My 9 year old has autism. He is sweet and funny and loving and wants to be liked. But he stims. He stims a lot. He skips a lot and hums a lot and bites his fingers and when he gets nervous, he blurts out lines from cartoons. He's smart and sweet and though I've always thought he was the coolest kid ever - to someone who didn't give him DNA, he might seem closer to the uncoolest. idk - I gave him DNA so I can't tell.
He hid under my desk playing on his kindle for a while. Then he needed to skip. He skipped around in the back. He asked questions about why I use car-wash sponges instead of erasers and he picked up the giant chalk-board compass (like for making circles) and used it like chopsticks on my sponge and said "here's your eggroll" and then laughed an awkward very typically ASD cackle.
At one point my future mechanics, after doing the hard parts (like all of the conceptual stuff and all of the major algebraic manipulations) stared at the result "0 = X - 72" like it was unsolvable and my joey said "Anything minus itself is zero - come on guys - let's do this". And they laughed. And then he skipped off.
He skipped off to the bathroom by himself and just when I was going to go bring him back, afraid he was playing in the sink, he had skipped back and was doing karate moves by the window. My students let me know he wasn't missing, he was just "kicking ass and taking names."
When he tried to make a joke, they laughed with him. When he was on the verge of a meltdown and needed to climb into my arms like a boy half his age, they didn't. They smiled. They high-fived him. They asked him for help with their arithmetic.
I cried all the way home. I love them. They're the reason I stay in this.
- unknown sender
I love it when our students show their best sides. I've often noticed that people who have a hard time with school often have boundless hearts for people. I hold that value in my hands like a lovely stone.
ReplyDeletetaking a break from grading to read this and I'm crying too. What an amazing group you have...
ReplyDelete~I Feed Hamsters
Awww! And yes, I, too, find that there are advantages to teaching the somewhat-less-privileged (my students are a bit more privileged, or at least have found more success in establishment institutions than yours have, but are still definitely less firmly established, and thus less entitled, than many I read about here), including that they are often kinder when life is difficult for others, because they've experienced such things themselves.
ReplyDeleteAlso -- I just expanded my vocabulary. I never knew what to call a group of joeys before. Now I do. Thank you.
Wonderful post after a crappy day. It would be a great story even after a good day.
ReplyDeleteIt would remain unknown if not for this site.
My thoughts exactly.
DeleteBest wishes to the OP, and thank you for sending this in.
Me 3.
DeleteWe had an armed intruder drill. As we huddled in the corner away from the door, with the lights off, I spoke with my students about how they are so tolerant of others and that I have never seem them make fun of anyone in class. That is a special gift of acceptance that they give each other. I talked about it because we always hear that the armed intruder has a grudge and is looking for payback. The class didn't really know how to respond to me, but I think they knew I was giving them a compliment.
ReplyDeleteMade my morning. Well, this and the coffee I'm chugging. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteYears from now when someone edits the anthology of CM, this should be included. Thank you for sharing your story.
ReplyDeleteI'd certainly buy a copy of that.
DeleteIn fact, I keep a printout of "The complete Yaro" pdf in my office.
Complete Yaro.
DeleteThanks. I'd meant to save that PDF, and now I have.
DeleteI have a professor who has brought his children and a sick cat to class, despite glares and sincere concerns from students who frankly don't want the germs or the dander, or don't want cats and kids around generally.
ReplyDeleteThis is a nice story, for professors. When you're in a jam, take the kids to work. What option do your students have? Tell you to keep your brats at home? Of course they had fun. Of course your students were nice. WHAT ELSE CAN THEY DO?
I tested on the spectrum as well, so I'm very emphatic with your 9 year old. I'm glad he had a good time.
But my professors tell me to stay home when I'm sick, if I'm going to be a distraction.
What fresh hell of important teaching did you HAVE to do that day that you schlepped the family to class instead of giving everyone, including yourself, a mental health break?
Aaron
Skipping a day is hell in technical subjects.
