Inept

Inept: the state of having or showing no skill, clumsy.

Some days in special education leave me feeling inept, to say the least. Take last Monday, for example. I had my day all worked out—in advance, no less. First thing, I was going to take a few minutes to get ready for a parent meeting in the afternoon. After that, at 9:00 a.m., I had a meeting with another teacher and our social worker with a new, incoming student. That should take about a half an hour. When that was done, I had it on my list to go back to the class where one of my staff was conducting part of our campus day. That’s the day when we get together in small groups to work on classroom discussions and activities revolving around social skills, practicing money and time skills—that sort of thing. I figured I’d do that until noon, and then it would be lunch with the students, which would then blend nicely into our afternoon activities, which, in turn, would run until the end of the school day. That was my plan. That’s what I had written down. My neatly written plan crumbled immediately in the face of reality. In fact, last Monday’s reality was a whole civilization away from my “plan.”

The weather report called for scattered clouds and occasional light rain showers. Mr. Weather Man didn’t mention the steady drizzle, mixed with that Styrofoam looking snow-like stuff--and a howling wind. Beside all the reminders to the students, let alone the staff, to dress according to the weather, guess how many students and staff showed up prepared for the rain. Exactly NONE! Yes, none! (Well, it seemed like none.) Believe me, our students are fair weather workers. With sunny skies and highs in the mid-70s, they just might go to their work sites willingly—maybe even happily. But mix in some cold-from-the-sky water and temperatures hovering around 45 degrees, and you have a surly crowd on your hands.

It would be quite enough if some of the students were plain old surly. Then you’d know what you were dealing with. But, no, some of them have to pull out all the behavioral stops to get out of work. There’s something about the first nasty weather day of the year that brings all their goofy strategies to the fore. One kid suddenly developed an “awful stomach ache.” Another went into the bathroom and proceeded to throw up. I had no idea he could puke on demand. You learn something new every day. One girl, who weighs at least 325 pounds, decided to just shut down. I mean, it’s as if she has an on/off switch in there somewhere. If she were a computer, she went into a hard shutdown. “Leave her where she sits. We ain’t budging her, no how.”

About this time one of the staff members came to me to report she needed to go home. She said she had to stop twice on the way to work to throw up. Whatever. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Hope you feel better.” (Stupid rain.) Great. Now we’re short handed. Time to do the shuck and jive staff shuffle to make sure everything is covered. Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve got to change Rod. He’s the kid with spina bifida who needs help toileting. Translation: he needs help changing his adult diaper. He is also on anti-rejection meds because he received a new kidney about two years ago. These meds sometimes cause the worst diarrhea you can imagine. Rod and I jokingly call them “blowouts.” Today, however, he had an industrial strength blowout. Time to put on the Mother Teresa hat, hold on to the old stomach-flutter muscles, and dive in. In the end, that change job was quite a workout. Oops. Almost forgot. Time to head out for the 9:00 meeting.

“I’ll be back in about a half an hour.” Famous last words. The student we meet with was very pleasant and seemed quite bright. But man, what a life she has led. She just moved into a group home three weeks ago. That’s after having moved about 40—yes, forty (40) times in the last ten years, bouncing from one professional parent household to another. Mixed in all that was a stint living in a mental health facility. Let’s see here. Oh, good. Behavior problems. Ya think? It ends up she has pummeled someone in every household she’s lived in. It took an hour and a half to sort out all of her “stuff.” Luckily, I didn’t get her. She’s too capable for my crowd. Whew.

I get back to the class around 11:00. One of our groups has already returned from the work site. There was nothing to do there today. Pretty soon everyone is back. The old relo is getting crowded—with surly kids and staff. Tensions are rising. Some of the kids are picking verbal fights with each other. Time for action.

“You, you and you, and you three over there. Let’s go to the choral room. You six, go with So and So and play basketball.” That leaves just a few in the classroom who are busy with other things. Well, the day came to an end, and, oddly enough, it felt like a successful day. Maybe it felt successful because it was all so typical. But is sure wasn’t what I had in mind.

'Nuf Said

"We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s
teaching. . ."

Spencer W. Kimball. June 1976

Too, many, commas . . .

Man, oh, man.

I was just reading, some of my posts, and I noticed, just how many commas I use.

Geez. This reads just as if Adam West, the old Batman from the 1966 TV series, was doing the talking.

I need to pull out an English grammar text and review the use of commas.

Otherwise, besides Batman, I, may forever, sound, like Robin Hartl, the lady on, Hometime, who talks in fits and starts, as she strains to install, a light fixture in the remodeled, bathroom on PBS. (I think I need to get out more on Saturday afternoons.)

