Jerry: Alarm Clock Words

In her short book Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard comments that words, some words, bring us back to reality, waking us from sleep. The people who use those words catch us asleep or ‘dead and gone and grieving’ and become, as it were, alarm clocks rousing us from our slumber.

She writes, “The mind—the culture—has two little tools, grammar and lexicon: a decorated sand bucket and a matching shovel. With these we bluster about the continents and do all the world’s work. With these we try to save our very lives.” (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk 24).

That’s probably a lot deeper than I think; nevertheless, I think we can agree that we live in a culture—a world—intoxicated on words. There are words everywhere, on everything. “Signs, signs, everywhere there’s signs.” (Five Man Electrical Band). Environmental signs. Billboard advertising. Sky-writing—seriously, can you imagine Shakespeare meeting Orville and Wilbur Wright?

If we lack anything in this world, it is not uses for the 26 straight and curved pen strokes that form the shapes of our most basic form of communication: the letter. And sometimes a large part of our job as special educators is to help students who have severe communication deficits make sense of those letters and the sounds, words, sentences, and so on, that they form. Furthermore, we have to do so in creative ways, with few words ourselves, and sometimes with no spoken words at all.

We are paid to pay attention, to listen more than we talk—to teach communication often by the very way we communicate.

My aunt, who is a career teacher, told me one day that it is important as a teacher to keep a notebook or a journal (I personally carry a Moleskine notebook) in order to have a place to write down all the things that students say—the silly and the serious. I have been journaling since I was 16 years old so this was not a big change for me and thus I began adding these anecdotes to my journal.

I would like to share a couple of things with you that I have written down in my Moleskine that students have uttered over the course of the last month or so:

• In my afternoon reading camp session I asked the question: What is a homophone? The student’s reply? “An old-fashioned phone?”

• In the same group, some students were working on a synonyms game. As they worked, I mentioned that I had dictionaries available for use if they needed them. One student looks to his friend and says, “Go get-em, Tiger!”

• Two of my students were at the play table. One student started to make a mess of another student’s toys. I said, “Please do not knock down his blocks.” The student replied, “But he knocked my stuff down earlier.” I said, “Well, that’s not how we do things here.” He replied, straight-faced, “But that’s how we do things at home.”

• A student was working with my paraprofessional coloring bags of white rice for a game we were making. The paraprofessional said, “Come help me color rice.” We could not figure out why the student then started playing with cars and talking about racing them on the counter. When she asked him to put the cars away, he replied, “I thought you said we had cars to race?”

• I recently went on a field trip with a first-grade class to a pumpkin patch. Good times. One little girl talked my ear off for the entire 45-minute ride to the pumpkin patch and ended by reciting a beloved poem, “This one and that one sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” I knew the rest until she got to the part where she said, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage.” Then, after that, “that’s not all, that’s not all, then daddy comes drinking lots of alcohol” followed by the comment, “My dad told me that.”  I’m not making this stuff up at all.

Communication deficits continue to be one of our main issues in special education. There are all sorts of devices available to help overcome said deficits from PECS (Ryan, Hughes, Katsiyannis, McDaniel, & Sprinkle, 2011) to American Sign Language to BIGmack (Beck, 2002) or another augmentative or alternative communication technology (King & Fahsl, 2012).

The truth is: special education teachers are in the business of sounds, letters, words, signs, pictures—communication. That is what we do day in and day out. Most of the issues we deal with, behavior or academic or otherwise, stem from an inability, on the part of the student, to communicate. In some ways this complicates our job; in other ways it simplifies it.

One last story to tie all of this together. I was walking down the hallway with one of my kids who has autism. He had had an incident with another student and he was trying to express himself. He was beginning to rant and his tone was turning sharp, the volume increasing. As we were in the hallway, I reminded him that we needed to be quiet and talk with our hallway voice. I asked him to just tell me what was wrong. He looked at me and simply said: “I am upset with...”

The alarm went off loudly. I smiled, my heart warmed. And the rest of my day was perfect.

What funny or deep things have you heard from the lips of your children?

Comments

[Alison]

Communication is a very important aspect when you are a teacher. It's extremely important to teach students good communication skills. I loved all the examples you gave of things you students said. Children really to say the funniest things. I like your idea of carrying around a journal to write it all down in I think I will do that when I become a teacher. You hit it right on the dot when you said communication deficits continue to be one of our main issues in special education. Communication is a major issue that we are constantly trying to help. We need to keep giving our students as many opportunities as possible to have some social interaction. The more chances we give the students the more comfortable they will become and hopefully the more they improve on their communication. Keep up the great work and enjoy the year!

