was out Thursday and Friday, so this morning, I was attempting to give a spelling test.  Aide S was busy with Bulldozer and M, and Aide T was not there yet.  The kids had their anti-cheating-devices up, and I couldn't find Elastigirl's.

So Elastigirl -- the girl who is supposed to be oblivious to everything around her -- looked around, saw that everyone was working, handed me one of the pictures from her spelling test, and SET UP ONE OF HER FILE FOLDER GAMES AS AN ANTI-CHEATING-DEVICE.  On her own.  Because the others were doing it.  I was so excited, I hardly knew what to do.

10.  Aide S made the kids in her group today do their graphing the hard -- right -- way.  :-)

11.  Aide S also dealt with Superhero's increasing agitation in exactly the right manner, and simmered him down.  Yay!

In summary, I discovered something yesterday -- Aide T, Aide S, and I make a good team.  The kids pull together and work hard when not affected by the rampaging drama stress that is Aide J.  Thursday was actually rather refreshing.

Meanwhile, Speech Person DFT spent most of Monday nitpicking at me, but Program Specialist SBS shot her down at every turn.  Yay.

Hopefully, as I manage to be awake for more than an hour or two after dinner each day, I'll be able to post more.

Oh!

I forgot awesome thing number 12.

Bulldozer has a communication device called a Mighty Mo.  His Mighty Mo is programmed with a ridiculous amount of extraneous, superfluous, useless-to-him vocabulary that is drilled ad nauseum by Speech Person DFT, despite my suggesting that maybe he'd use it more if it actually contained things he'd want to say.  Also, unlike other models in the same line, it does not allow Bulldozer to type out his own messages -- he CAN read and spell -- and makes him dependent on the vocabulary that's in there.

So getting him to use it in class is sometimes a challenge -- particularly since my requests that vocabulary relevant to what we're doing in class (e.g. characters from Charlie) be added.

But this week, whenever we did News-2-You, I asked him a question and he answered it with his Mighty Mo.  One day, I asked him, "Is the hockey player we're reading about a girl?"

And Bulldozer, instead of saying or signing "no," went right to his Mighty Mo and constructed the following three-word phrase:  "Not girl.  Boy."

All on his own.  It was absolutely AWESOME.