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SnapshotsIDtranscript.docxSnapshots: Intellectual Disabilities
Video Transcript
Carlyn
Jana:
When Carlyn was first born that was a really traumatic experience. Right off we knew that there were problems. First of all, she wasn’t breathing. When they finally got her breathing, they began to evaluate her physical appearance and her other physical abilities and just evaluated right off that there were probably other problems.
Ray:
The first few months were very horrifying for us. We would spend a couple hours feeding Carlyn two ounces of milk and then we would lay her down for about an hour. We just kept repeating this process twenty-four hours a day. We did this for a couple of months.
Jana:
That was a very difficult and emotional time. It was heartbreaking. I can’t explain how you feel inside when there is something wrong with your baby. Parker and Rachel dearly love Carlyn. In fact, Parker continues to tell me that Carlyn is his favorite person in the whole world. He just loves Carlyn and the interaction between them is very special. They interact with her very physically. They give her lots of hugs and they roll around on the floor with her and tickle her and wrestle with her and all that kind of stuff. Lately they have been going down the stairs and all kinds of fun things together with her. There is a deep interaction between them and sometimes I have to kind of calm it down because it is more physical than anything but they enjoy being with her and love playing with her.
Pat Bercherer:
When Carlyn came to school it was the first time she had ever been to an elementary school and it was quite large and I’m sure frightening for her. She was very leery of even coming in to the door. She was at first an observer; she never interacted with the children. Now she is over there right in the middle of them. She just loves to play cards with the boys. She plays dolls with the girls. She seems to really enjoy being here. She has very good role models; she seems to learn from others what they are doing. The other thing that we have been working on is her feeding and drinking and at first she was only taking two swallows of a liquid, either punch or milk. She would take maybe one bite of a cracker, one bite of toast and do one swallow and that was it. Now she is drinking a half a glass of milk, bringing everything to mid line and putting it on the table without spilling and she is eating an entire cracker and always raises her hand for more.
Academically we are trying to help Carlyn with some motor planning, fine motor. That deals with taking pegs in and out of small little holes, putting things into containers. We are trying to help her categorize things. We have different shapes, where she puts the squares, the circles and the triangles into a shape container which she truly enjoys doing. I think she sees that first they are there and now they are gone and she is always looking for them. When Carlyn first came into my classroom I was very doubtful that she would see much success because she is one of my more delayed children and now I have done a complete turnaround because I feel like she is doing really well in this integrated setting and I feel like it is the least restrictive environment for her at this time. And as I said before, she uses all the children around her to learn and she does have good role models in that area. She has started to talk more and not so much talking, but making the sounds such as ,”Ba-Ba” and “Ta-Ta”, which is great because at the beginning she wasn’t saying anything.
At the beginning, I think, Mom was like myself, was leery of having Carlyn here because all the other kids were so mobile and now I think she is excited that she is walking. I try to send notes home when Carlyn passes a milestone. When she walked ten feet, we wrote that home and when she took five swallows of a liquid we sent that home. When she has done some of her academic things, like putting a puzzle together, or just socially interacting with the children I try to let Janna know that and keep in contact with her as much as I can.
I would say she is going to be in this program for another two years. She is five and then it would really be nice to see her go into an integrated kindergarten class with services provided for her at that time if she needs them. I feel like she is just growing leaps and bounds here. I just love her! I just think she is a neat little girl and I think she is benefitting from us as much as we are from her. I’ve seen her grow just in two months, three months, from a little person that crawls to someone who is now walking and making an effort to interact with other children. So I think she is great!
Ray:
Jan and I have had a lot of conversations about Carlyn and one thing that we have noticed is that one thing that people tend to treat Carlyn a little differently when they interact with her. They feel good about it which is o.k. and right, but we want Carlyn to have the same things that our other children have. We want people to know that it is normal to talk and interact with children with disabilities. That it should just be an everyday occurrence, but I have a lot of faith and hope that Carlyn will have a bright future to look forward to. I am very grateful. I think all of us are that we have Carlyn. That really sustains us at times, because some times are stressful and they are very difficult, but never the less we are very grateful for Carlyn that gives us a lot of Joy.
Lilly
Suzanne:
Lily is adopted and she was over two years when we got her and we were told that she would never talk and might not walk and I believe I was a little optimistic, I thought, “well with all this family interaction and all of the verbal things that she will hear. She will talk” But it has been very arduous and very hard for her to learn to talk, but she has a really resilient spirit and she has worked very hard. She has come from really not being able to say a discernible sound to being able to say words that we understand. And even sentences. She is saying two or three word sentences. Lilly is probably closest to Josh and maybe that is because he is handicapped too. But she seems to be the arms, as limited as she is, and he directs her and he is the one in charge of Lilly reading her homework too. She reads the words to him and he checks it. He reads bedtime stories to her, helps her point out the words, and helps her get undressed. She just needs a little bit more direction so Josh helps Lilly.
She is taking on her share of the chores, she has to make her bed in the morning, and she empties the dishwasher. She is what we call our errand person because I guess having compensated for lack of physical mobility; she has a really good memory. She knows where things go and she knows where things are, so if things are lost we say, “Lilly, do you know where…?” and she will always fetch it. So we have just made that one of her chores.
