I've never been in a room, house, or camp, where there wasn't a full cast of characters- And I don't mean students, participants, or campers either. We work in a field that draws us to be emotionally complex people, able to act and sing and dance on a moment's notice. Certain people get drawn to that. In a world where "Everyone has Special Needs", some of 'everyone' still find those of us who choose to work here a bit eccentric.
Why are you looking at me like that? Something stuck in my teeth?
Work can be a stressful environment, especially when you're working between a number of participants who are being watched by a number of staff. Something goes wrong, and no matter how well the situation gets taken care of, there's some emotional residue that goes with it. After a long week, you have a powder keg of people who feel resentment, frustration, exhaustion, or conversely, gratitude and appreciation for those people who helped us get through something tough. These tough segments drive people together and drive people apart. At the end of the day, it's hard to call your coworkers enemies, friends, or simply acquaintances. These are complicated relationships with complicated people who are stuck together.
In short, they're family. You've got your brothers and sisters, older and younger. You've got a weird uncle or two, and your friendly grandpa figures. And when you fit in, you feel safe. And when you don't... Well...
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let me introduce you to your Weird Other Family:
HBIC:
I swear, I didn't make this name up. The honor of that privilege goes to an old friend of mine who taught me right from left when I was just starting. She used this term to describe herself. It stands for Head Bitch In Charge. Some of you are probably raising an eyebrow and asking "WTF mate?". Then there's a small group of you with a side grin who just chuckled and said "Yeap."
HBICs are typically ladies who have strong, outgoing personalities. They're veterans who have seen the organization change, and have gotten tired of trying to hide how they feel about it, or you, or pretty much anything. You know, if they had tried to hide that before. They can take anything that comes their way, and with as little as a look can turn a crisis into a "sorry ma'am". They're some of the most dedicated advocates of our guys, and they'll let nothing stand in their way to getting what is right and fair for them.
HBICs also serve as the barrier between the 'in group', and the 'not so in group'. They make it very clear who they consider to care for the participants, and who is incompetent, lazy, or outright harmful. Through this function, they create a culture of solidarity and consideration, because no one wants to be on an HBIC's bad side.
Life of the Party:
Every job has its share of Weekend Warriors, and this job is no different. They're the first person to start counting down to Friday, or to Spring Break, or to whenever it's time to not be at work. Because someone's gonna get crunk this weekend. They know every sports statistic, and fluidly are able to work their way into conversations revolving around basketball, hockey, baseball, football...
Of course, this wouldn't be interesting if it was just a stereotype that transcends job boundaries. The cool thing about the guy (traditionally) who is The Life of the Party, is that they just don't give a fuck about acting. They've got this swagger that's sort of like The Fonz, mixed with anything more relevant than The Fonz. They don't tap dance around participants, so participants realize this guy is the shit, and they focus on trying to impress them. They tend to get along with guys who really care about how they're viewed socially, and go out of their way to be perceived as masculine.
The Pretty Girl:
While times are changing, and gender roles are as flexible as those old Stretch Armstrong guys, Special Needs and education still are viewed as primarily female fields of interest. Consequently, many young ladies, fresh out of college, go out of their way to join organizations that work with people with special needs.
The pretty girl is the darling of the workplace, the person who all the young men, student and staff alike, spend an uncommonly large amount of time around. This gets to be frustrating, usually, for this person, who tends to be the first one who realizes that people are revolving around them mostly out of superficial concern. However, since these are often the only people that actually PLANNED on going into this line of work, they're usually quite trained and capable. Balancing between being a trained expert, and being an unintended figurehead, they usually end up being rather humble and worldly, having to have a rather thick skin to deal with all the bullshit.
Chatting Cathy and Talking Timmy:
Occasionally a staff member talks a good bit. Other staff members gossip about getting trapped into never ending conversations. Teachers have meetings, and then reminder meetings, about not using the cellphone for personal reasons during the day, and limiting verbal cues. But somehow the message never really quite gets through.
There's nothing wrong with a talkative staff member, in my personal opinion, though the grape vine might tell a different story. Usually this person is the best person to come to when you yourself need to talk about something on your mind.
Yet, because of the proclivity towards talking there are some pitfalls for a CC/TT to keep an eye for:
1) Make sure your cellphone time isn't causing you to ignore your charge. I'm not going to say that I endorse making personal calls during work, but if you're going to, make sure that you remember to keep an eye on what you're doing. I can't tell you how many crises could have been averted if the person in charge of the AOP had simply been paying attention to their charge.