DeleteYou could just assign reading instead of teaching,.. but 8/10 students will not be able to understand it from the reading. So you have to teach it. But you have 20 chapters to cover in 15 weeks, so skipping two days (one snow day, one sick day) is a whole chapter, and students are no longer fully prepared for their professional exams or the next course or anything.
As it is, we barely manage to scrape the surface of topics we SHOULD be doing in depth because of time.
We tell students to stay home if they're contagious, and even then only reluctantly. I don't tell them to stay home because "they are a distraction".
Students who skip class often ask, "did I miss anything?" The first answer that comes to mind is always along the lines of, "no, we only do important stuff when you're here." Of course they missed something.
DeleteMy students HATE when a prof misses a class. It is certainly not a mental health break, because they know they'll have to work harder to get caught up on that material.
Aaron, thanks for coming by. Now back to wherever one goes, those people who write hateful and attacking emails, like the one you sent to the blog's moderator. Pissant.
DeleteLOL, yes, that was hardly a missive that would engender the response, "Welcome back! Good to hear from you again!"
DeleteI'm still flabbergasted.
DeleteWhat're profs supposed to say when they miss class? "Did you miss anything?" Or, "I gave us all a mental health day, but of course, you're still responsible for the material we didn't cover."
You know what a good mental health break is? The weekend.
Thank you for this, OP. And to address the very valid point about students' kids, our student population includes many parents of young children. Our campus desperately needs on-site drop-off childcare and we don't have it. There are many times when the K-12 schools are out and the university's in session. I tell my students to bring their kids to class if they need to. The kids sit quietly coloring or reading, they don't bother anyone, and so far it's been okay. But it's not a sustainable, scalable solution, and it's probably in direct contradiction to some official policy.
ReplyDeleteWould these child care establishments consist of a time travel device taking your child back to the '60's when that was a thing?
DeleteI hate to break it to you, but you guys aren't the only ones who have to deal with children AND a job. It's very common. It costs a lot. No, not because of the employees and building, but because of the insurance.
Also do you really want student workers looking after your kids? Because you know that's what would happen. At that point you may as well tell your children to watch themselves.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI don't know where you are living, but on site child care is alive and well in the Northeast. Nearly every community college in my state has one, and two friends of mine both have it at their places of business as well. I was born in the 60s---I don't think they had on site child care then, pal. But they sure as shit have it now. And yes, it's part of ECE programs we have, so there are students in the classroom along with the required number of certified professionals. The kids are better watched than at other places! I've never used them, but I've seen how wonderful the centers are!
DeleteOh, and of course we know we are not the only ones with child care issues. It's just that this is a blog about things that happen at COLLEGES, from a FACULTY perspective.
This reminds me of that time someone blasted us for not having our blog posts of the day devoted to the death of Michael Jackson.
Delete@Prof Poopiehead:
DeleteSpeaking of someone to leave your children with...
It seems to me that the need for drop-in daycare (and not just on college campuses) is a very 21st-century thing, because just-in-time (i.e. constantly variable) scheduling for many service/retail workers is also a 21st-century thing.
DeleteAnd if the campus daycare provides predictable work and/or properly-supervised apprenticeship for some of the students on campus, all the better (it's not like U.S. daycare workers in other settings are highly trained or closely supervised, though many of them are excellent nonetheless).
To be honest the best parts for ME were your narration.
ReplyDelete"rough and gruff" "disenfranchised" "future mechanics"
The fact that your students struggled with 0 = X-Y means that this is going to be a struggle. I recommend giving up on them like they do in Asia.
I also really liked the rhythm, as well as the content, of this paragraph:
DeleteWhen he tried to make a joke, they laughed with him. When he was on the verge of a meltdown and needed to climb into my arms like a boy half his age, they didn't. They smiled. They high-fived him. They asked him for help with their arithmetic.
