Tuesday, November 20, 2007

So I'm back. Somewhat sporadically but here again.
I've been starting work recently at a school called Giant Steps, a school for autistic children. It's been quite the experience working with such a wide spectrum of kids, from ones that are kind of spacey and show a lot of behaviors, flinging their hands around and squealing in ear-shattering pitches, to those who are almost what you call normal until examined closely. It's made me wonder what goes on in these kids' minds, when some of them are so scrambled that they can't learn to write or toss a ball. Sometimes you can tell they're trying to please you and really want to perform well and it's adorable, but they're just so unable because some connections somewhere in their brains are not connected the right way. Some of them though, are just off in space and unable to focus on anything. My friend Noah says that these are the kids who are planning to take over the world. I laughed.
Today, I was teaching little blond Charlie to write his name. "This is boring," he says to me, "I'm going to blow up the school." And then returned to his r's. You were right bro, sorry I doubted you.
And then there are times where I'm walking around in a figure eight flapping my arms and pretending to be a duck with 4 kids following right behind me, and I really wonder what I'm doing...