Here We Go Again!

We've all experienced a numbing trip to the dentist; we've also experienced trying to drink from a straw when we're all numbed up, too. Now, think of having the same difficulty when you're not full of novocaine. How can that be, you ask.

Try a bout of Belle's Palsy. I had that wonderful experience eight years ago. What a pain. Being a guy, I put off going to the doctor for a day, which allowed the nerve that controls the facial muscles on my right side to swell up all the more, making things worse.

I started the tale-tale signs of another episode this afternoon. I headed for the nearest InstaCare place lickety-split. The doctor gave me a prescription for an anti-inflammatory drug. Hopefully, this will head a full-blown problem off at the pass.

Luckily, it is on the left side this time. That means I can still squint out of my right eye to see through my camera's view finder.

Banana Hands

I’ve wondered how to approach telling about my adventures in special education. Should I do it chronologically or topically? Neither approach seems to make much sense, so I’ll just fire off stories as they come to mind or as they come up in real time.

Stanley was something else. I put this in past tense because he moved away quite a while ago. He was one scary dude—John Coffey scary, if you’ve ever seen the movie, The Green Mile. He stood six foot five and weighed in at a svelte 380 pounds. His hands were as big as any two of yours and mine. Hal Larson (Jack Black) in Shallow Hal makes fun of Tony Robins’ banana hands. I didn’t laugh at that gag in the movie because I lived every working day with a set of big, meaty hands that could come down on you like a load of hay bales without a moment’s notice.

Let me explain.

Stanley came to my class sight unseen. He was registered in July. His old teacher from another district came to Hartvigsen and talked with our lead teachers and the principal. Alex wasn’t there at this meeting. His former teacher raved about how gentle he was and about his amazing memory. Stanley really was a savant. Give him any date in history, and he could tell you what day of the week it fell on without fail in about one second. Staff members even pulled out perpetual calendars to check him out. He was, indeed, amazing.

“You’ll love him. He’s just a big Teddy Bear,” she gushed, “We’re really going to miss Stanley.”

Conveniently, she left out the part about his dangerous fits of rage.

“Oh, he’s a bright young man,” our committee of teachers concurred. “Sounds like he’ll fit right in with . . . Tom’s class.”

I think secretly none of them wanted to get anywhere near John Coffey, er, Stanley as his file–holding teacher. By default they had first refusal rights, so to speak, and they took them. You see, fits of rage or no, Stanley has autism, and that is a hard sell under the best of circumstances. If I had a choice clearly handed to me to take a student with autism or pass, I’d pass, thank you very much.

For the first day or two of school, Stanley was pretty quiet and got along. On the third day of school, I was off campus with some fellow teachers checking out a vending machine we wanted to buy for the school. I had left my class in the capable hands of my four para-educators. Then I got an urgent call from our behavior specialist, Cheryl, the same teacher who rescued me from Todd on my first day at Hartvigsen. She told me Stanley had gone off on some poor kid, slamming him head first into the tiled wall in the boys bathroom, and how it took six big, male staff members to negotiate Stanley into one of our floor-to-ceiling carpeted quiet rooms.

I flew back to school. When I got there, he was still in the quiet room, crying his eyes out. Cheryl was standing at the secretary’s desk going through Stanley’s just-arrived student file. Sure enough, there was a big notation about his aggressive behaviors: hitting, biting, slamming people around, head butting, trashing classrooms. Yikes!

After a while, Stanley calmed down.

“Am I in trouble?”

(I wish I could convey in writing how he talked. He spoke in short, staccato bursts in an even, high-pitched monotone voice that rose briefly at the end of each sentence, making them sound like questions. When he was really excited about something, when he actually was in a Teddy Bear mood, his words came out in one long slur.)

“No, we’re just waiting for you to settle down a bit. Are you ready to come out?”

“Are you going to call my mom?”

“Not necessarily. Do you want us to?

“No. Are you going to call the group home?”

About three weeks before school started, Stanley was placed in a group home. Some students with disabilities qualify to receive funding from the State of Utah so they can receive group home services and live in an apartment away from home. He qualified as an emergency case. It turns out that he was becoming very aggressive toward his parents and siblings. Understand, folks with autism do not tolerate change very well. Stanley was struggling with at least two huge changes: he was away from home for the first time ever, and he was in a totally strange school. Unfortunately, he had been set up for problems. That should never have happened.

“Yes, we’ve already done that.”

“Are they coming to get me?”

“Yes, we can’t have you on the bus this afternoon. Can you tell me why you were upset?”