And I wouldn't be inclined to give up. These guys (sounds like they're mostly or entirely guys, which is too bad, since mechanic is a decent-paying job, more so than many of the fields women more often go into) don't need to know a *lot* of math, just enough to get by in their chosen profession. That's the sort of situation where helping students figure out the basics, even if it's something of a struggle on both sides, is well worth the effort. It's when a student has completely unrealistic expectations ("I want to be a nurse because I just love helping people but I can't figure out that chemistry and anatomy stuff. It's too hard!" or "I want to be a lawyer and argue cases in court; why do I have to learn to write?") that I worry. Of course, mechanic can be a life-and-death profession (steering and brakes do need to work; wheels should remain attached to the vehicle, etc.), but I suspect that's usually more a matter of following well-established procedure than figuring out a math problem correctly. I'd be much more worried about a prospective nurse who had trouble keeping hir decimal places straight.
Oh she was saying future mechanic literally? That wasn't my interpretation lol.
DeleteAnd I've been seeing a lot of female mechanics lately. Enough to be noteworthy. What with the pay getting more attractive and the gender issue becoming less important, it was only a matter of time before the scale started to adjust itself.
I've brought my 7-year-old to class several times. Each time, it's awesome. He plays or reads and needs very little attention, because he can see that his parental-unit is busy.
ReplyDeleteIt helps that he's at a very cute age. It humanizes me with the students: they can see me flip between nurturing parent to nurturing professor, which looks very different but is in fact the same thing with a different vocabulary and tone of voice.
I've had to bring my young daughters to class many times when they were too sick for school, and I had a class. They usually sat quietly, reading. Once toward the end of my lecture, I looked over at my child and saw she was cheery, but bored and impatient to leave. I said to her, 'Only a few more minutes!" and she replied, "How many more seconds!?" which completely thrilled the entire class!
ReplyDeleteI'll confess that upon seeing this post, one of my first thoughts was "might a kid in class be distracting to students?" Rather than express that straight away, I decided to give it more thought. Here's what I came up with:
ReplyDelete1) Why shit on the moment?
2) If there's a group that's already aware of classroom distractions, this would be it. We're often discussing cell phones, laptops, food, students talking, etc. So I certainly don't need to point it out.
3) How do I know how much a distraction it really is unless I'm there in the room? See item 2. Perhaps a kid in class has the effect of making the guy who always watches porn on his laptop, and the girl who always scrolls through shoes on Zappos.com, and the Facebookers and the talkers and eaters, all to stop that shit and focus on what's happening in the classroom, in so doing ceasing their usual disturbance of those around them. The net level of distraction has actually decreased.
4) Is it really so bad for students and proffies to occasionally see each other as people with lives beyond the campus perimeter?
At my joint, kids in the classroom are frowned upon, but that's more because of the nature of what happens in the classroom and not a reason for me to advocate it elsewhere. In the office areas, however, I've watched colleagues' kids and they've watched mine. And on very rare occasions, a student's kid has hung out for a while. It's not yet often enough to make a drop-in daycare viable, but that could change.
The nature of what goes on in the classroom? Do you teach at, like, a porn college?
DeleteYou wish.
DeleteHow can we pay for ALL THESE CLASSES?
DeleteMy perspective is probably informed by having a close friend who had her first kid at 20, and finished up college while raising said kid, and another who came along during the (long) process. She sometimes had to bring a kid to class (and sometimes had to leave class again when said kid got restless), but her professors' willingness for her to at least try the experiment when childcare arrangements periodically fell through (it probably helped that she was at a women's college) was key to her making it through college.
DeleteIt's trickier for professors, of course, who can't just leave if the kid gets restless, but doable at times depending on the kid, and the class.
Drop-in day care (perhaps especially drop-in sick-child care) does seem like a potential solution, and one that, at least at the moment, would especially benefit female faculty and students (because.for better or for worse, moms still tend to be the ones who interrupt their paid/student work when family routines are interrupted by illness, etc., though that may finally be changing -- which is a good thing, and will only increase the demand for such backup care).