Math, Middle-School Boys and Cookies

I subbed math today at Dixon Middle School where my brothers, sisters and kids all went to middle school (I went to Tomlinson Junior High in Lawton, Oklahoma). I got to sub Math which is my second favorite subject to teach after English.

The first half of the day were the kids in main-line classes and the the second half was for resource and special-ed. The special-ed kids try super hard, but disabilities make learning hard. The resource-student, junior gang-bangers were trying to push buttons while I was trying to help those with disabilities, so I was getting frustrated. During forth period, twenty minutes before the lunch bell rung, I decided to mess with the rotten kids. I had already sent one to the office for threats, disruptions and profanity and I wanted to lower the stress level just a little.

I pulled out the pack of cookies I had set aside for lunch and started looking at them. These kids, especially the boys, were starving. I opened the package slowly. Smelled the cookies loudly. Picked one out and sniffed it as if it were a fine cigar. I acted like I was going to eat it, put it back, then quickly snatched it back and gobbled it down greedily. I then sighed loudly and drank from my bottle of Coke.

I then ate the entire pack except one. I held it up and addressing the one boy who looked like he was about to cry from lunch anticipation, I told him I was going to put it in my pocket and save it until I went home. This kid also happened to be the loudest and most abrasive, but he is a middle-school boy after all and his stomach is still more important than his homies, the girls or mathematics in particular.

Every once in a while before the bell rang I would pull it out and smell it again.

He was in agony.

Between classes during hall monitoring, I would pull the cookie out and show it to him whenever I saw him. He was funny about it, but his friends teased him a lot.

Finally at the end of the day as I was exiting the building, I passed him as he was waiting at the main entrance for his mom and ate the cookie right in front of him. I told him how it tasted, but he said he already knew what Triple Double Oreos tasted like with a grumble and a huff. He told me I was a punk, but I responded that every time I ate an Oreo from then on I would think of him.

Man, I love middle-school boys.

Assembly: Change Change Change

A long time ago I learned the truthyism: nothing is constant except change itself. This is not a bad way to understand the world, but for some reason some people just don’t get it.

We have a situation in Assembly that requires some people to be moved from one seat to another. Particularly one person, Person 1, but the last person we moved, Person 4, was very unhappy about it. Person 4 was convinced I thought she had done something wrong. She didn’t of course. She didn’t believe me. She actually broke down into tears. Sobbing, fifty-year old women from Boston are pitiful, but because the change was important and necessary, I didn’t budge (I can’t tell you why Person 1 had to move unfortunately).

This set the mood for the day.

A client/trainee, Person 2, who was a tiny part of the primary reason for the change is someone who taxes the patience of the faculty and other clients/trainees. Person 2’s disability makes her cranky. Constantly. She is a very nice person, but if something sets her off she complains non-stop (Hey is for horses! I can’t drink caffeine. Current events is only supposed to be on rainy days! I hate Bingo! Tell the other faculty they can’t boss me. So-and-so is bossing me! etc.). We moved her to her new location, because she has been doing very well and we had been looking for a way to integrate her better into the group.

Today, the first day of the move and person 2 is happy with the change, but one of her new neighbors was not too thrilled and started picking at Person 2. Person 2 complained. Eventually, Person 2 had to be taken outside until her “behavior” subsided. I have been working with Person 2 for as long as I have been substitute teaching with Assembly (since early February) and so I know how to weather her worst storms and to also help her understand we hear what she says, listen carefully and value her. It did not take long for me to get Person 2 to agree to ignore her neighbor at her new table. Now Person 2 and her neighbor have a long history of strife. Both are hard working, competitive women with very different disabilities. To say the least, the needling continued. The neighbor dislikes Person 2 (“She’s annoying”). We had two more blow-ups, both went outside for “talks” and both lost their end-of-day rewards for good behavior, but Person 2 is still happy with the change. Eventually, the neighbor will come around to Person 2 and everything will be fine. The stress of change eventually goes away.

It is too early to see if Person 1 likes the change. He’s sneaky. Person 3 was just fine with the change. Person 3’s OCDs are extreme and I was expecting problems, but I got none.

At the end of the day, the last thing I heard from Person 4 is: “I didn’t do nuttin. I was good. Why did you make me change places.”

Oh my!

Assembly: Grey Foam

I substitute taught the highest production team in Assembly today since their boss had her last day yesterday. Assembly is a day-program/transition department for cognitively-disabled adults for the Provo School District. The people I work with are called clients or trainees. This group is higher functioning than many and most of them love to work, but their disabilities interfere with their chances to find work except for here. They work on it though.

