School Life

Things are going well at the schools. Its been an adjustment to plan by myself, to think about the fact that it will just me teaching it now, not Alli and me, and other things along that nature. We started a new month, which brings new (and familiar) concepts to study at the kresh. This month we are taking a closer look at shapes, and last week I taught the shape heart (to be re-visited in February). When I showed a picture of a heart, I put my hand over my heart, to indicate that it was the same as the one there, and said that everyone has one. One little boy, Chagan (which is deceptively pronounced like John), felt around his chest for a minute with a worried look on his face, then looked at his teacher and said "Kalp yok!" which means, "There's no heart!" So cute! His teacher explained in Turkish that it's the thing inside that goes thump thump, and that he does in fact, have a heart.

At the center I have started something that I've been meaning to do for a long time, but just now finally felt comfortable enough and well-established enough to do. At the EEU (the preschool I worked at last year) we use a program called the AEPS, which is an evaluation tool for preschoolers, and helps provide some possible educational goals for individual students. This is an area where teachers could use some help at the center, so I finally brought in a small section of the AEPS to use with Funda, the one-on-one therapist that I work with who speaks English. She is fabulous at encouraging me to use my Turkish as well. Interestingly enough, when I showed it to her, she said that the center has a similar tool in Turkish. I have been asking if something like that existed for the past 4 months, so apparently it is not widely-used or well-known by the teachers.

It has been really great to work with Funda on something concrete, that I think can really make a difference. She is also new to teaching, so she is open to trying new things. After evaluating one of the students, and choosing some goals together, I made a data sheet, and have been teaching Funda how to do discrete trials and to take data on the session with this student. This feels really good. It is also a great thing for the student's mom, because Funda speaks with her after every session about how things went. On Friday we spent a long time with the mom talking about goals to work on at home and how to actually teach her son. This is what I got a Masters degree in special education for - now I feel like I am actually using what I learned. The conversation came naturally, and I felt like I had some really good tips to offer her, that came easily to my mind. This was one of those rare moments when I felt like I was really using what I learned in my Masters to a full extent. It makes me really excited to have my own classroom next year!