[Jerry]

Emily,

Thank you for sharing a thoughtful response and the humorous anecdotes. I love hearing stories like this. I have three sons and I have even written down a few of the funny things they said when they were itty-bitty. Now that they are all teenagers, the humor still rolls in every now and again. I love kids and their beautiful way of seeing the world. It keeps me breathing. :-)

jerry

[Emily P.]

Jerry-

I love this post- students sometimes say the funniest things! It brought a smile to my face. I must share a few of my stories now. I was working with a student who has Autism, and he was trying to write about a personal experience for English class. I gave an explanation for him, and said, “Write something along those lines.” He came back within seconds and said, “Whew. I’m all done.” I looked at his paper. It had his name on the top with the date and one sentence that said ‘Something along those lines.’ Oops.

Another funny story just happened the other day. We were talking about the dollar bill. I said, “This man’s name is Washington. Does anyone know his full name?” A student eagerly raised her hand and said, “Washington D.C.” with the biggest smile on her face!

I must agree that writing everything down is a great idea. Even when you have the best plans laid out, and you think you’re saying everything perfectly by leading them up to the appropriate answer, it sometimes fails. Communicating with students with disabilities is much more literal and precise than communicating with a colleague. But that’s what makes life interesting, and through those natural conversations and “oops” moments, students learn.

Most importantly, we need to be understanding of students’ communication attempts. It is our job to listen to them, even if they are nonverbal. We must try our hardest to figure out what it is they want to share with the world and teach them appropriate ways to share those thoughts and feelings.

[Jerry]

Great stories. I love the bug story. HAHA. I think Annie Dillard would like it too. In her book An American Childhood, she tells about how as a child she collected bugs. Good times. :-)

[Sabrina]

I was in class one day, and my cooperating teacher was talking about insects with a student. This student has been diagnosed with severe Developmental Disabilities. Her verbal skills are equivalent to that of a three-year-old, which makes this story all the more hilarious.
I was sitting in the resource room completing my work and I couldn't help but eavesdrop on their conversation. The teacher said, "What is another word for insect?" The student did not reply. The teacher, trying to get the student to repeat what she replies says, "At our house, we call them bugs." Again she asked the student, "What do you call them at your house?" The student says, "GROSS, they are gross." Teacher says, "You are right, they are gross."

[Kari]

I agree that communication is key especially in todays world where everything we do or see is some type of communication. I work with a student with a developmental disability and she completely broke down the other day explaining that she hates being bossed around and never making her own decisions. She stated that at home and outside of home she never has the chance to make her own decisions. This was very eye opening and made me realize that she needs more opportunity to make some decisions. Overall, I believe communication is great in any case because you learn how people feel or what they want/need.

[Nina M.]

I always tell myself I need to start keeping a "muse book" of all the funny things my students say. However, as funny as some the things they say are, sometimes I value the comments that are not so funny. These really allow me to gain a deeper understanding of who my students are and where they are coming from.

Last week I directed a student to clean the cereal crumbs he left on the classroom counter. He quickly replied, Those are 'Jamals," which is the name of his brother. I really wanted to chuckle, but helped the student recognize that he shouldn't put blame on his brother (especially when there is no possibility that his brother could be involved). The situation helped solidify that the student needs to work on accepting responsibility and made him openly accept this need.

Also recently, a new student of mine who mostly keeps to himself, jumped into a conversation about siblings at lunch. He shared that his parents wish he could be more like his brother. Although a shy student, my other students seem to really gravitate towards him and always seek him out during unstructured social situations. It is great to know that at least at school the student can feel accepted the way he is.

It is these profound statements that deepen my understanding of my students, thus allowing me to better meet their diverse needs, more easily ensure that I am a patient educator, and value the importance of building strong rapport with students.