Today, we had work. For the last two weeks, there wasn’t any work and so everyone was excited. Grey foam is packaging material for an air-bag manufacturer here in town. Today’s foam was two inches thick with quarter-inch holes punched through. Each foam piece is four by three inches and has fifty holes cut through. Assembly has to pull each little bit of foam out of the holes. The job is quite simple and because it is simple, “foam” is the perfect work for Assembly.

There are two teams of higher functioning workers. The team I was working with is very efficient, but also very emotional. Think of mixed middle school drama and put that into the minds and bodies of adults who are in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

Here are some of the things I did:

• Reminded someone to stop tattling to me about what happened at home that I heard from her three other times today and repeated several times yesterday.
• Remind someone to not grumble under her breath.
• Ask the grumbler and the repeater not to argue.
• Tell the grumbler to ignore someone on another team who is bugging her.
• Remind someone to stay awake.
• Tell someone to not wash his hands every five minutes because the foam is itchy.
• Negotiate a deal as to when someone can get a snack from her lunch bag.
• Ask hand washer to pull up his pants, he’s flashing everyone (severe plumber’s crack syndrome).

There is of course more, but this is part of it. Not everyone has problems like this. There are other extreme problems, but none of those exhibit when the team is working because they love working. Everything I listed happened while we were working.

Each of the six teams in Assembly have different problems. The group I was with does not have any one who drools. There are no wheel chair bound people. There are no people who say “no” to any request and run and hide in the bathroom. On the other days of this week I worked with those groups and I loved it as much as I loved working with this group.

When there is no work, we do activities, chores and classes. The trainees would rather work. They get paid to work, not to do the other stuff, so when we are working there is a lot of fun and between some of them light competition to see who can do the most.

Circles of Intimacy

Today at Central Utah Enterprises (CUE), I discussed the Circles of Intimacy with the staff and how it is being used with middle-school kids with the same or stronger disabilities than the clients/trainees in laundry and assembly.

I love the guys at CUE. In spite of their disabilities, they are some of the most authentic, wonderful people I know. Even the guy whose discipline problems are so severe he spends almost all his time with me with I work at CUE. The reason is when I walk in every morning, I get greeted by a chorus of hellos and hugs from almost everyone. Even the autistic men who normally do not like any physical contact will come over for a hug. The problem is this should not be happening.

None of the clients/trainees at CUE is a good decision maker or problem solver. They lack the skills to separate someone who cares for them or some one who would prey on them. Many of them are repeated victims and still they treat everyone innocently. While in a perfect world there is nothing wrong with this, we do not live in a perfect world. Far from it. To even become a person who works with the disabled, one must go through a serious background check and even then, there are predators.

The circles of intimacy is not a cure all, but it at least provides barriers. When the Pepsi guy shows up, some of these folks go up to him and give him a hug. They don’t even know his name, but they like him because he brings in the pop. In the circles of intimacy, he would be in the orange or wave circle. Someone you know, but not well who it might be best to keep away from. I would be in the yellow or handshake circle. The middle-schools have an in depth program and video series that over a period of months helps their students understand how the circles of intimacy works. If the staff at CUE could do it, they might be able to teach the same program to at least cut down on some cases of victimization.

There is a good argument against the program. Many of these guys do not have families. Many who do have families, only see their families once a year. A few still live at home, but all eventually move into institutional living. The concern is they would then never have physical contact if the staff at CUE stopped hugging them. The hug or blue circle is for family. Instilling these restrictions would eventually be heartbreaking for both the staff and the clients/trainees.

One of my best friends at CUE has no family that visits him. He is a middle-aged man who has serious issues, but is very kind and is a hard, hard worker. He is also very funny. He has been victimized by people who claimed to be his friends. He has only given me a hug twice, but both times I can tell he needed one. He was troubled because of something or the other or was telling a story about his time in jail or his prison tattoos. If he was restricted from all physical contact, he would be hurt, but if he had learned the skills the circles of intimacy program teaches, he might never have gotten into such serious problems.

While I recognize, this program would not address family members that would take advantage of the state-funds they receive (I know of two these cases at CUE), it would at least begin to help.

Central Utah Enterprises

I’m working at Central Utah Enterprises (CUE) for the next week, so there is not a lot I can tell you about what I am doing (all legal reasons). The funny thing is as soon as I walked in, one of the most interesting clients/trainees said, “Aaron, you’re here today?” “Yup and you better be good or you get to come sit with me.” “I’ll be good, I promise.” He wasn’t and he got to spend the afternoon with me.