2) Learn to notice anxiety and cut verbal cues that may be leading a person to acting out. How can I tell a person to stop doing what they're naturally brought to do, in this field? It may not be the prime teaching technique for all cases, but some students really benefit from having single-sided conversations. But if you're prone to talking, make sure you're not on the path to setting someone off, and if you are, make sure to learn how to limit your verbals when you need to.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Staff Trainings and Extracurricular Activities
For reals staff trainings and exercises:
I've found over the course of my employment in the special needs community that there are a few kinds of officially-official staff trainings. There are, of course, the state mandated ones- CPR, DCFS, medication distribution training, ect. Accompanied with these are the organizationally mandated ones- NVCI/CPI, Population Training, professionalism... While it is a hassle to take the courses, especially at the rate at which we are told to retake, and keep these classes current, I don't know too many people who really disagree that most of these trainings are necessary.
Then there's the 'TV is my babysitter' training. Organizations usually include these 'trainings' on days when the administrators are otherwise occupied doing negligibly more important meetings, but don't want us to get used to the idea of going home early while we're being paid. I don't know how many movies the 80s produced on the topic of special needs awareness, but I DO know the percentage. 100%. As in all of them. It's always got that technicolored roughness, despite being recently remastered for DVD re-release. The sound quality is a little off. And the message is simple: "You don't know anything about people with special needs? Here's a story of a person going through the labors of dealing with special needs."
They are movies that primarily appeal as documentaries to people who have never actually co-existed with this population and basically tell them what our job is, roughly (and in a candy-coated package), to do. If it were to be able to train a staff on anything, it would be basic empathy- a skill that without, no paraprofessional would have any amount of success. Basically it is an effective time-waster which literally qualifies as being involved with our line of work, and by the end of the movie you really just feel like your bosses don't trust you to use the teacher scissors.
My favorite trainings I ever had, though, were the ones which expanded my perception on what the current special needs community has to offer. It was my first non-seasonal job placement where I worked with transitions-age students who have special needs, and really helped me appreciate the field at large. We went to visit different adult day programs, and see where our students who graduated would potentially end up.
We only really had a chance to visit the programs in our immediate area, but the programs that we got to visit really opened my eyes to things that I really only got to hear about from down the grapevine. Places like Arts of Life (a program in which I am an unrepentant fanboy, by the by) which specialize in a specific interest area of participants, and really get it done right. Places which existed in the area for decades, from back when it was considered kinder to the child with a developmental disability to remove them from their family, and place them into state care. Places in cutting-edge buildings, newly built out of funds from cleverly worded grants.
The only thing that would have made these trainings cooler, was if we also got to spend some time appreciating the places where our participants came from. I mean, when you're in a single age group for a long time, people start talking about rumors of what the guys in high school, junior high, and grade school coulda/shoulda done. The general consent becomes that they weren't really trying hard enough, and that the classroom we were working in was that much more stellar for being able to overcome those challenges. Which, honestly, couldn't have been further from the truth, though it took until I became a substitute teacher in that same school system to fully appreciate the wealth of caring, hard-working individuals that I didn't know I had been working aside all along.
Those are the types of trainings that I've had, which I was paid to participate in. At least, they WERE, until I landed in my current organization.
Extracurricular Activities:
You see, where I work now has this cultural anomaly. On Wednesdays, after the students leave, but during our paid planning time, all the menfolk get together and guilt-trip one another who try and ditch out. They file into the gym, and put on exercise clothes. And what do we do? We play basketball, of course.
Now, let me preface this a little bit. I never really played basketball growing up, but it should not be any surprise that, like everything, I have a natural gift at playing ball. Especially shooting. I felt that I was so good at making mad dunks and shooting three-pointers that I decided that it was unfair to my coworkers to have to compete with me. I gave myself a proper handicap, and now only shoot the ball by wildly flailing my arms in the air, and letting the ball go wherever. As for defensive skill, I have been complimented so many times for how good I am at it, that I felt that it was necessary to let you all in on my secret. At one point, someone told me that a good defensive person "sticks onto their opponent like white on rice". If there's anything I know how to be, guys, it's white.
You may be wondering, "Hey Barry, what does any of this have to do with special needs, or staff training?" First off, we play alongside people who are in the residential part, which really is quite amazing, actually. These guys know how to play, and because of that, the staff members hold nothing back.
