If sitting wasn 't hard enough for a pre-schooler, imagine developing fine motor skills with someone who doesn 't even speak your first language. "Juan" was bright, but needed an array of supports to get his speech, fine motor skills, and patience to grade level. As the speech-language pathologist murmured to Joe (the occupational therapist) that Juan had bit her last week, Juan had snuck over to the faucet to pour a cup of water. When I nudged Joe to Juan 's attention, Joe snatched a handful of paper towels. “Juan, I have a game for you.” The occupational therapist sat him down and squashed the towels into the cup. Joe wrung the towel into a bowl on the table, and asked Juan to do the same. Juan may have thought he won, but he was still flexing his tiny fingers and accomplishing the OT 's set goals. At that moment, Juan’s “occupation” was playing with water. Occupation refers to any activity
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The individualized education plan (IEP) helped my brother with Asperger 's succeed throughout high school. However, after hearing about how schools were removing most self-contained classrooms, I reconsidered. At one school I volunteered at, there was a boy who had already gotten suspended 5 times in the first grade for injuring others. A cramped classroom of over twenty students would have been over-stimulating. Thus, I continued to search for a career that put the patient’s needs first.
While I am no longer an education major, my background has made me sensitive to diverse populations. Many of the students I had tutored in the public schools were learning English as a Second Language. The toughest challenge, though, was working with a deaf camper at Camp Horizons. My communication disorders class had taught me about Deaf culture, but not how to sign to my septuagenerian camper with humor dirtier than a teenager’s. Through time, I began to understand all of their colorful
The individualized education plan (IEP) helped my brother with Asperger 's succeed throughout high school. However, after hearing about how schools were removing most self-contained classrooms, I reconsidered. At one school I volunteered at, there was a boy who had already gotten suspended 5 times in the first grade for injuring others. A cramped classroom of over twenty students would have been over-stimulating. Thus, I continued to search for a career that put the patient’s needs first.
While I am no longer an education major, my background has made me sensitive to diverse populations. Many of the students I had tutored in the public schools were learning English as a Second Language. The toughest challenge, though, was working with a deaf camper at Camp Horizons. My communication disorders class had taught me about Deaf culture, but not how to sign to my septuagenerian camper with humor dirtier than a teenager’s. Through time, I began to understand all of their colorful