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| LA Olympics 2028 |
Teacher Appreciation Day at "A" School Elementary
This is a suburban elementary school in SE Valley city located near the heart of old "Smiley" upper-middle income neighborhoods.
Smiley High School is just across the street and there is no lack of inspiration for academic learning as "The Bears" will eventually transition into "The Tigers" or other mascot at the Middle School (also only a mile away). Nearby are nicer newer home neighborhoods where the suburban moms enjoy taking their dog out for a walk, jogging around the nearby park, and getting some fresh air. The appearance is generally that this is a peaceful, comfortable, ideal all-American neighborhood for rearing one's family.
"A" School is cleverly laid out since it is a more recently built facility. There are modular octagonal layouts with internal hallways linking classrooms to major central nodes such as the Library or Study Area. Outside are the playgrounds with at least eight basketball options, 4-6 handball courts, courts for rubber ball, hopscotch, tetherball, and grassy field areas accentuated with solar-paneled picnic areas. There are bungalow rows for children in higher grades as well as for contained Special Education classrooms.
At this school there are also pre-School, pre-K, transition-Kindergarten classrooms so that a child can experience a full early childhood development from K-6 amongst permanent teachers, helpers, staff, and administration with even an anticipation for which classroom and teacher he or she might expect in the coming years. The Pre-K have their own separate playground close to the entrance where the parents will be able to pick up or walk their stroller to school.
The principal and other staff are outside greeting the students and throughout the day are periodically visibly helping coordinate orderliness along with their security staff.
This sense of cohesion is very helpful for students and teachers because it supports building bridges between and among the learning communities including with parents and nonprofit organizations. In fact, on the school website are survey reports (eg. CCSPP) on how well the school appears to be reaching out to the neighborhood and communities. One way it has done this creatively, perhaps in conjunction with the high school across the street, for instance, is sponsor community resource fairs whereby community stakeholders can share their input and exchange ideas.
These kinds of community bridge-building are important for an area as diverse as SE Fresno with its minority populations of Hmong, Hispanic, and African-American as well as ethnic heritage of Armenians and Italians. Many are from the area's working farm families, who often try to pool their resources so they can support large growing families as other family members may migrate to another state for work.
In particular, many newer immigrants often are infused with high expectations and ambition of achieving the American Dream and for this reason had opted to settle in California. This is visible in their eagerness to do well in school and participate in a variety of extracurricular activities.
On this date Observer "C" had come to fill in for a paraeducator, however, it appeared unknown exactly which classroom she worked in. This required "C" to be assigned at first to the pre-S-pre-K-T-K classroom called "ops." It was also nearby a Special Education classroom for early autism. A Mrs. M. was very helpful in trying to acclimate "C" as a newcomer and telling her about the classroom with Mrs. G., whose assistants T. and J. had arrived early. The reception area for the students is in front of the Pre-K playing area.
Shortly thereafter, security staff C. informed C. while in the cafeteria that the actual classroom for the day was a 3-4th grade Special Education classroom with Mr. V. and Ms. D. As they had taken the students to restroom as part of Circle Time, it was not difficult to locate them. They also held PE both inside and outside the class which allowed C to become familiar with the ten students, many of who are low to moderate ASD. For instance, although early in the day it was not visible, by afternoon, from restlessness, many of the boys became not just fidgety but self-stimulative engaging in rocking, body-contorting, distractive gazing, or verbal repetitions.
The early morning exercise and strolling outside had a therapeutic effect, however, because they were able to sit through the next hour-and-a-half of English Language Acquisition, including working and completing their spelling and sentence packet, testing, self-correcting; and another session with reading comprehension, testing, and self-correcting. All the students, with the exception of one, were able to use pencil, paper, pen; and evidence of their Earth Day science project artwork is visible on the cabinets.
Mr. V. and his assistants has rehearsed them well in the protocols of the classroom and for this number of ASD students, the level of orderliness was quite awesome. There is also a quiet pride in how the students go about their tasks, for instance, one child, C. is assigned the seat-stacking job; another R. is assigned the supply person job (handing out pencils); and actually each person in the room has an assigned "classroom job" whether it is "door holder," "caboose," "greeter," or "desk washing." C. actually unstacked chairs for the work center area where this para-educator was to sit, and he stacked all the chairs for the work centers up at the end of the day.
This was a very good opportunity to observe some optimal level ASD well-functioning and academic potential and skillful teaching methods at work. It confirms that there is no "set ASD" stereotype under which the students operate for certain. For instance, one child, E. who is a large amusing fellow who likes to wear a cowboy hat and handkerchief, can actually recite whole verses from Dr. Seuss and create his own similar rhyming poems. He can recite them so loudly that it would make an audience laugh. Also, after a half hour of review and practice of their latest spelling words, most of the students did surprisingly well; at least half of the class attained a "9" or "10" on their spelling test. They could not only spell but also recognize the word and understand its meaning, although most of them did not or were not able to compose a sentence with the spelling word.
One higher functioning ASD student did write out sentences with the spelling words, but only when he was provided sample sentences which he copied word for word. A mark of achievement for the students and staff is that many of the students are able to exhibit neat handwriting, keeping within the lines of the paper and recognizable letters. The higher functioning ones again are copying the word legibly and exactly as would appear in a 3rd to 4th grade level book.