CUE is an adult transition center built to help adults with cognitive-disabilities gain skills so they can work at regular companies. Some of them have already worked at places like Wal-Mart and some of them would like to. Some of them have disabilities that make this hard. Some of the clients/trainees could work at Wal-Mart or other companies like them, but have a disability that causes “behaviorals” that frighten most people. Many of them have extreme OCD-like traits that preclude certain problems at work. Some of them do not handle correction or constructive criticism well. Some of them can not handle a change in routine. Some of them have been told certain common words are insulting, but in general conversation are not. For example the word “hey” is insulting to many people at CUE, because their parents told them it is derogatory. It is, but for some people, it is meaningless or even a greeting.

So someone who has a great work ethic, who is very kind, who is actually quite smart is thus unable to find work even as a cart-pusher or over-night maintenance worker at a Wal-Mart or Target. This is what we try to work with. Some do find jobs, so it does pay off, but some have been working at CUE for so long, they will be retiring soon.

I have worked so often at CUE that many of the clients/trainees come to me with problems instead of their appropriate staff. This morning, I worked in the laundry where CUE does the wash for the entire Provo School District, some charter schools, many small businesses and for Utah Valley University when their laundry has too much to do. When the folks in assembly (they assemble packaging for a local manufacturer) heard I was at CUE, many started coming over to ask permission to go to the restroom, tattle on others, complain about problems or just to visit. The problem is, they are supposed to go to their own supervisors in their work area and to stay there.

CUE is easily the most rewarding place I substitute at. I love going there, but I just can not tell you about some of the funny, wonderful, heartbreaking and often tragic stories I have experienced while I am there.

I can tell you a bit of good news: one of the people I have worked with the most was asked to go to Timpview High School to substitute for an absent custodian. This woman has been working so hard at her problems so she could go and work even one day outside of CUE. She ran right into laundry while I was helping others to tell me. I am so excited for her, but I also know when they don’t need her again, she is going to be devastated, thinking she did something wrong when truthfully the regular custodian was able to report to work.

Dixon Middle School: English

Finally, a class I can blog about. For the last six months or so, I’ve been subbing almost entirely with intellectually disabled students and it is quite illegal to blog about them. Middle school students? No one cares.

Dixon Middle School is where all my kids went to school as well as my brothers and sisters. When we moved from Oklahoma to Utah, I was already in high school, so I was the only person in my family who did not go to school at Dixon. Dixon is very old, but is in fairly good condition. It looks a lot like the school in Back to the Future. There is a little modernization, but it is easy to tell where that was added in with occasionally poorly placed wires, drill holes, sprinklers and computer cables. The class I was teaching in was originally a storage room for the neighboring biology class room and so was smaller than most of the English classes I’ve subbed in in newer buildings. Dixon is a Title I school where most students are minorities. This is the exception in very white-bread Utah County. Many of my students today asked if I could explain the lesson in Spanish. I answered in Korean and from that point on everyone spoke English.

We were learning how to do compare and contrast using Venn Diagrams. The text was Johnny Tremain comparing what Johnny was like before his accident and afterwards (when the forge cracked and spilled molten silver on his hand). The kids understood most of the physical problems, but many of the psychological/personality changes Johnny went through were lost on them. Fortunately, the teacher left a nicely designed, self-guided, fill in the black questionnaire to help them figure things out. The challenge came during the last fifteen minutes when I was required to spring a five paragraph essay on them that was due at the end of class. Ninety percent of the kids got it done with the remaining ten percent loudly complaining or saying they weren’t gonna do anything a sub told them they had to do. I taught seven periods and had the exact same reaction to the writing assignment.

Middle school! Loads of fun as always.

Map of Public School Bathrooms in Provo and Orem, UT

I have subbed at all of the schools here except Provo High School (my kids, my brothers, my sisters and I all graduated from Provo High, however) and have used the restrooms at each of these places. The scale I am comparing the student restrooms to are the Provo LDS Bathrooms (which has the best bathrooms I’ve seen in my life) and the Top Hat Dance Club in AnJunRi South Korea (which on Friday and Saturday nights was awash in vomit, diarrhea and urine and is the worst bathroom I’ve ever been–think of the nasty bathroom in the movie Trainspotting and you can understand, except for the smell, which movies can not translate). The Provo High School C-Wing bathroom is legendary with every Provo High Alum as being the nastiest pot to piss in. I would hold it until I could get to the gym and pee there. I’ve seen girls vomit as they walked past. The saddest thing were the boys who would hang out in there.

I think this is a problem. Most school bathrooms in the Provo and Alpine School Districts are on par with the Orem, Wal-Mart and that is no compliment. It is very disgusting when schools can only be as good as a Wal-Mart. There is an interesting correlation, the nicer bathrooms are in schools that have richer students and parents The exception is Timpview where the richest parents in the valley send their kids and Orem High School, because the building is only two years old. Educators say the hardest problem to deal with is poverty, but I reject this argument. Clean bathrooms are an indicator of a staff that has a good attitude. If the teachers care, then the janitors care. The kids never care and will pee in the floor if they are not paying attention or texting.