[Brittany]

Communication is the key. I have students that need to control things and be dominate. If you interrupt them to give them directions or defuse something, they let you know that YOU should NOT have interrupted them and now they have forgotten what they were going to say. When students can communicate it is great sometimes but then when they throw things in your face like that sometimes they are right but other times they just can't seem to understand why that time was okay to interrupt. It is so hard other times not to laugh at some of the things they say. One day a male student leaned in towards me. He said, "My underwear is on backwards and it hurts." Another student came out of the boys bathroom. He told me there was a monster in there. On the way back to the classroom he told another male teacher to watch out because there was an invisible female monster in there! I am only a student teacher and so far I have only had a few things that the students have said but I can't wait to listen to the many crazy, out there, funny things they come up with. I think it is a wonderful part of the job when a student says something that makes you stop and think about their comment.

[Jerry]

Kristine,

Treebeard, an Ent, would remind us that anything worth saying is worth taking the time to say it. He would also say that we are 'hasty' creatures. I probably agree. As a rule, I am opposed to timed tests because they measure what we can do in a period of time, not what we can do given as much time as we need. Students in SE often have as much time as they need as an accommodation. I think this should be the case for all students.

Jerry

[Kristine]

I had an older student complain to me about timed tests. He said that adults are always saying that things should be done with care and not hastily (I'm paraphrasing), and he couldn't understand why he should have a time limit on making sense of a reading passage or completing a page of math problems. Yes, it is a question of determining reading or math fluency. But he was right, our expectations can often be contradictory.

[Chandra]

ahhh that last part was supposed to say "Turkey or Ham"....not "turkey or sub"

[Chandra]

In my classroom, my students are all communicating at different levels. One student is very talkative and has a normal vocabulary for his age. One boy is autistic and mainly just scripts from songs (we are really trying to work with him on telling us how he is feeling 'I am full, I am hungry, I am sad, I am happy'), one speaks 12 words with her voice, uses ASL, and a Dynavox, and one isn't able to speak at all. Because of all the different levels they are on, it is very important to pay close attention to their conversations with us teachers and the other students.

My teacher shared this story with me the other day and it made my week. My cooperating teacher had just landed her first sub job and had been told ahead of time that one of her students with Autism really got put off by ANY changes so she decided to meet him right when he got off the bus. He walked to the door, and she said " Hi, Mrs. A has a sub today, I'm Mrs. M" and the student simply said "Turkey or Sub".

This story alone shows how aware we need to be of what our students can understand and comprehend in terms of communication.

[Suzette Tidrick]

Wow, this post reminds me we take so much for granted. We just assume communication occurs naturally. I remember when I taught first grade, and I told my students we were going to write the letters of the alphabet without looking at them. The alphabet strip was on the front board, so I had them turn their desks facing the back of the room. I said the letter and asked them to write it. One of my better students was struggling and complaining how difficult the task was to complete. I watched him. He was sitting there writing the numbers with his eyes closed. He did what he thought I said to do.

He is now a middle school principal.

[Stephanie C]

Jerry,

I really appreciated your post. I also believe that communication with students is an important part of any teachers job, especially a special educators job. As teachers we are role models and we need to demonstrate proper communication. In my experiences I have worked with many students with and without disabilities and they repeat a lot of what they hear or see on TV.

A preschooler I had was painting a picture, supposedly of Justin Beiber, when she said to me, "Ms. Stephanie, if I can't marry Justin Bieber when I'm older I'm going to marry Aiden (another boy in her class)."

I like the idea of keeping a journal of things kids say because I am sure it would make the difficult days a lot easier! I love to write and have journaled since I was ten years old, but I have never thought about journaling about things my students say!

In my classroom, which I am student teaching in, I make sure to take a couple minutes of class time everyday to just talk with my students. It helps them practice communication and it also shows them that I care about them and their lives outside of school.

[Liz]

After reading this I had to really think about my time in the classroom so far. I have had students who have not ability to regulate the volume and speed at which they talk when they become passionate. I have found that if I start to lower my voice when talking to them and speak in a deliberate manner that it helps. There are other teachers that start to talk over them and then it all just escalates. I think that is one of the things I have learned the best in the last month(I am student teaching), I need to keep my voice level if I want the kids I work with to keep theirs level. I like the idea that we are working on communication in whatever we do. I think this is very true of teachers, especially special education teachers, we are working towards the goal of getting kids to understand themselves and those around them the way many kids do naturally. The one quote from one of my students that I think will stay with me for the rest of my life is that I am "the strictest student teacher they have ever had." The student meant it in a joking manner but I took it to heart. I do not consider myself strict, just consistent. If you have work to do, you do it. Then you get to do the fun stuff. :)