As for reading comprehension, it is a bit lower for the ASD students and remarkably so if compared to grade-level. This relates to over half of them having verbal communication deficits. For instance, although one boy, G., can understand instructions and does relatively well in class, he cannot do speech communication and this probably influences or affects somewhat his reading and listening comprehension. Actually in this case he also does rather well in reading comprehension, but many do not. Even though the reading comprehension was accompanied by an engaging video including demonstrations of what the thematic memes and questions entail, then followed by Mr. V. reading the question and providing the worksheets for the students to circle the right answer, the students found the one-page six-question illustrated reading comprehension exercise confusing.
Reading comprehension is admittedly challenging even for at-grade students because it requires the students making inferences, using analogy, and being able to trust their own judgment. When there is a sense of learned helplessness or an oppressive home environment, that kind of self-reliance can become hampered. But it can also be simply a trait of the ASD itself, and observing Mr. V. and his assistant, there is no evidence that they are being hampered or oppressed. On the contrary, Mr. V. and his assistant are doing everything they can to encourage the students to, within classroom order limits, do well and participate actively and without gossip, denigrating comments or casting judgment.
A good example of this was the neat Science-Math lesson that Mr. V taught after recess. After snack, C. had asked whether or not Mr. V. would do "Mac-and-Cheese" again. At first, this paraeducator thought this was a special game, however, it became apparent that indeed, Mr. V.'s science lesson is a demonstration on how to use fractionated portions to measure things out for cooking. The real cooking is done by the microwave oven, but even this, Mr. V. has a student pressing the right time and button. Everyone was excited about being chosen to measure something out (water, milk, salt, noodles, cooking time, cheese) and it appeared to be invigorating especially as other science videos were being shown "Gigi's House," "Laundry Day" etc.
However the students attention span seemed to wane about midway through the cooking because it involved several cycles of heating and stirring of the noodles before adding ingredients, then after adding all the rest of the ingredients. Nevertheless they were all eager to try a bit of the microwaved cooked "Mac-and-Cheese." Interestingly, a characteristic of these type of students, probably connected to their muted ability to emotionally respond or communicate, very few of these students know how to say "Thank You." Maybe it had not been programmed in and evidently, the teachers do not take it personally, that nobody seems to know how to say thank you.
A critical routine that thankfully the pre-K and early grade Special Ed emphasizes at this school is "potty training" which is literally teaching the students how to bathroom. In other schools, this critical routine may not be mastered even at the second grade for ASD students. However C. noted while on break and lunch that Mrs. M. takes the student into the "Unisex" water-closet separately and literally instructs and times them on what to do and when. There is even a step-by-step laminated card chart showing pull-pants down, sitting on toilet, toilet paper, stand up, pull-pants up, wash hands, etc. The itemized steps show the students what they need to do even if they cannot read or write.
Special Ed teachers are famous for being able to create the kind of visual and nonverbal cues and hand-signs and one-word expressions that enable brief effective commands. Mr. V. did embed his teaching time with "teachable moments" for reprimanding students, reminding them, and emphasizing the importance of appropriate behaviors. Some students, such as D. or L., are minimally able to attend to classroom activities. Several others require frequent reminders. One outside lunchroom monitor, a sixth grader, stopped by during lunch and told Ms. D. that D. had pushed him or made aggressive moves towards him in the bathroom. As D. was lying face-down on the lunch bench, the sixth grader could not directly address him, and as D. is unable to verbalize much at all, nobody could really tell if it was D. who had actually done this or not.
In fact, partly because of these kinds of concerns, after lunch, Mr. V's class plays at the pre-K playground near the street. This would be to avoid any possible altercations or fits of upset by or among the ASD students and the rest of the grades. The students seem to not mind this kind of segregation as some of them leave as soon as lunch is over, since on Fridays they have a shorter-day or relaxed-day schedule. Sandwiched between the administrative building and K-3 building and street, this area also feels safe under the shade of two large oak trees which have been preserved from even before the school was constructed. Several boys like to try to climb the tree or scratch figures in the dirt below the tree.
On this date, several district maintenance trucks were parked inside the school adjacent to the bungalows near the playground most of the day. One of the trucks had arrived mid-day and was parked outside. One fellow was working inside closet attached to the K-3 bungalow which was crowded with school equipment; however this is also adjacent to the inside restroom, so it is a minor concern if this restroom is adequately secure. The maintenance were there all morning and it was unknown why they had to park their trucks in the playground area. This worker did notice that the janitor was using his smartphone while Mr. V.'s class was in the lunchroom. It was a minor concern because the janitor held his camera in a near vertical position which would allow video or photographing of the students.
This paraeducator also asked Mrs. D later is she wanted to take a picture of C's artwork scratching in the sand, but she declined. Apparently she enjoys her lunchtime recess quietly scrolling on her smartphone a little bit, but she does so holding the phone level on her lap, and is not inclined to take pictures of anyone or anything.
Due to the high poverty rate and rising unemployment nationwide due to various economic and war-time and artificial intelligence factors, there is a probably a growing attraction toward internet crime, including the connections to human trafficking and pornography rings, which operate covertly, invasively, and collectively over time. This is why, accompanied by the fact that these schools mixed upper income neighborhoods, there may be specific interests in traffickers studying and identifying sensitive groups.
Overall, this was a very good day for observation and the educator is grateful for the opportunity to work and contribute in a very small way for the very nicely run school team.