My Happy Hour came earlier today. I met for lunch with speech therapists and teachers that I work with. Two of the ladies retired this year. The rest of us continue to work with our preschool-aged developmentally delayed children. We had a grand time and talked for hours. Thankfully, the restaurant recognized that we were a group of women enjoying a rare afternoon together and did not give us that "Hurry up and get out of here" feeling. Currently, we mostly work at different buildings. I think supervisors probably thought we might prove too formidable a group if we stayed together :-) Each of these ladies is a very special person in my life.
Sandy is a fellow speech therapist. She is one of the retirees. Sandy helped me with practical aspects of the job. She showed me that it is indeed possible to spend quality and quantity speech therapy time with the kids and to get the paperwork done-not easy, but possible. She modeled ways to integrate therapy into the regular classroom routine and how to work as a team with the teacher. She insisted on language groups for children when our previous supervisor did not approve.
The rest of the women are teachers:
Marge: Marge has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know. She is the other retiree. When children turn 3, they can begin to attend our preschool 2 times a week. Marge is one of the few teachers I know that would take a look at a child, realize that some children need more time-the difficult ones that few people want to deal with-and increase the number of days for those children to attend. She worked with parents and taught them to work with their kids. She made sure parents were always welcome to visit the classroom and made them feel at home.
Nancy: Nancy can talk your ear off. She stays after school to be sure the classroom is appropriate for our little ones. She has a special afternoon class for children with severe autism. She and Sandy volunteered to go to extra training and to spend extra time teaching other teachers, so they could get the PM classroom for these children up and running.
Robyn: Robyn's classroom is designed for children with high-level autism/Asperger's Syndrome. She, too, has spent lots of extra training time to learn how to teach these classes. She sets up special weekly visits for her kids to go for therapeutic horse riding. She convinced a private dance/gymnastics studio to set up a time once a week to work with her to teach the kids. She has set up space in her room for some of the kids that have sensory integration difficulties. When she was literally in the hospital, she made sure to e-mail parents and gave them home activities to help the kids. She called the substitute each evening to be sure all was well in class.
Jackie: Jackie started as a Paraprofessional/Teacher Aide. She worked 3 years as a one-on-one Aide for a deaf-blind little one. She had the patience and stability he needed to make progress. Jackie has a daughter with developmental delays. She decided to go to college to become a teacher. She now teaches elementary school kids that need learning support and emotional support; in addition to teaching some gifted/talented kids.
Carol: Carol is the teacher I work with. She plans some of the most amazing lessons for our little ones. She is always coming up with new ways to teach some very difficult kids. Carol is intent on being sure the children who come through our classroom learn to pay attention, play appropriately, be independent, and have fun-all at the same time! She encourages me when I am overwhelmed. We work together with the OT and PT to team-teach. She is one of the few teachers I know that truly welcomes team teaching.
So, it was a good afternoon. We had some wine (White Zin), good food, and dessert. Mostly, we had friendship.
This is an open thread. Come on in and grab your favorite beverage. Any good times with friends recently? Need a shoulder? This bar is open for conversation!