“That one boy was screaming.”

"Which boy?"

"That one that I pushed his head."

Word had it that the boy in question was merely making some odd vocal sounds, the kind no one took any notice to at Hartvigsen—except for a kid with autism.

“This is going to be a long year,” I thought, as I rubbed both temples with my fore fingers.

It was.

Banana Hands (continued)

I guess I ought to finish the story of Stanley. Like John Coffey in The Green Mile, Stanley more often than not was a gentle giant—one who possessed unusual talents. There really was more favorable than unfavorable about him. Shock of shock, he really was a Teddy Bear like his former teacher said—most of the time—although we had several more dangerous bouts with him over the next two and a half years. The biggest stressor in having him around was the total unpredictability of his outbursts.

Once we were in an assembly; I think it was during the Christmas season, and one of the high school Madrigal troupes was performing. Stanley was sitting right in front of my co-teacher when he suddenly turned in his chair and came down on her with those huge hands. In a flash, several of us were on him. It was all we could do to get him out of the gym and into the hall. There we were, six or seven of us, each trying to control an arm or leg, or both. Even the principal was in the thick of things. All the while Cheryl was there talking us, and Stanley, through the situation so that he could get what he needed, and more importantly, so that no one got injured. Finally, after about 20 minutes, he decided he wasn’t going to get anywhere and said he wanted to go outside. Two minutes later he and I we were sitting outside on a bench in a show shower with him rehearsing Mormon temple dedication dates. He knew them all.

We had episodes like that every couple of months. In all fairness, though, he calmed down tremendously. Eventually we felt safe taking him into the community on a regular basis. One time the whole class went to the Gateway District in downtown Salt Lake City to watch a 3D Imax movie at the planetarium. As we walked from the light rail stop to the theater, Stanley stayed unusually close to me. As always I was wary of him, my muscles tensed, ready for anything. Was he getting ready to blow? I had my hands tucked into my coat pockets. It was pretty chilly. Suddenly I felt a huge hand sneak into my pocket and take mine.

“Are you cold, Stanley?”

“No.”

“Oh, I get it,” I thought to myself. He was feeling a bit insecure; he needed some reassurance.

We went into the theater and took our seats. We were the only group there. It was all of 10:30 a.m., and we were it. We filled one entire row right across the center of the theater. There in the middle was Stanley, sitting about two feet higher than everyone else, the only one wearing those goofy paper 3D glasses. I started laughing out loud at my own mental image of how this scene must have looked from the front.

“What are you laughing at?’” asked one of the staff.

“Picture yourself down front looking back at this lot.”

We both started giggling uncontrollably as one of the docents just then walked down the steps, front and center, to welcome us to the theater. She was clearly having a problem stifling her own giggles.

(I said I should finish the story of Stanley. Well, I didn't. More later.)

On Audacity

Usually, when someone says another person is filled with audacity or that some work of art is audacious, those words are intended to cast an aspersion on the person or object of art.

Last week I had a couple of musical experiences come together at an enlightening intersection. First, I encountered a relatively “new” musical artist while listening to a local radio station. I had never heard of Brandi Carlile before, but her song, The Story, hit me like a ton of bricks. I really liked it—and here I am, an old fogey who just turned 54; Ms. Carlile must be all of 25. When I got home, I looked her up on the Internet, downloaded her first album, and collected a few songs from her new one. There was something in her voice and style I couldn’t quite place, yet it seemed oddly familiar. The Story soon became one of those songs I am compelled to listen to over and over again. The ‘Song Count’ thingie in iTunes says I’ve listened to it 34 times on my iMac. I’m sure I’ve listened to it twice as many times on my iPod, which I run through my car stereo. Hmmm? That’s about 100 cycles of The Story. You’d think The Story and Brandi Carlile would get old after a while. Well, they haven’t.

The other element passing through my recent musical intersection was a long overdue listen to Janis Joplin’s album, Pearl, from 1971, I believe it was. Now, back in the day I wasn’t a big Janis Joplin fan. I just didn’t get it when it came to her persona and her music. She was hard to figure out. Unlike most female singers at the time, she didn’t exude anything close to the feminine “ideal.” She was a bit heavy, had a double chin underneath round cheeks that highlighted her acne-filled complexion, and she sweat a lot. And her singing? That voice certainly didn’t belong under the

Soft and Pleasing category. Maybe she was ahead of her time in that she presented herself just like she was without any idealistic pretensions. There's no need for young girls to go into hazardous cycles of bulimia in order to look like Janis. But to me, way back in 1971, Janis Joplin was too raw, too out there, and, well, too audacious for my overly conservative tastes. (I'm more than a little surprised at how much I appreciate her music now!)

Ha! That’s it! That is what I now find so compelling with Brandi Carlile’s work. That's what makes it resonate with me. Somehow it just works. To my ear, her voice and style are an amalgam of Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette with a dash of k. d. lang thrown in for good measure, along with just enough Joplin-esque audacity to stir things up and keep them interesting. The element that made Janis Joplin a musical force to be reckoned with, and which makes Brandi Carlile’s music so compelling to me now, is the presence of audacity.

Audacity. Now, there’s a word. Yet, it’s one I find very positive and filled with hope. 

Huh?! 

Indeed, audacity and positive hope seemed to go together, but I couldn't say why at first. In such moments I turn to my trusty dictionary for help. Here’s the first definition of audacity: the willingness to take bold risks. To be honest, I have to acknowledge the dictionary’s second definition, too: rude or disrespectful behavior. What is positive or hopeful in that? 

Sometimes we find ourselves in a mire so thick it seems we will never get out. At other times we face challenges that appear to have no solution. All of our old approaches to problem solving don’t work. We’re stuck, we’re frustrated, and we are hurting. What do we need? Frequently we need to assume a willingness to take bold risks. Let’s face it. Some problems and challenges can be solved only by doing something new, something bold, something audacious. 

What about the rude or disrespectful bit? Whether one is rude or disrespectful is a function of other people’s perceptions. Rudeness and disrespect are words that describe the condition when an individual bumps up against the myths, taboos, and sacred cows held by others or by society. Frequently, trying to solve personal challenges using methods that fall within our old mind set, or that of those closest to us and of society, becomes part of the problem. Many times our old strategies and societal concepts of what is proper and improper flat out don’t work. So, when we take a bold risk in order to find resolution, our actions may come across as rude and disrespectful because we’re out of step with the general flow of things. Yet, if we remain true to our societal notions of what the proper path should look like--in other words, if we don't rock the boat--we may be doomed to remain stuck in our hole.

So, when all else fails, we may need to screw up our courage, slay some sacred cows, and infuse a dose of audacity into our lives.

Here's a video of Brandi Carlile I like.

Light Is A Weird Thing

Click on image to enlarge

Yes, light is a weird thing. It’s always there, be it particles or waves, or both at the same time.

I’ve only experienced total darkness once. That was in Lehman Caves at Great Basin National Park, Nevada. The guide turned out the lights after the tour reached the belly of the cave. Yeah, it was dark, all right. But other than places far removed from all sources like this, light is always there.

In early June I took off to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. It was during new moon. The only light at night was from the stars. Away from city lights, even the stars cast enough light to see trees and the outline of the red rock cliffs surrounding the campground. Light is always there. At times you just have to look for it.

As a photographer, I am forever chasing after GREAT light. What is GREAT light? It’s light that makes scenes before us come alive and pop. It isn’t hard to find, actually. All you have to do is spend hours and hours (or is it days and months?) trying to be in the right place at the right time. In other words, you have to be willing to place yourself in the presence of GREAT light when most (sane) people--the ones you want to be with--are doing something else.

The best light is early in the morning and just before and just after sunset. At the first glimmer of dawn, most people want to be sleeping. At the other end of the day they want to be eating with family and friends, or sitting out on the back patio. That’s all fine and good, but if you want great photos, you have to chase after great light.

Another time to find great light is just as a storm moves in or as it moves out of the area. Hanging around exposed to the elements is an adventure all its own. Few activities are more ‘fun’ than standing next to camera and tripod--hands in pockets--freezing, waiting for that snow squall to move by just so, kissing the scene before you with magical light. You wait and wait. As often as not, nothing happens, except your fingers hurt from the cold . . . and you see another spot a couple of miles away beautifully showered with magic.

Rats!

Oh, well. There’s always tomorrow.

Maybe.

(Notes on image: I went south to get INTO the heat. What did I get? Several days of cold. When I made this shot at about 7:00 in the evening, the wind was howling and it was about 45 degrees--on June 4th! Yes, my fingers hurt like mad. The plateau in the far distance is the Kaiparowits Plateau. In the late 1970's there was tons of pressure to allow that whole area to be subjected to open pit coal mining with a coal-fired electric plant plopped somewhere north of Lake Powel. That would have been a tragedy of monumental proportions. Many Utahns to this day curse the name of Bill Clinton for creating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by executive order. Fine. But now everything you see in this shot--and everything as far as the eye can see--is protected by the Monument. All you have to do is drive through its vast, pristine emptiness to realize President Clinton did the right thing.)