Journal Excerpts, Week 1

Apparently they chose a strange week for me to start being the permanent sub in the hearing impaired class. It’s testing week, so one of the teachers was out testing a child most of the time and I still am unsure of how many kids are actually in the class.

On the first day Blake (name changed to protect identity) scared me mostly senseless. He is 11. He is deaf and severely autistic. I didn’t know what he could handle or understand so I mostly just watched him. I put his shoes away when he immediately threw them on the floor. I smiled at him when we were alone in the room at the very beginning of the day as tears of confusion began to well up in his eyes. I picked up and threw away his cheese wrapper and yogurt container and fruit snack packaging that he threw on the floor when he was done.

Over the next few days I started enjoying building my relationship with Blake a little more. I decided (while the other teachers weren’t looking) that I would see if I could get Blake to put his own shoes away. Maybe even throw away his own trash. As he sat down to read a book and tear his shoes off, I sat next to him. As soon as his shoes were sprawled on the floor I picked them up and put them on his book. Immediately they were on the floor again. I put them back on the page he was looking at. He made a noise and moved them to the opposite side of the table from me. Again, I put them on his book making the sign for him to please put them away. For a couple of minutes we repeated these actions. He didn’t get angry; he just got them out of his way. Finally and without a shred of emotion Blake stood up and took first his left shoe to the wall and then his right. I almost jumped out of my skin. Surely, even Annie Sullivan herself would have been proud. Picking up his trash was a little bit more difficult but I had read that consistency was very important. I wouldn’t let him sit down or get on the computer until he cleaned up after himself. I would squeeze his elbow, point to the wrapper, and make the sign for “throw away.” He got a little more frustrated with this. He was ready to start playing on the computer. I guess he eventually realized that he wasn’t getting on until he had cleaned up after himself and, just like the shoes, instead of gathering all the trash up in one trip he took it one piece at a time to the trash can. I don’t believe it was to intentionally show me attitude by doing it slowly, I think he just likes to do things one at a time.

Blake and I go outside together for about 45 minutes a day. He loves the nature trail which is alright by me. There’s a little outdoor stage and one time I had him sit on the bench while I did a little silent show for him. I’m sure I would’ve looked highly insane to any passersby. Then I sat on the bench and pointed to the stage. He got up and did his own silent show. I received great amusement from this. Blake seemed wholly unphased by the entire experience and we continued on the trail. He loves to look at the river and we make the sign for water, three middle fingers up in the shape of a W tapping the pointer on your chin.

Wednesday, he tried to take his pants and underwear off on the slide. I caught him just in time. I imagined a picture of myself running after a large and naked eleven year old boy on the playground of a public school flailing his red shorts and whitey tighties behind him.

Thursday, he played football with a big group of boys. He smiled his adorable big smile and just ran wherever the group ran. He had no concept of the ball or any sort of structure. The boys all but ignored him but he had no concept of that either.

Friday, we joined a group of girls doing gymnastics. I showed him my handstand (I’m still such a show-off about that thing) and we of course immediately made a group of friends gaping over a “teacher” being upside down. Blake put his hands on the ground next to his feet and started kicking his feet up a little. The girls all wanted lessons in handstands.

Blake's grandmother -who is his caregiver- seems to have an odd sense of humor about the whole thing. She sends him to school in shirts that say "Out of my mind - back in 5 minutes" and "Not the brightest crayon in the box."

Alex (name also changed) is deaf but he has an implant that makes him able to hear. Unfortunately, it was broken on Monday. So I worked a lot with Alex this week too. He can speak well but with his implant being broken he can’t hear a thing so everything I say to him has to be signed. “Immersed in the culture” as it were, I learned a lot of sign language this week.

Friday afternoon I was alone with Blake and Alex as the other teachers were out. We took a field trip to the library since Alex has a lot of trouble reading and wasn’t interested in the book I was forcing him to read to me. Keeping Blake silent in the library was like asking a fat guy to fast inside of a Golden Corral. Alex picked out a book that he was interested in (it was about Indians) and we made our way back to the classroom. Alex and I spent about three hours working on reading and sounding out words. Interspersed were questions like “why does Blake always like to take his shirt off?” and “why do you really think I need to know how to read in order to get into college?” and “what’s a ghetto? Is it Chicago? That’s where I was born. Is it Jamaican’s that shoot each other? Is it here? Because I get the mail and it says ‘have you seen me?’ with a picture of a kid like me. Is this the ghetto? Do I need to move?”

Sign the answers to those questions for me.

I was able to string together some words I knew for the best answer I could come up with:

“Where you live doesn’t make you the person you are. It’s what you know, what you believe, what you understand, what you think.”

Blake waved to me from the bus for the first time on Friday. And that’s how my week ended.