Day 3: He lives in the most fantastic world

A few days ago, I was at work just going through the motions. A work routine usually looks like this: The teacher is at the front of the room trying to teach a new concept—social skills on this particular day. Such a subject is never a crowd pleaser in a classroom of ten teenagers, spanning the ages 12-14, all of whom have a common diagnosis of Autism and many having dual diagnoses. I sit in a chair that is strategically placed between two students that need more assistance than the others and I take notes. I record things like 'how many times H. picks his nose,' or 'how many times S. throws her books off of her desk in a fit of rage,' or my personal favorite 'how many times C. refers to his imaginary world.'

Tangent time: I need to confess something. I'm a fraud. Heres how this note taking business works. At the end of an allotted period of time, I take my recorded notes, graph out behavior patterns, and then create programs for working on these behaviors. These behaviors, according to the teacher, seem to be hindering the students' progress in school. Here's where the fraud part comes in. I don't think that C. living in an imaginary world is hindering his academic performance. It may not be ideal for his social performance, but that's a whole other battle. The poor kiddos I work with constantly have people (usually big bad adults) breathing down their necks telling them to do this, don't do that, you're not doing this right, that's too big, that's too small, oops, try again. So my thinking goes like this: If I had big, bad adults constantly breathing down my neck critiquing my work, I would create an imaginary world, too. And I would escape to it as often as possible.

So, I beef the data regarding how many times C. refers to his imaginary world. If I beef the data so it doesn't look it's a problem that is potentially jeopardizing to his performance, he gets to keep the imaginary world. He gets to, for the tiniest moment, be safe from the nagging adults commenting on all the ways he is doing things wrong. I'm not going to be the one to take that away from him. I'll leave that for the next person that does this job.

Welcome back from that tangent. Let's move on, shall be? So, C. (who just so happens to be my favorite student) was sitting at his desk working on an assignment. It was his birthday and I was extra impressed with how attentive he was, considering such a monumental event. He was 13! He was doing fantastic work but his eyes were fluttering in and out of sleep as he desperately tried to fight off sleep and stay awake. I scooted my chair next to his desk and said "Hey bud, I was noticing that you look pretty tired. Did you get enough sleep last night?" This is the conversation that followed:

C: "Of course I didn't get enough sleep last night, Miss Megan."
M: "Oh no, I'm sorry, my friend. What was keeping you up? Were you excited about your birthday?"
C: " I was just thinking and I couldn't sleep because my thoughts wouldn't let me."
M: "That makes sense. What kinds of thoughts were you thinking about?"
C: "Well, there was really only one thought."
M: "Why don't you tell me about it."
C: "It's just that I was thinking about rats. I was thinking about what the world would be like if rats didn't have hair on their backs but grew all their hair on their bellies."

This, my friends, is where I lost it. I kept my cool long enough to finish the conversation but all the while, I was experiencing a full body reflex that was working in overdrive to keep me from bursting out in laughter. The tears were pooling in my eyes. But alas, I made it. I got myself out of the classroom just moments before the anti-laughter reflex busted at the seams and doubled me over. My dearest student couldn't sleep all night because he was up thinking about rats. RATS! Rats. Rats with no hair on their back, at that.

My students and their dear imaginations are what is right in the world.