Week Seven 3/31/16

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful week!

As I was working with some students this week, there were a couple frustrating moments. On the first day, I was working with a student named Charlie. Charlie has a tendency to wander off mentally and space out. As the instructor, I needed to constantly bring him back; however, the problem was that Charlie didn’t know he was wandering off. He thinks that he is constantly working and with every reminder I make, the more he thinks I’m attacking him for something he didn’t do. This caused a grave amount of stress in him and he started to lash out at me and talk to me with a more aggressive tone. You could tell he wasn’t having a great time, and I started to feel irritated by his behavior. Nevertheless, I reminded him again and again and explained why I needed to remind him why I was doing so. His work was very slow-paced and inconsistent, but he said he was still technically working. We both got through the session, but it sure was a rough time.

The next day I worked with a student named Keri. Unlike the older students, Keri is much older and is in her early 40s. She lives independently and consciously knows she has Asperger’s. I needed her to hammer some metal wire; this required very minimal energy. Keri’s goals are focused around her whining. She constantly whines and whines and it’s ridiculous. Five minutes into the hammering, she started to complain and said she has arthritis in her wrist and lacked the muscle coordination do to this. Being the stubborn person that I am, I pushed her even though she felt out of her comfort zone because I knew she was completely capable of doing this task. She found that hammering with her left hand was much easier because she was, in fact, left-handed. After the small hurdle, the rest of the session went on fine.

On a personal note, growing up whenever I had to introduce my brother and state the fact that he was autistic, I would immediately get the response, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” They felt this immense amount of pity and would treat him with this absurd amount of care. This most likely came from their fear of Calvin’s insane meltdowns, but nevertheless, they treated him in a way that he was terminally ill and never made him to any hard labor. But what one thing I have learned off the bat from being an autistic brother’s sister is that they are human too. They can do as much as we can do. They’re just as unique as we are. They have the same amount of potential in life that we also possess. So when my mom tells us to bring in the groceries, I make sure Calvin does the same amount of work as I do. When Calvin starts to complain about how he doesn’t like the feel of water, I tell him he needs to wash his dishes. They all need a little bit of a push and they can accomplish anything.

Thanks for reading!

Grace

Week Six 3/24/16

This week was total chaos. Three completely different days.

The first day everybody lost it. For some reason the students were having meltdowns and were not cooperating with the instructors. First thing an instructor must understand when a student is having a meltdown is to remain calm. If you start talking to them with an aggravated tone, it just adds fuel to the fire. In the morning, Nate, a student in the sewing department, could not understand certain instructions and when two different instructors were trying to teach him how to deal with the stress he was feeling, he kept on lashing out and started to yell at everybody to leave him alone. In the afternoon, another student started to break down when an instructor was trying to tell him he needs to start working on his personal goals. Daniel (the student) has a tendency to ask “what if” questions even if they are completely out of context. He had just asked a “what if” question and then said he’s doing excellent on his goals. The instructor wanted to make him recognize that he had just failed at his goals two seconds ago, but Daniel took it a completely different way and started to cry because he thought the instructor meant he’s been failing at everything he’s done since he’s been attending SEEDs.

The second day was filled with new recruits. A group from another organization called Mentor came into the warehouse and had a class. These individuals were very low-functioning and some had multiple disabilities: blind, deaf, etc. Each individual had a personal helper. While MaryAnn was running the class, she had to think of ways to break down the steps even more in order to increase their success rate. This day, unlike the first, was a very productive and easy day. Everybody was on their A-game and there were zero meltdowns. I took part in a small exercise with two other students in the afternoon. One of these students used to be very playful and would respond well in a conversation; however, in December she had an extreme breakdown and it caused her to be hospitalized for a week. Since then she hasn’t really been the same and doesn’t show any emotions anymore. However, during this exercise, I said a couple small remarks and I got her to smile and laugh and come out of her shell a little bit. Overall, a very successful day.

Each day of this week I had my own class. I worked with Camille, Charlie, Brian, Breanna, and Ricardo. I needed to be aware of each student’s goals and had to prepare for the class beforehand. This was a much more tiring job that I thought. By the third day, I was physically and mentally exhausted (cutting metal with shears isn’t easy with my lack of strength). Nevertheless, the impact I leave on these students is completely worth it.

I have grown very close with most of these students and will be very sad when I have to leave them in a couple weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Grace

Inside View of SEEDs

Where I go three days a week!

Week Five 3/16/16

Welcome back to my blog!

As March progresses forward, my schedule seems to become more busy. With college decision dates, my concert with the Phoenix Symphony, and All-State auditions, I’m constantly on edge and have trouble finding time to rest. Nevertheless, I have taken refuge to going to SEEDs every week. Now that a little over a month has passed by, I have created many relationships and will only continue to do so.

Also, VERY exciting news. I received my fingerprint clearance card! The card that legally allows me to work directly with these students (not that I have been interacting with them illegally…) and give MaryAnn approval for me to be around the students. This card required a 6-week waiting period; however, mine came in surprisingly early!

