My Time With Zach

Visit: September 11, 1999 9:00 am — 11:00 am

Well here it goes. The journal begins. I suppose the most appropriate way to begin is to give the history of Zach and I.

I’ve known Zach since he was born. I started babysitting when he was a baby, during the time period when he started having seizures. With the right medication, he stopped having the seizures, but as the years passed it bcame obvious that his sickness had taken it’s toll. His speech and brain processes are not the same as other children his age.

I actually got to know Zach most when I was his teacher at church. I was really nervous about having him in my class after watching him in the previous class. He ran around the room, wouldn’t listen when his teacher told him to do some things, and sometimes acted out violently.

After I became his teacher, I did have moments when I wanted to give up, when I would leave the class with crayon markings on the chalkboard, crayons down the heat vent, and my ears turned pink with some of his language choices. But his smile and "Hello Sister May" kept me teaching. Once I realized that he wasn’t trying to get my goat, but rather he was just trying to enjoy and get through the class, my style of teaching changed. I left the crayons at home and brought play-doah for him to work with. Any lesson I had to teach could keep his interest as long as I adapted it to include trains and helicopters.

That brings me to where things are now. I’m now meeting with Zach in an entirely different environment. I’m meeting him in his home. I can already notice big differences in the way he behaves and interacts with me in this new environment. At church I was more of a teacher and disciplinary figure, but at his home I am more of a friend.

Another big difference is that he was hit by a car while riding his bike about a month to month and 1/2 ago, and is now has a cast on his right leg from his pelvic bone to his foot. Zach isn’t one to sit still, so this is very different. I was worried about the cast and his immobility, but I soon realized that it was actually really nice to have him stay in place rather than running hither and fro.

Hopefully this is enough background to get started with. Instead of just starting from the beginning and telling the events of the morning, I’m going to discuss experiences using the three dimensions of reflection.

The first dimension of reflection is affective. Basically this is the emotional part of the day.

It was so exciting to see Zach again. I got the best welcome when I entered his house. He was so excited to see me, and that made me really excited to be there with him too. He was bubbling and kept asking if I had come to visit him.

Another emotional experience occurred when we were on a walk. We had seen the fire engine pass us, and when we walked a little further, we saw the fire truck parked next to a house. Zach and his brother asked if they could go visit the firemen. I told them that the firemen were during their job and that we needed to let them keep doing their job so they could help the people. Well no sooner had the words excited my mouth than the firemen started coming over. Apparently they had been at the accident when Zach was hit by the car, and hadn’t seen him since that night. It was really neat to see Zach and the firemen equally excited to see each other. I think I was the only one that wasn’t excited, and that was only because I was wishing I didn’t have such a casual appearance with all those cute firemen around.

The next dimension of reflection is behavior. This is where I consider how I will act in the future after this experience.

The only real problems occurred after we got home. We went up to the boy’s room and we were playing with toys. Zach decided to throw some of the toys. At first I tried tried to play with him so he wouldn’t throw the toys, but it didn’t exactly work. So then I told him that we couldn’t throw toys because that breaks them, and even though I wasn’t yelling, and didn’t even have that strict of a tone, he got really sad and said, "Sorry Sister May". Then he said, "give me a hug". So I gave him a hug and thought, "hey, that was pretty easy." And then I asked him which toy he wanted to play with. He told me, I got it for him, and then he threw it. Instead of repeating what I had just told him, we played a different game. We made a tent with blankets. Now that I look back, I think I should have stuck with the toys. Sure it would have probably been more frustrating, but I think it’s important that I establish what’s ‘ok’ behavior. Even though I didn’t allow him to keep throwing things, I sneaked around the issue.

The last dimension of reflection that I want to explore is that of cognition. This is where I connect everything that happened with things I learn in class.

One of the things I noticed was that Zach is really gifted in many areas. I noticed especially that he had a talent for making up games. While we were on the walk he would make us watch all of the stoplights. Whenever one would turn colors, we would all cheer. It was a great game.

Another thing that struck me was his desire to learn new things. He would continually ask "Sister May what does a bird do?" or "Sister May what does a cat do?" These may be questions that a 4 year old asks rather than a 7 year old, but his desire to learn is as great if not greater. He is also really smart. He knows the different types of trucks and identified a "concrete truck" for me. He also can explain how a train runs (he really know) and loves good classical music.

