Conclusion 4/26/16

Hello!

I have attached a link to my presentation below. I hope you can all attend on May 7th for the final presentations!

Grace

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bU-Xn_2uRzxr-ms_ykzDyWRN5Rcvwf2jD7YP6amoGbw/edit?usp=sharing

Week Nine 4/13/16

Hello again! Today was my last day at my internship. It’s quite shocking how time has passed by so quickly. My day was as ordinary as any other day on the job, but one thing that was different was my mentality. I wanted to give today my very all.

As I instructed my regular morning class, things were a little different. Over the couple weeks, I have actually been training a very high-functioning student, Kyle. MaryAnn hopes that he himself can become an instructor eventually and I was in charge of getting him there.

Whenever we had these sessions, both Kyle and I worked with Andy.

Kyle needed to understand a few things about Andy before working with him: Andy’s OCD, his wandering eyes, and his issue with not staying inside his workspace. I then had to explain he will need to have a background of each of his students in the future because it directly correlated with how he was going to teach them.

After listening to me, Kyle took in everything and before he gives any instructions to Andy, he makes sure that Andy and he make firm eye contact. Kyle still has a little problem with keeping Andy on task when they’re not working for long periods of time and rather doing small tasks.

However all in all, I know that Kyle will make a great instructor one day.

Like any final day on a project, I began to reflect on what I learned over the past couple months. For three days a week, I saw this amazing, thriving community of hard-working individuals. Constantly learning and totally capable. However, once they step out into the world, they suddenly lose their independent light and live in the shadows. I find that the gap between them and society is not that large. They need support from people like MaryAnn, who see that they can improve and live a fulfilling life.

Every time a student here learns a new technique in jewelry or in welding, they are able to create high-quality products. These products are then bought by customers and sold to people in the outside community. The students take in pride that they were able to create something beautiful and “good enough” to be put up for sale in a show. And isn’t this sense of pride we all look for in life? To have accomplished something after hard work?

As the frequency of autism increases, the support for these individuals must do the same.

Thank you for following along with me for my senior research project!

Grace

Week Eight 4/6/16

Hello again! I cannot believe two months have gone by since I started to come to SEEDs. It’s very exciting to see how far the students have come since the beginning.

This week my hands got a little dirty. There was a lot of painting and a lot of filing, leaving my hands green and black.

When working with Alex and Ryan in the morning, I needed them to paint some metal stakes for the upcoming show. The challenging aspect was that these stakes needed to be painted in a certain manner. With a fan brush, the painting needed to be done in a way the black metal could still be seen through the green acrylic paint. I struggled with trying to explain this to the students because they both lacked listening skills. Alex caught on quickly after I showed him how the paint was supposed to look, but Ryan got a little carried away. The paint was already so pigmented and he was putting on way too many coats. So instead of trying to explain it again, I first added some water to the paint to dilute it a bit and then I held the paint cup in my hand so I could control how many times he could put his paintbrush in the paint. After denying his access a couple times, I kept on telling him to use the excess paint left on the stake. With both students, I constantly rubbed down the stakes with a paper towel to leave a nice spread out layer. All in all..they came out perfect! Just took a little extra work.

In the afternoon, I worked with Breanna and Andy. We polished the garden tags that we’ve been making for over a month. Using scotch brite to scrub off the dirt and metal, we all ended up with black fingers. Breanna worked very hard and she made sure to get every last bit of dirt off of the garden tags. Andy on the other hand simply rushed through the tags that I was giving him and wasn’t exactly paying attention to how well he was working. To keep him on the same pace with Breanna, I gave him a rougher scotch brite and told him to apply a bit more pressure to completely polish the tags. Like the morning class, they both worked very well and we finished our products on a good note.

After having my own class every week, I realized the instructor is constantly thinking of ways to either use a student’s certain behavior to help the outcome of a product or thinking of ways to counter a student’s certain behavior to do the same thing. For example, I needed to think of ways to counter Ryan’s overcoating. This isn’t a skill specific to a person who has worked with people with autism. This is just common sense.

Thanks for reading!

Grace

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