Not only is she handicapped and black, and adopted, but she has that drool coming out of her mouth and it turns the other kids off. So I think as she gets older, medically she will want to look better so maybe she will close her mouth and it sounds kind of mean because we are always saying, “Lilly! Watch your drool! Close your mouth!” We do it because we don’t want her to stand out in not good ways. My greatest challenge with Lilly is her inability to focus. If she is directed step by step, she will do it, but if you leave her on her own she sometimes gets into mischief. Because she cannot communicate abstract thoughts and deep thoughts, it is really hard to know if she really doesn’t get it or if she is just being a knuckle head.
Pam Halladay:
Lilly has been in my classroom now for three years. She came to me when she was barely five. One of Lilly’s weaknesses is her attending. And now she can work independently at her desk for a good 15 minutes. In my classroom we use peer tutors. Lilly’s tutors are Anita and Amy, they come from 6th grade. They have been working with Lilly now for two years and what they do is they come into the classroom and reinforce some of Lilly’s skills using the computer. The computer is also a wonderful tool for Lilly to be able to communicate what she is learning because all she has to do is touch buttons to express the answers. Anita and Amy have been wonderful peer tutors, they have benefitted because they both lacked self-confidence when they first came into our classroom, but now they seem to be blooming through helping someone else out and that is the real benefit of peer tutoring.
Lilly understands the meaning of conversation very well. Her receptive skills are very high, but her difficulty comes in being able to vocalize back to people. Her articulation skills are very low and that’s why we use the touch talker. Mrs. Roberts, the second grade classroom teacher and I have a natural ease with each-other. We just have chemistry where we are comfortable with each other. As the children from my classroom go into her classroom, I find that the students also they have a natural ease with each other. It’s a really neat chemistry they just blend together.
Mary Roberts:
The children in the special-ed. Classroom come in and they sit down mixed in with my class. Lilly is the most popular one, they all love her neat machine.
Ms. Roberts:
Who can help her find Friday? Ok Patricia, thanks.
Machine:
Friday
Ok, what year is it Lilly?
Student:
Right there
Machine:
1992
Ms. Roberts:
Can you push the numbers that tell us what day of the week it is Lilly? Can you move so Lilly can see the numbers on the days of the week? Ok Lilly push the three. All right!
Ms. Roberts:
During the learning center activities there is always one student from the special ed. class paired with one student from my class. We have a lot of different centers in my classroom and it forces them to interact. They really enjoy the interaction with the children from room seven, the special ed. children. This is Lilly’s last year within my classroom and I hope for her to go to her neighborhood school next year. Hopefully to be mainstream as much as possible with the curriculum adjusted to her needs, partial participation activities like, she will be doing book reports at her own level, meeting the requirements of the classroom but still doing it at her ability level and from there with her great socialization skills and her persistence, I see her as being independent in the future, working in a job setting.
Suzanne: I am very optimistic about Lilly’s future, because she has got such a great spirit and as long as she will keep trying I can see her living independently. I feel really fortunate to be associated with Lilly. I just am really thrilled that she is in our family. The stereotypical thing about a black child coming from East St. Louis and having a better life, so to speak; well we don’t look at it like that. We just think; boy are we so lucky to be able to be around this kid.
Lee
Lee:
First I eat lunch, and then I go catch the UTA bus. Then it takes me up to my work. I’ve been learning how to ride the bus since I was a sophomore. Then I get off and go to work.
Ray Cornelsen:
This here is a checklist that we give to the kids when they come in to work and it has written on here how many cases. I prewrite the order in order to show them how many cases I want to get them to get from the back room, which we call our picking area, for them to bring out on the shelves. And for them to stock the shelves. Now Lee can’t read but he has learned how to be able to associate what is written, such as Beef chunks, to what is written on the cases in the back room and this way he is able to identify the products that he is then putting on the shelf.
Lee: I stock the shelves.
Kate Tillinghast:
So what we have done is we have used the community for our curriculum, making a functional curriculum out of shopping , banking, and using the UTA bus. Anything that is sort of a common sense thing that you need to survive, all of the survival skills of the community.
Lee:
Right now I work over at Motel 6. I work in the laundry room. Sometimes I fold the towel and once I got to work the washing machines and that wasn’t that easy.
Lee:
I go around and strip the beds for them. At my school they have got this weight room. I get to go there and I get to go do it. I go there every second period and work out. I’ve got somebody over there to help me.
Teacher:
Does everybody have a calculator? You didn’t bring yours today? Shoot. Come on up here peer tutors. Corin? Where did she go?
Lee:
We have a peer tutor and they come in every period to help us and if we need something they are right there to help.
Tutor:
Well we are asked to sit in the aisles and help them out and whatever they may be doing, working in their folders, they count money, they play all sorts of games. We go to the grocery store. We are just here to aide them.
Lee Sr.:
I think the major thing he has learned is his independence. Of course he has always been a little independent, but they taught him how to be independent for himself.
Barbara:
He is a great friend. Everyone who knows him when he walks down the street says, “Hi Lee!” It’s amazing how many friends this boy has.
Lee Sr.:
The older people in this area are the same way. They see him and they make a point to stop and talk to him to see how he is doing.
Lee:
It is fun being a scout. The only part was getting my eagle, because that wasn’t that easy to get.
Barbara:
