So the Christmas break is over and back to work it is... The year hasn't started great, only two weeks in and we've had to say goodbye to a loved one and seen my little cousin admitted to hospital...
But these fears weren't my biggest over the holidays; I became very anxious about returning to work with one group in particular. My youngest and largest group: 10 kids between the ages of 3 and 7; it's a challenging group. We have 5 beautifully behaved, polite, bright, willing to learn kids but we also have 2 selective mutes aged 4 and 5, an autistic boy aged 3, a 7 year old with ADHD who can be very disruptive and another boy with extreme ADHD who is also very violent aged 5...
We are known as the circus class and it's very easy to see why. Every class, my classroom assistant and myself and breaking up fights, giving countless timeouts, trying to keep the attention of 10 very active little kids and trying to defuse problems before they start. We encounter hitting, kicking, swearing, spitting, chairs being thrown across the room... pens, pencils, books, rucksacks have all flown across the room at some point. So you can imagine my anxiety levels towards the end of the holidays...
Before Christmas we had made huge progress with 4 of the 5 challenging children: Both my selective mutes where able to whisper to my assistant and myself; We had made the 7 year old with ADHD the "classroom helper" so he would help us hand out colours and activity sheets, it seemed to really calm him down and his behaviour had improved very very quickly; With the violent ADHD 5 year old, things improved a lot slower but we still made progress, we were starting to learn what triggered the violent outbursts so we diffused the situation before it got too bad, we weren't perfect and still we had days where he was totally out of control, days where he swore at us teachers, hit, spat and kicked everyone who was in his reach and threw chairs across the room, but they were less. With autism it's different, we aren't equipped with all the tools to help him fully, but we do our best, we have days where we make progress and you start to think "Okay, we can deal with this, we're going in the right direction" but the next day you are right back at square one, progress is almost invisible.
My anxieties were in particular with the selective mutes and the ADHDs: After two and a half weeks with no class, not seeing us twice a week, would they still feel safe enough to whisper to us? After two and a half weeks with no routines, no structure, was the ADHD going to be worse? Were we going to have to start back at square one? Were we going to have to do all of this over again? Was everything a waste of time? Had it been worth the stress and worry?
First day back, all seemed calm to begin with, we sat down and did and colouring activity; Our 5 year old girl who is one of the mutes, whispered to me "Yellow please" my heart skipped a beat, I passed her the colour, smiling from ear to ear "Good girl you remembered the colours, high five!"; Our eldest ADHD sat nicely, helping one of our younger children who can't read yet, "Good job buddy". I turned to my youngest mute, held up a colour "What colour is this one?" silence, in my head I was begging him to talk, I'm not sure if I wanted him to talk more for the benefit of his confidence or mine...still nothing..."Okay... don't worry. It starts with Rrr.." he smiled "Red!" another round of "Good boy, well done, high five!" was in order. Our kids survive because of the constant praise we dish out. The children beam when we praise them, they are happy and proud with themselves.
But it wasn't long before my tummy flipped, I heard the dreaded word..."FIGHT"...Oh great here we go again. Yep I could have made myself a million air if I had bet on who it was fighting, violent ADHD vs Autism, the result? hurt feelings, a scratch and timeouts. I still get frustrated that a 3 year old autistic boy is capable of doing a timeout very well, yet a 5 year old ADHD will not sit still and just starts attacking me for putting him there, but it's something we knew we'd have to work with...
Oh it's good to be back, I still have anxieties, but now they are different. What else can I do to help these children? What if this as good as it's going to get? What if I'm making it worse? What if I'm not good enough? Will we have also taken 4 steps back after Easter break?
We have another 5 months left with this class, on bad days we look and each other and say "How the heck are we going to survive another 5 months?" but on good days we are more positive "Can't believe we only have another 5 months with them...it's going way to fast" Yes we still have days where we feel like just breaking down and crying, days where you clear up after the kids have left without saying a word to each other, days where you feel helpless, like you're never enough. But those days are getting less. We also have days where we smile constantly, were ALL the kids get sticker for good behaviour, days where when parents ask how their child behaved that day you can smile and say "Wonderful, they did a great job today".
Maybe 5 months is a long time, but we are sticking with these kids and helping them the best way we can. Our goal as teachers is to do the best possible job, to help the kids learn, have fun, smile and most of all to see happy little faces. Anxieties aside? Yeah, we love our job.
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