Another thing I noticed was how much easier it was to teach him in the environment he is in. In comparison it’s a lot easier than when I was teaching him in a class with other children. I could devote my attention to him, and had a lot less behavior problems. I can see why sometimes teachers have hard times with human exceptional children in their classrooms. It does take more effort and more preparation. But then again, I know how much Zach thrived on seeing his friends at church. I think that environment taught him a lot of things about socializing with kids his age.

I learned a lot from this visit, and actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I think I know a little bit more to what to expect, and hopefully things will continue to run smoothly.

Visit: September 18, 1999 9:00 am — 11:00 am

I’ll start by reflecting on the affective part of the visit. Once again I received a great welcome when I first walked in his door. It might have been just me, but it seems like he was even more excited to see me than last week. It’s really good talking to him and sensing how excited he is to just talk. It’s "Sister May" this and "Sister May" that.

After being prompted to think of a goal for my experiences with Zach, I decided that I would help him make a photo album/scrapbook documenting this time of his life. Basically I will bring my camera and let him take photos of things he likes, and things that mean a lot to him. Hopefully he will both learn to use the camera and how it works, and will also have a record of this time of his life. (Which because of his recent accident will probably be pretty memorable.)

So we went for another walk, and Zach decided that he wanted to take pictures of signs. It’s amazing how much fun it can be walking around noticing things that you fly by every other minute of the day.

We were also lucky enough to see a train during our walk. It’s not that surprising considering that he lives right next to train tracks, but Zach loves trains. The best thing about hanging out with Zach is that his enthusiasm rubs off on you when you’re with him. He has a zest for life, and although I think most kids have the same zest, he forces you to be zesty with him.

Time to move onto the behavior dimension of reflection. We had a few problems using the camera. Luckily I have a pretty sturdy camera, because he had no fears of pushing all the buttons. The hardest thing was having him decide what he wanted to take a picture of, and then only take one picture of that thing, rather than the entire roll. I ended up holding the camera in between pictures, but I’m hoping that by the end of the semester he will be able to hold the camera without abusing it.

I was actually surprised at how well the pictures turned out that he took. About 1/2 of them actually had a sign in them. There was also a good shot of the sky and many nice pictures of the houses. I think we’ll start working a little more on the aiming of the camera.

Next I’m going to talk about the cognition dimension of reflection. I definitely feel a lot more respect to those individuals who use wheelchairs. It wore me out just wheeling Zach around for an hour or so. Plus even though a lot of the side walks have ramps on the edges, not all of them are in very good condition, and some aren’t that easy to use. I had to be a lot more cautious of where I was going and make sure there was a way to get up on the other side. I bet it gets easier after awhile, but I definitely can see the need for handicapped parking now.

If Zach’s condition were permanent, he would need a lot more changes to his environment. Even now he’s pretty helpless. The bed he sleeps in is too high for him to get in and out of by himself, and with his casts he very immobile. He’s learning to crawl a little bit, but really relies on his mother (or me when I’m there) to carry him around. He doesn’t seem to be too upset with it, and I think he’s thriving on all the attention, but I’m afraid it’s going to have adverse affects when he starts to heal and is expected to do things for himself.

Once again it was a very positive week, and I’m looking forward to visiting with him again next week.

Visit: September 25, 1999 9:00 am -11:00 am

Once again I’ll focus on the affective, behavior, and cognitive form of reflection.

I walked in Zach’s house and guess what? He had his cast off. He was completely cast free from head to toe, and boy did he want to tell me about it. He said "look at my legs" and then patted them to show that he had no casts. Then he instructed me to pat my legs and sure enough there was no cast on mine either.

Once again we went for a walk to take pictures. We ended up walking to a nearby park. Now Zach just barely got his casts off, and doesn’t have very much control over his legs yet. So when he asked to go on the swings I was a little bit hesitant. Unfortunately, even though it was a city park, there were no swings that have the child safety back. I had horrible fears of him falling off and injuring himself again. So instead, he sat on my lab and I pushed us both. It was lucky for me that he is a very light child, because there’s no way I could have done it otherwise. The excitement he felt on the swing was worth ever pump of my legs. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that he’s been immobile for the past month, but man he was happy to be swinging. He would shout "Weeee" and all sorts of other fun exclamations and of course made me join in as well. I have to admit it’s been awhile since I’ve been on a swing, and it really was a lot of fun.

