Blog 14: 4/21/15

Blog 14

4/21/15

 

Tonight was my first night volunteering for Dr. Davis' Tuesday night lab.  I stayed in the Rockwall gymnasium and obsessed and assisted Jackie teaching.  Jackie had two students who liked to dart away from her; Finny and Jeffery.  I would help out by redirecting these two students back into the activity whenever possible.  I have worked with Finny in Monday night labs.  I am a T.A. for Dr. MacDonald so I work one on one with Finny.  I liked seeing Finny incorporated in a group setting.  I think he kind of followed what the other students were doing.  Jackie had some older sibling helpers.  I had them help me out by trying to keep Jeffry and Finny on task during the activities.  I think Jackie may have been a bit overwhelmed with the amount of students she was teaching.  However, this is realistic especially in an APE setting.  I have some experience in redirecting students because of my experience over the summer.  Working at BOCES in an ABA program helped me understand and practice how to redirect students.  I watched a few of my peers do this incorrectly and I tried to teach my one friend Hannah how to correctly redirect a darting student back into the activity.  If the student is running in front of you, the first step is to catch up to them.  Once there one hand goes across the students body on the chest of student the other hand is placed on the students forearm area.  It is important not to grab any joints such as the wrist or the elbow because this could harm the student.  Then you slowly guide the student to a hault.  It is not all at once but more of a slow motion.  Then you turn the student around by keeping the same hand on the child's forearm and moving your hand from the child's chest to the child upper back.  You slightly push the child's back to the direction you want to child to travel.  Often times the child may drop to the floor.  The most important thing is to lower down with them when they do this motion.  Do not tug on the child's limbs because this is dangerous.  Give verbal reminders as needed and try to guide them up to a walking position in a least intrusive way.  This is more difficult than it may seem and takes a lot of practice.  Luckily enough I experience this almost every day in the summer.  It felt good teaching another TA this method.  I think this should be taught in 356 because it is a strategy that teachers can use with a multiple students.