Teachers just know.

I love my new job. The kids are so great. They say the funniest things! The week has been long and tiring, but I'm so glad I am in the position I am in. We're still stomping on vocabulary words and playing all kinds of games to learn new things. The color coding system and all of the time that I put into setting it up has been 100% worth it. I could leave the room and the kids would follow their schedules and know exactly where to go and what to do. They are completely independent in following their routines and that is the ultimate goal of every autism teacher.

Today, we got our locker combinations. My one little guy has been talking about putting his backpack in his locker all week. I opened it for him and he said, "it's my turn to try." I tried to explain turning right, then counting the lines on the lock to find the number, and then turning it past the second number once (who came up with that anyway?), but it was a bit much for him. He was pretty disappointed that he couldn't open the locker. I thought about it all morning and I knew I could come up with a way that the kids could open the lockers without us having to do the combination each morning...

Kids with autism are visual learners. They need visuals to make sense of the world. I came up with a solution to the locker dilemma, and it was a success. They still need a little practice with it, but it's a definite opportunity for them to be completely independent, yet again.

I put small strips of colored tape on the right parts of the combination lock. I rigged it so that the "turn left to blue" and "turn left to red" includes the crazy lock step of going past the second number. The final step of "turn right to green" lands them with an open locker!

I felt good about coming up with the color combinations for the lockers. I'm pretty certain some of the regular ed kids could probably benefit from my solution. That was just the start to a great Friday!

I think that I could write a book called, "101 Autism Quotes" - and it would be pretty funny. We were reading a short story this morning that used the repeated line, "I see a ___." The blanks were filled in with various community helper careers. The purpose of the book was to work on sight words, but I always fill their little brains with extra information as we work on various things. We were talking about what each job was. I said, "What does a pilot do?" They answered, "drive the airplane." I said, "What does a doctor do?" One answered, "He gives a check up with the cold tool." I thought that was a pretty good description. Then comes the fun answer. I said, "What does a teacher do?" One of my kids said, "Teachers just know." It's true! They do, they just know!

On to the next great thing. I finished lesson plans for the next two weeks. The only thing that is somewhat hard to plan for is our social studies/science period. I don't really have a curriculum to follow and we don't even have textbooks. So, I just have to look at the state standards and see what I need to come up with for the lessons. One of the topics for sixth grade is "Earth." I found a great set of lesson plans from the Core Knowledge website... and it is a first grade lesson plan called "Exploring the Earth: A 10 day Journey from the Inside Out." Although it's first grade, it does cover a lot of the more advanced topics that you learn about in middle school (plate tectonics, volcanoes, kinds of rocks, etc.) So, that's what we'll be doing for the next two weeks! I had plans to hit the hardware store this weekend to get a few of the things we'll need for the experiments. I'm so used to spending my own money, I figured if I shopped carefully, I could get the items fairly cheap. Well, we were standing in the hallway looking at the rain this afternoon (we finished all of our work so fast today!) -- and a very nice lady walked up and said hello to us (this is big for a school that has never had kids with autism before). My kids turned around and said hi, waved, and then went back to looking at the rain. The woman had talked to me during the first day of school training and I had vaguely remembered her, but she introduced herself again and told me that she was the science department coordinator. I took that opportunity to seize the moment and ask her if she had materials available for us to use. She said, "definitely!" She told me to send her a list and she'd have all of the supplies in my room Monday morning! Wow!

As if THAT wasn't enough, at the end of the day today one of the 6th grade teachers came into my room to tell us that all of the sixth graders were meeting in the room next door and having a "sing along" with the school counselor. He brings his guitar and sings to the kids and they love it. She came to get us! She sought us out! She invited us! We came and my kids had a blast. He even asked a few questions at the end, one of them being, "What is one great thing that has happened this week?" One of my boys raised his hand and said, "I'm in middle school!" (He's been saying that all week.) The kids all laughed (in a good way) and the counselor told him that was a wonderful thing. Pretty great experience for everyone.

Last but not least, as we were walking out to buses, one of my boys said, "Mrs. Smith, no school tomorrow. I will miss you." Very impressive for a student with autism to develop a relationship like that, AND know how to express it. I told him I'd miss him too.

What can I say? I think we're Achieving Success. Daily.