Then he asked if we could go down the slide. I agreed, and decided to have him sit on my lap. It was going really well, and we were enjoying the ride until we got to the very end, where the slide slopes a little bit less. I think it bent his leg a little bit, which was still pretty tender, and he started to cry. Of course at this point I’m thinking I’ve broken his leg again, and was starting to feel a little panic. However, he said he was ok, and within a minute the pain was gone. I think I understand a lot better know why parents are so protective. It was really scary when I thought he had hurt himself. From then on we didn’t try the slide again. In fact the only thing I would let him do was the swings again. I told him that we just had to wait a little while until his leg was a little bit better. True he probably would have been ok doing some of the other things, but I didn’t want to take the chance of him getting hurt. Maybe on a grand scale that’s what a lot of parents with human exceptional children are feeling. I’m not talking just about slides and swings, but when a kid comes home crying because someone made fun of his exceptionality, it would be hard to keep letting him go.

Now I’ll move onto the behavior form of reflection. Things actually went really smoothly overall this visit. A lot of it probably had to do with the fact that we spent the whole two hours on our walk and at the park. There were so many new experiences that he didn’t feel he needed to act out to get attention. He even held the camera the whole time we were on the walk. I let him decide when he wanted to take the picture, and he has the steps pretty much down. He know to first push the red button, then look and see the thing he wants to take the picture of, and then push the other button. He still sometimes needs help finding the button on top with his hand, (since he can’t see it), but that’s really the only thing he is having problems with. I haven’t looked at the pictures from this session yet, but I’m thinking he probably needs to work more on the lining up of objects as well. I tried to explain a little bit about how the camera was working, but he didn’t seem to interested. In the next few weeks I’m hoping to explain a little more about that, and maybe in the next few visits we can take a trip to the super market to drop off the film.

Lastly, I’ll move onto the cognitive form of reflection. We talked a lot in class about diversity. I’ll say this much, it would be incredibly difficult to teach Zach if he didn’t speak the same language, or even if he didn’t speak. Even though Zach is behind in his language development, I can almost always understand what he’s saying. Without that, I would have to find another form of communication, and things would probably take a lot longer to do. Also, as I mentioned before, Zach is a pretty small guy. There is no way we could have done the same things if he was an adult in the same situation. Zach is pretty good about crawling, and is learning to walk again, but it’s a really slow process, and it would be very difficult caring for him if he was a bigger kid.

The worst time of the day occurred going to and from the park. Between his house and the park there is a freeway. In order to get to the other side you have to go on one of two roads which go underneath the freeway. The problem? Both roads have recently been the victims of heavy constructions. This means that the sidewalks are currently nothing more than dirt pathways. Last week I went on one of the roads and although it took a little bit of work, all in all wasn’t too bad. This week I was thinking the other road would probably be better, since the construction has been done for quite awhile. Well needless to say, it wasn’t. On the way to the park we went on one side of the road. Here the dirt was loose and was a good inch or two deep. It was really tough pushing the wheelchair through it, especially on the way up on the hill. I wonder what those people who are in wheelchairs do when they have no one to help them. There is no way Zach could have possibly made it through there without some help. On the way back I decided to try the other side. It looked more used and I was hoping the dirt was packed down more. For most of the way it was a lot better. Unfortunately, about 2 feet away from the edge of the sidewalk the dirt turned into mud. It was pretty deep, and I knew there was no way I was getting a wheelchair through it. I didn’t want to go back up and find another route, so I ended up lifting Zach, carrying him across, and then going back for the wheelchair. It was lucky for me that the wheelchair was light and could be carried. However, the situation itself is not one that should have happened in the first place. I cannot believe that the city didn’t leave a way for disabled people to get to the other side of the freeway. I understand that they had to destroy it for construction purposes, but the construction has been completed for some time now. It’s irresponsible and probably against some law to leave it inaccessible.

Also there was one curb that didn’t have the little slope to make it easier, and there was honestly no way around it. (There was a fence bordering the other side, and traffic was too heavy to go in the street). I had to take the wheelchair over it, and it was no easy task. How would people in a wheelchair get around it if they were on their own? They’d probably have to back track and find another way around. This environment definitely could have used a lot of work to make it more accessible to those who have disabilities.

