Kevin's Classroom

Now I know why Kevin couldn't just tell me about his room. You need some background information. His instructor (Greer) at Columbia has developed this program. The main classroom teacher is a PhD student and the 3 aides are Masters students. There are 8 children with autism and each is very low functioning and exhibits negative behaviors. Greer uses "learn units". This is each time a student gets direct instruction. I think in a regular classroom if a teacher calls on a specific student to read or answer a question this is a learn unit. There is supposed to be 1,000 learn units a day. I can't remember now if that is per teacher or per student, big difference. I couldn't believe that was even possible, but his second day Kevin recorded 500. (His first day he had 100 and really didn't understand what was going on.)

So, he has 2 students assigned to him. They are working on language and following one step directions. If the student responds correctly to a verbal command they receive a huge amount of praise and a positive score. If the teacher must demonstrate or model it hand-over-hand with the child the child gets no praise and a negative score. To show you the levwel of functioning he demenstrarted this with Lilly, who is 1 1/2. "Clap your hands. Sit down. Pat your lap. Stand up, etc." There are 20 commands and a student must get a positive for each of them before the teaher moves on to 2 step commands. The language is scored by holding up a flashcard. If the student says the name of the item they get praise and a positive. In order to get in 1,000 learn units the teacher must learn to go through the commands very quickly. The other things they do is sit the 2 students at a table and tell them to "play with the blocks" or "look at the books". The teacher then sits back and observes, marking a plus or minus every 5 seconds as to whether the child is actively engaged in the task or is doing other behavior, such as staring or flapping their hands. The child that bites generally bites his own arm but gets very close to your face when he does it which is extremely intimidating. The teacher is supposed to turn their head away and thus ignore the behavior and not give any attention. Challenging. Another student would lift his knee when sitting in order to hit himself in the head. The teacher intervened by pushing the chair under a table so the child could not lift his knee. Well, no surprise, now the child repeatedly bangs his head on the table.

I was wrong though and Kevin will change rooms every semester but will continue to be empoyed by the same school system. After earning his masters he will be the head teacher in a classroom. We are not sure what the other classrooms are like, compared to his. Tuesday nights class is to discuss the students experiences in the classroom, so he should know more tomorrow.

Incidently, if you read the previous post, he agreed whole heartedly that we are not going back to the enrollment office and will keep Katie home this year.