a week in Life Skills

School's out for summer, but I'm still working. There's a summer sub list and I'm on it. I'm guessing it's there to fill in for summer school, the year-round sites (there's a couple), and some ESY programs. Because it's summer, and there's way fewer jobs, it's no time to get choosy, so I'm doing absolutely whatever comes my way.

This week I'm working at a school that's about as far away from where I live as you can possibly get. I don't normally do a lot of elementary level Life Skills classes these days either, but again, works is work, and kids are kids. So for the next week, I'm going to be immersed in the world of Life Skills.

I got pretty lucky with this assignment, all things considered. Life Skills can be pretty extreme sometimes. For anyone reading this who's not familiar with Special Ed, at one end of the spectrum you have kids who spend most of their time in regular classes, and way on the other end, you have kids who are basically in institutional/ medical settings. Somewhere between the two you have students who receive intensive instruction in specialized classrooms (the classical model of Special Education). What makes Life Skills interesting/challenging/difficult/amazing sometimes is the extreme levels of needs you're likely to get. Most of the kids I've met in these settings have some sort of developmental delay combined with one or more of the following, traumatic brain injury (TBI), mental retardation, communication/speech disorders, emotional disturbance, autism, etc. Luckily in this particular group, there's no hitters, no biters, no grabbers, or runners, everyone's toileting on their own (not typical!), nobody's non-verbal, and no one has any feeding protocols. In other words, this bunch is pretty easy compared to some classrooms I've been in.

So it's a change of pace from my usual routine of secondary schools, but it's a pretty easygoing group, and I'm enjoying myself. It's really nice that I'll be at the same place all week, so I get to know names, and what to expect. As a sub, you don't get to count on that happening very often.

Oh, and I always pick up really good ideas when I'm working in Life Skills classrooms...