It is now Monday and we are headed to the local Thomas Jefferson high school to meet with Kim who is the director for the Autism Society of Colorado and she is going to set us up with time to work with the students.
As we arrived at the school and walked through the hallways, I start to notice that it is the most diverse school I have ever seen, which is pretty amazing. There were all kinds of different races, ages, and students with disabilities. Although this was true, they all got along very well and it was clearly a growing community and trend to treat all other equal. I think that this should be expressed more in today’s society.
The first thing that we did was meet the teacher for the student and her name was Elizabeth. She is a very young, outgoing, and energetic person who works well with the kids and I learned a lot from her. She first asked if anyone would like to go on a special learning trip, so I jumped at the opportunity and next thing I knew I was standing at the bus stop with Jacob who is 19 years old and is a senior and Healy who is 16 years old and is a sophomore. Jacob has downs syndrome and Healy has a severe case of autism. Healy can’t count and Jacob has trouble remembering names, but they live as normal as possible lives. Jacob even had a girlfriend in the class!
The task of the day was to have these two kids figure out their own way, by taking the bus, to the hotel to fold pillow cases as their job. They had been practicing this for over three weeks. When we got on the bus, they both didn’t know what to do to make the bus stop and we missed the bus stop. This was when I first realized how severe these cases were and how different their lives are compared to mine.
We eventually made it to fold the pillows and back to the school for lunch and by this time I was best friends with Jacob and Healy. These two kids are great and fun! It really opened me up to seeing how they live their lives compared to ours. The simplest thing can be so hard and a perfect schedule is needed.
When we were folding clothes, Healy was asked if she wanted to take a break, and she got angry and threw a tantrum. We dealt with this by telling her to breath in and out and talk to them about what was wrong. She needed her pills, which she takes in the morning, lunch, and afternoon everyday.
I learned that in high school, the tradition is to go four years and then go another three which are called senior one, senior two, and senior three.
The day was long and we were all so warn out by the end from chasing these kids around and helping them all day.
No comments:
Post a Comment