This week I worked alongside MaryAnn to teach two students, Jonatan and Andy, about emotions, coping skills, and personal goals. Jonatan tends to ramble on and on about his thoughts and has a difficult time listening to whoever is talking to him. He mumbles a lot of his words and has poor enunciation. I’ve talked about Andy before in previous blog posts, but just in case you guys forgot, Andy is the nonverbal stellar student who has great focus and works meticulously. However, Andy’s OCD causes him to constantly be distracted by imperfections and has a hard time keeping his hands to himself and his own work space.

MaryAnn and I started with writing some emotions: happy, sad, scared, angry, etc. We made both students express the emotions on their face. From here, we transitioned to positive emotions and negative emotions. MaryAnn wanted to get to a point where she could talk about anxiety and stress. We all feel anxious and stressed out, but unlike most people, these students don’t exactly know how to handle these emotions. Therefore, MaryAnn taught them easy steps to cope with uncomfortable situations. First, stop what you are doing and take moment to breathe. Then, remind yourself and say, “ I can do this!” We might automatically do this, but by breaking it down for these students, they can process the information easily and use it in the future. Jonatan caught on to the three steps really easily and in fact really enjoyed doing them.

However, it was interesting to see Andy be very active in this class. After expressing the different emotions on his face, he was also very verbal and proceeded to say all of the steps as well.

All of the students are improving their communication and social skills every week and it is really exciting to be a part of it all!

Thanks for reading and talk to you guys soon!

Grace

Week Four 3/9/16

Hello everyone! I hope that you are all having a wonderful spring break and a good week of rest. Since I had nothing planned for this week, I thought I might as well go to SEEDs and continue my internship. And it was a good thing I did!

This week everyone was working very diligently to finish a lot of products for this Saturday’s event! Because of all of the chaos, Mary Ann  gave me more responsibility and more hands-on work. This was my first week as a substitute instructor. I had two classes, each with two students.

In the morning painting class, I had Ricardo and Alex. Both have a tendency to wander off, both physically and mentally, and requires me to constantly remind them to keep focus. Alex has clear verbal skills when he is directed to answer questions, but likes scripting and singing to himself. Ricardo has a much more difficult time communicating and has small to minimal communication skills. He says a word or two occasionally, but usually self-talks. In the class, I had to teach both of them how to make long brushstrokes to make a cleaner finish on whatever we were painting (in this case, pots). I appointed Ricardo to the gold layer and Alex to the black layer. Both struggled with being neat, so I had to come up with a way to teach both of them how to make straighter lines.

Alex was using a much larger brush because he had to paint a larger surface area. The large brush was giving him a hard time to make the line between the black and gold not overlap. I looked at Alex and had to keep asking if he was paying attention. When he made eye contact with me I would show him how to move the paint slowly, so that the black wouldn’t go onto the gold. His tendency to paint quickly made his work uneven and inconsistent, so his key term I gave him was “slow.” As he eased his brushstrokes, his hand became steady and his lines improved. Ricardo had the same issue of painting too quickly; however, I couldn’t have a conversation with him because of his lack of concentration. With Ricardo, I put my hand over his to physically show how he should paint. I was saying words like, “slow, calm, soft, etc.” and he caught on to the word “soft” very quickly. So whenever, I caught him painting too rashly I would say “softer” and he would understand.

The pots Alex and Ricardo were painting

In the afternoon, I worked with Andy and Alex. The three of us had to create labels for the finished ceramics. This required stamping, writing, and taping. Since Andy has good handwriting, I put him in charge of writing the dollar amount on the labels. I told Alex to stamp and tape the labels onto the products. This system was working fine until Andy had an unexpected appointment and had to leave. I then tested if Alex had good penmanship and told him to start doing the writing. He impressed both Mary Ann and I with his handwriting and I made him do all three steps for the rest of the class period.

Thanks for reading and talk to you guys soon!

Grace

Week Three 3/2/16

It is already MARCH! I can’t believe the time has gone by so fast.

As my third week at being at SEEDs comes to an end, I have formed relationships with most of the students and staff. Now that I have a familiar face, the students feel more comfortable around me and I have proven to my supervisor that I can establish an instructor-student relationship, regardless of my age.

This week I wanted to focus on how SEEDs incorporate job skills into its program. I stayed in the newsletter department. Although this class doesn’t have any artistic or hands-on work, students are learning about different computer programs, such as Publisher, and how to use social media as a voice. Each student chooses what he or she wants to write about. Once a topic is chosen, he or she conducts research and, after the instructor helps edit, writes the final draft of the article. These are the same steps we learned when attending grade school when learning how to write a five-paragraph essay. We all had to learn the basic rules to writing before learning how to write with our own style.

On a different note, I was able to do some work with the students. Acting like an instructor, I followed Mary Ann’s instructions and helped assist and make tags for the products for the next big sale. Each student had his or her own job, whether it was hammering, filing, stamping. While looking over the students, I focused my attention to the nonverbal student. Andy was hammering around the edges of the tags, but has a tendency to wander off in his mind and after he finished one job. A goal for him is to keep to his work space and to ask for more work to do after he finishes. This forces him to speak at least a minimal amount. So after he finishes one tag, I only looked up to him and didn’t say a word until he said he needed another one to work one. After the first three attempts, he caught on very quickly and I was very proud of him!

Steps to creating the tags

It was a very exciting week for me and I love to see everyone working hard for the next big event!

Grace