Visit: October 2, 1999 10:00 am -12:00 pm

What can I say? Zach and I are getting along really well. I thought I had a good relationship with him when I was his teacher at church, but I realize now that I didn’t really know him that well. It helps a lot that I don’t have to be in charge of keeping him occupied during church meetings. I realize now that the program in church doesn’t suit human exceptional children very well. There is too much emphasis on sitting still and being quiet.

When I walked into the house Zach was downstairs. His mom was trying to get him up for his breakfast, but he wasn’t being too responsive. Finally she said, "Sister May is here" and he started saying "Sister May is here, Sister May is here, we need to go upstairs" and a second later I could here him crawling up the stairs. He’s getting a lot better getting around the house. His mom is really good about making him try to get around. I think it takes a lot of patience to do this. It’s a lot quicker and easier to just lift him up and carry him. But he has to learn to use his legs in order for them to get better.

I didn’t bring my camera , so we went to the park again. This time we drove. It actually was really fun. We went on the swings, and he sat on the swings by himself. He didn’t even fall off and break bones. He also went on the slide and we played on the structure. The only thing that he couldn’t do was the pulley ride. His hands were just not strong enough, and he fell. I was underneath him, so he didn’t actually fall far, but he was a little sad. I just focused on the fact that he had hung onto it for awhile, and told him that we would try it again later.

I don’t know that I would do anything differently based on this visit. Things went really well, we had a great time, and I didn’t see any behavior problems at all. He didn’t want me to leave, but I told him that I had to go and that I would see him next week. The transition phase might be a little more difficult than I thought. I was planning on presenting him with a scrapbook made from the pictures he’s taken, and having a little party of some sort. It’s still going to be hard, though, especially since I’ve been spending every week with him.

We’ve been talking a lot about families in this class, and I can definitely see how Zach’s family helps him out a lot. Devereaux is younger than Zach, but totally helps him out with things. Plus he’s willing to play with Zach, even though Zach can’t really do everything yet. His mother is also really supportive. She makes him do what he can do. I think his progress is a good recollection on her dedication. It seems like it would be really hard caring for a child like Zach, especially in the stage of recovery that he’s in now, but he’s such a great kid, it would totally be worth it.

Visit: October 9, 1999 10:00 am -12:00pm

This week was a lot similar to last week. We went to the park again, and played on the swing and other toys. This week Zach had a walker, and man, did he know how to use it! It’s amazing to me how quickly he’s recovering. Every week he makes such amazing improvements. I have no doubt that soon he will be back to his usual self.

This week I had a really interesting experience. We were walking to the park from my car, and Zach was using his new walker. After we had made it most of the way to the play structures I turned around and noticed that we were being followed by two boys. I would guess that one was about 8 and the other was a year or two younger. The older boy looked a little bit nervous and I could see he was hiding something in his hand. My first instinct told me that he was up to mischief. Zach was as usual being friendly and talking to the boy, but the boy didn’t say much back. Zach and Dev turned back and started walking to the swings, but I looked at the boys for a moment longer to make sure they weren’t going to start something with the boys. The older boy held out his hand offered to me 3 quarters, 3 dimes, and 6 pennies. I was definitely caught off-guard but managed to say, "thank you, but we don’t really need your money, you can keep it." However this boy was very stubborn and told me to take it. I didn’t want to take money away from him, and so again told him that he didn’t need to do this. Again he insisted, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I thanked him and accepted the 3 quarters, 3 dimes, and 6 pennies. His unsolicited generosity was really touching. Even though Zach would much rather have a new friend than the spare change, this little boy was doing what he could to show his support.

This week in class we talked about systematic assessment. I’m not sure how applicable this is to my current situation with Zach. The truth is that I don’t actually know any results from the tests he has taken. I think for our current situation that is fine. I work one-on-one with him enough that I can tell as I go along what is working and what is not. I tried to think if test results would have been any benefit to me when I was his teacher. I again don’t think it would have made a difference. Because we had such a relaxed environment, we could decide which class he would go in, and make decisions based on how well he was doing in a class. Because there was no funding involved, and because it was such a small setting, I don’t think it would have benefited us any.

However, I’m certain that it makes a difference in his school environment. Even though I’m sure the teachers make adaptations for each child, there is a lot more paperwork and politics to fight with.

I’m actually really glad that I get to spend time with Zach in a non-academic atmosphere. As much as I enjoyed teaching him, I feel I’m gaining more insights by getting to know him in a relaxed environment.