Which actually brings me to the part which makes this activity particularly interesting to me. The staff members play their all, and go running back and forth across the court. Games are short, but intense. Teams are evenly matched, and push each of us to give our all. In a field where on a rough day, you could be called to be exceptionally fit, this is exactly the kind of thing that more programs should be doing. The most active members hired face off against the rest of the group, and for the less active members to keep relevant in the game, they have to push themselves harder to keep up. In the end, the it's sort of a reverse of the 'weakest link of the chain' parable. You've got this one guy, who is in better shape than anyone there, and the guy facing off him, who is only slightly less in shape. As people keep trying to play amongst them, those fit guys drag the rest of the team, kicking and screaming, into cardiovascular health.
While I feel badly for the guys trying to keep up with me, it really makes the team stronger if they end up shooting for the stars.
My only regret about this tradition is that the girls don't join in. I mean, sure, it's fun when one of the young ladies wanders into the gym to go do some small errand and covertly check out the game. But in my vision of what these sorts of extracurricular activities could be to the special needs community, it limits the team to not have the ladies pushing themselves alongside us. Plus, growing up with the whole 'women are equal' thing, it's sort of weird for me to see an actual gender divide presented to me. Yet, no one seems to complain about how the game is set up- it seems only to serve as an amusement to the ladies that the guys get together to do these sorts of things, rather than some sort of "boys only club", but I only get to see from my perspective.
Regardless...
The interesting thing about this basketball game, is that before I knew that programs had this sort of thing, I had been trying by myself to make this sort of thing happen in other programs. There's a lot to be gained from the community of people who have fun together, and keep in shape together. Better working relationships, better team-working skills...
And when you apply that mentality to other types of extracurricular activity, it really opens the door for other non-conventional staff trainings. Lots of people pulling muscles, getting sick, getting stressed? Try including a cheap-to-free yoga course before or after school one or more days of the week. Want to help get your staff into a mentality which is quick thinking, and empathetic? Screw the 80s movies, and pony up for a Improv Comedy class. In each of these, you're building a better paraprofessional, a better community, reducing stress, and increasing morale. Maybe they cost a little more than traditional trainings, but they don't have to. When you're hiring, look for people who are able to do these sorts of extracurricular activities, hire them, and then offer them a stipend to do a couple things at your different buildings a few times a week.
Or hell, just start looking around in your current hire pool. How many paraprofessionals have a cool talent or trained skill that they don't even think of bringing into work on a daily basis? How many other paraprofessionals might appreciate a class in auto-repair, computer repair, cooking, cleaning, accounting, paranormal forensics...? And what if you have a whole team of people who know how to repair cars, play basketball, and teach trigonometry? Well maybe you'll be able to supply the first program in Illinois that teaches participants math, while they do trick shots off of junked cars. That'll look really spiffy in the next issue of Special Parent.
I've found over the course of my employment in the special needs community that there are a few kinds of officially-official staff trainings. There are, of course, the state mandated ones- CPR, DCFS, medication distribution training, ect. Accompanied with these are the organizationally mandated ones- NVCI/CPI, Population Training, professionalism... While it is a hassle to take the courses, especially at the rate at which we are told to retake, and keep these classes current, I don't know too many people who really disagree that most of these trainings are necessary.
Then there's the 'TV is my babysitter' training. Organizations usually include these 'trainings' on days when the administrators are otherwise occupied doing negligibly more important meetings, but don't want us to get used to the idea of going home early while we're being paid. I don't know how many movies the 80s produced on the topic of special needs awareness, but I DO know the percentage. 100%. As in all of them. It's always got that technicolored roughness, despite being recently remastered for DVD re-release. The sound quality is a little off. And the message is simple: "You don't know anything about people with special needs? Here's a story of a person going through the labors of dealing with special needs."
They are movies that primarily appeal as documentaries to people who have never actually co-existed with this population and basically tell them what our job is, roughly (and in a candy-coated package), to do. If it were to be able to train a staff on anything, it would be basic empathy- a skill that without, no paraprofessional would have any amount of success. Basically it is an effective time-waster which literally qualifies as being involved with our line of work, and by the end of the movie you really just feel like your bosses don't trust you to use the teacher scissors.
My favorite trainings I ever had, though, were the ones which expanded my perception on what the current special needs community has to offer. It was my first non-seasonal job placement where I worked with transitions-age students who have special needs, and really helped me appreciate the field at large. We went to visit different adult day programs, and see where our students who graduated would potentially end up.
We only really had a chance to visit the programs in our immediate area, but the programs that we got to visit really opened my eyes to things that I really only got to hear about from down the grapevine. Places like Arts of Life (a program in which I am an unrepentant fanboy, by the by) which specialize in a specific interest area of participants, and really get it done right. Places which existed in the area for decades, from back when it was considered kinder to the child with a developmental disability to remove them from their family, and place them into state care. