Kindergarten

Derek started Kindergarten this year in a special class. It’s the middle ground between the life skills classroom and general education. The class is made up of autistic children from Kindergarten to third grade and there is one adult for every two children, the material and class time is highly structured, and everybody knows how to deal with and reach children with communication disorders like this.

Reports have been good. The teacher’s mostly write “Nice dayJ” in the communication log. He doesn’t have much to say about school once he gets home, but he responds well when I tell him it’s time to get dressed for school and comes home tired every day. So I think he enjoys it.

Last night was back to school night. I started the night feeling a bit creeped out being in a school and with lots of upscale parents, continued to feel rather out of place as the school foundation talked about their fundraising projects, like flipping a house in the neighborhood and holding a $50/ticket auction, but the presentation from the teacher was good and she said that working in a school like this has been really great. The teachers in general are supported well. There’s a music teacher, a PE teacher, and a librarian all on staff, which is unusual in any public school these days, apparently, let alone the cash-strapped Portland Public Schools.

(And just that afternoon I was bitching to a friend about how my librarian duties have a lower priority than my janitorial duties on a daily basis and how that makes me cranky about my job. So I know the teachers there are happier in their jobs than I am in mine. But that’s another story.)

The special ed classrooms are integrated into the school and the children there are the school’s children, not just special ed’s kids. They get exactly the same curriculum as the general ed classrooms, not ten year old hand-me-downs. This is fantastic because the idea of these classrooms is that the children in them need behavior and communication accommodations, there is no need for them to be behind their peers academically or have ancient books. They can step right into the general ed classrooms, they’re in the same place in the same books. One of my biggest concerns placing Derek in this classroom was that he wouldn’t get much contact with typical children, like he did in his preschool, that he’d be shut away, separate from the rest of school. I’m still a little worried, but hopeful overall. I was also glad that the classroom has toys and colorful bulletin boards and art hanging from the ceiling. It’s not dreary and bleak.

I also learned that Derek has picked out a few kids in the class that he favors. He wants to sit by them in circle time and pokes them to get their attention. This is good news! Last year in preschool he didn’t seem to have much preference or desire for playmates. I’d ask about who to invite for a playdate or over for a birthday and his teacher would have a hard time coming up with anybody.

And it’s for free! (Well, except for the fundraising and selling and donating and auctioning and appealing and flipping the neighborhood house.)

Baby's First Pun

Derek’s had a bit of an obsession with lights and light bulbs lately. He keeps moving the light bulbs to different sockets around the house, so we’ll find the refrigerator light bulb in the hanging lamp downstairs, or he’ll insist we put the burned out bulbs back in the sockets in the basement. He’ll turn the lamps sideways to get at the bulbs and carry them around the house. And since we are trying to save the world one three-dollar energy efficient tiny twisted florescent tube bulb at a time, Allen and I get a little cranky when we find broken ones stuffed in odd corners.

So Allen and I were nearly comatose Saturday while Derek’s jumping around being silly. He gets one sock from his sock pile – just one, he makes a note of – and then starts jumping around on our bed and messing with the lamp. And then it comes onto me all at once – sock, socket!

Me: “No socks in the socket! Are you crazy?!”

Derek: [Manic giggle] “No socks in the socket!”

[Hilarity ensues]