A tough day

Today was a bit of a tough day at Wellstone. Fridays are usually easy. I get there around 8:30, help greet buses until a little after 9:00, visit in one of the kindergarten rooms until 9:20, then sit in on one of the classroom's morning meetings until 10:00. I have supervision from 10-11:00 and then 6th grade girls group from 11:20 until 12:00. After that I go home. Pretty low-key day.

This morning I went to one of the 1st grade dual immersion classrooms for morning meeting. There is one student in there that is one our caseload. I'll refer to him as Ian. Ian is an adorable little African American boy, one of only three African American kids in that dual immersion class. The rest are all native Spanish speakers. He has ADHD and was having a rough time at the beginning of the year, but has recently been doing so well that they decided that he really didn't qualify for Special Ed services anymore. We still planned to keep a close eye on him just to make sure that it was the right decision. So I went in there to see how he was doing. Everything seemed to be going fine, until about 5 minutes to 10. The class was going around in a circle and sharing, and he was getting more and more upset that he wasn't getting "called on", even though I explained to him that the teacher was going around in the circle and his turn would come eventually. He ended up diving under the table and when it was his turn, his teacher said that if he didn't come out she was going to skip past him. He shouted out his answer, but she wouldn't accept it until he came out from under the table. This upset him even more and he started knocking over chairs and crying, shouting "I hate this school!" At this point the teacher more or less blamed me for this meltdown, saying that she thought the attention was setting him off and that he normally didn't do that.

Luckily he actually willingly left the room with me. I just said, "Wow sweetie, you are just having such a tough time aren't you? Let's go somewhere where you can calm your body down." I put my arm around him and I could tell that he just really needed that. So we went to my office around the corner and did some sensory activities that are designed to help him regulate his body and emotions. Then we did a little conferencing around what had happened in the room and talked about what he needed from his teacher when he was starting to feel that icky feeling in his body that made him have such a hard time. We talked about making a "volcano" card that he can show to his teacher to let her know that he needs a break. So that's something I'll need to meet with his teacher about. We also talked about knocking over chairs is not an okay way to make himself feel better. So at this point I was about 35 minutes late for supervision. Luckily I have a walkie-talkie that most of the support staff have, and so I radioed up to Julianne to let her know that I was dealing with a situation. When I walked him back to class, they were just coming back from having school photos done so his teacher asked me to walk him to get his picture taken. When all was said and done, it was nearly 11:00 so we only ended up having about 20 minutes for supervision.

[Supervision, just as a side note, is when Julianne and I can process what's happened during the week and I can ask questions about practice techniques or theory or anything. She usually asks guided questions also to get my thinking. We typically have supervision for an hour each week. ]

Just as we were getting ready to get our 6th grade girls, Julianne got a call from the Focus room (which is the behavior room) asking for her to come check in on a student. So she said that she would do that while I took the girls down to get their lunch, and she'd meet us back up at the office. 6th grade girls group consists of 5 girls that are all pretty low functioning in terms of cognitive ability and also social maturity. They're all funny and sweet girls, but they can be a handful. We have group during lunch time, so they bring lunch up to the SW office, eat and then we do a lesson, usually around a social skill or something to that effect. Lately we've been doing Yoga Calm, which is meant to help them build self-awareness, confidence and self-regulation strategies. Anyway, Julianne actually never came back for group because she got held-up in the Focus room. So I was left with group all by myself, and it did not go well. I'd led another group by myself once, but it was only two girls. The girls today were super energized, and it didn't help that we hadn't had group for three weeks because there wasn't school the past two Fridays. It was impossible to get them to do anything. They were so excited about Halloween, and just wanted to talk and talk. So I sort of felt like a failure, but I knew that they were just having a challenging day. That happens in group sometimes, even when Julianne is running it. I made sure to "name it" at the end of group though. I said, "So group was kind of hard today. I understand that everyone has a lot of energy because lots of classes are having parties today and everyone's excited. Also we haven't had group in a while, so we're kind of getting familiar with it again. So today was a tough day, but that's okay. Next week will be better." It was important for me to let them know that it was hard for me too, so that they knew that (1) My expectations were higher (so they don't start to think that group will always be so unproductive and not want to come any more) and (2) I recognized where they were at and understood.

I ended up leaving almost 30 minutes late because Julianne still wasn't back and there was a 5th grade student that wanted to work on a math test in her office. I wanted to provide that student with the quiet space, so I just waited in there with her until Julianne got back. Then I went home and worked for about six hours straight on a midterm paper that is due tomorrow morning.

So there's a little peek into my life! I realized that I don't write enough about my day-to-day, to answer some of those questions like "What exactly is school social work all about?" So there's some of what I do. It's pretty hectic and you really need to be flexible and able to deal with ever-changing schedules. Things come up, there are always students in crisis ... You have to learn to prioritize and improvise. Usually it's not so bad that I miss supervision and then Julianne misses group, but I have to be ready for those things. So there you have it! (And that's just a half day...)