Note: The map is not to scale. I didn’t even use a ruler.

(This map was drawn with a Fine Point Sharpie and Micron Pen 0.8, sketched out with a yellow Sharpie Accent highlighter and green Zebra Zebrite Bible Highlighter & colored, edited and lettered in PhotoShop Elements.)

Substitute Teaching: Yay!!!

This comic was drawn with Micron Pens, a Fine Point Sharpie and a Chisel Tip Sharpie & colored and edited in PhotoShop Elements.

The fire I’m mentioning is actually three forest fires burning twenty miles or so to the south of Provo. The afternoon was worse than the morning. Driving home was like hell. Check it out here.

Substitute Teaching: Pizza Party (CUE)

Writing about my long term substitute teaching assignments are always scary after learning that doing so can actionable in either civil or criminal courts (depending on content). There are a few things I can write about and today there are two subjects: current events and the annual pizza party.

Current Events
Every day for an hour or so, we read and discuss the newspaper if there is no work. There hasn’t been work since Thursday and chores can only pay so much, so we read current events. Some people really get into it and some hate it and then have “behaviors.” Fortunately, no behaviors, but more on that later.

The Daily Herald, the local newspaper, ran a front page story about how routine prostate examinations may do more harm than good. This was upsetting to several of the guys there since they’ve already had prostate examinations. I can understand why no one would want to take such a test without knowing the test has a one in a thousand chance of actually saving life. The other 999 are just gonna have to risk cancer because the test does butkus.

The men here at CUE go to routine medical examinations and most of them hate the doctors. Most feel the doctors have no respect for them because they have disabilities. I tell them, I have the same problems and it’s just because doctors are an arrogant bunch. We talked a lot about the test and I got quite a few more details about the test that I just didn’t want to know.

We spent thirty minutes discussing this article, so I made the following word search. The group I work with right now loves word searches. I hope they like it.

Article by Brian Vastag at The Washington Post

Annual Pizza Party
It’s not exactly annual, it’s dependant if we have funding or not. The party coincides when the school year ends for the kids over at Provo Post High School. I taught the kids over at Provo Post for five weeks. It was fun to see them together with the CUE guys. Some of the CUE guys have to be kept separate from them, but otherwise we had a lot of fun.

We kept the different groups separate. Some of the folks just don’t get along with each other, but I have worked with each group except two. I had fun talking to everyone at all the tables. The pizza was very appreciated and there were no fights over sodas or bread sticks. My group was done quite quickly.

Once lunch was over everyone went inside and the assembly groups bowled. Bowling at CUE involves a basketball, ten very battered pins and no scoring. They cheered and laughed and were very happy when work for tomorrow was rolling in.

It was a great day and everyone had fun because if there were “behaviors” then no pizza, sodas or bowling and a good chance of being excluded from tomorrow’s work.

Substitute Teaching: Assembly (CUE) “For Sunset” (8/29 Faces)

(Magic Marker (blunt) & PSe)

There was no work today. The trainees were having a hard time. We watched a hygiene film and a couple of travel videos. They hate this kind of stuff, so there were a lot of “behaviors.” I’m working with my fifth team since coming to CUE. I like them very much, but they are very high maintenance (and often violent). I still love working with them, however.

Right after lunch when we were still getting everyone organized for our next activity (me reading Judy Moody outside under the trees), “Sunset” asked me to draw a picture. I do not draw often at work. I just can’t spare my eyes from the possibility of violent “behaviors.” I asked her what she wanted. “Draw me,” she said. I know Sunset quite well and her tempers, so I asked what she looked like. “I look like Tweetie-bird.” She’s told me this before. So I drew Tweetie-bird, but I love teasing Sunset, so I drew Tweetie with fangs and horns and titled the picture “Vampire Tweetie.”

Sunset is a nice woman, but her patience is limited. “I don’t look like that,” she said flatly. “No?” “No, I look like Spring-time Tweetie.” I teased her a little more and then erased the pertinent parts of the drawing and changed it to Tweetie wearing shorts and wearing Sunset’s hair. “So, is this what you look like? Tweetie-bird with your young-woman’s hair?” I asked. “Yes, I look just like this.”

I smiled and dug up a nasty-old, magic marker from the drawers (I forgot to bring a sharpie with me) and finished the inks.

She loves it. I told her I would give it back to her tomorrow after I put it in the computer. Sunset showed the picture to all the other people there and corrected everyone who didn’t agree Sping-time Tweetie looked just like her.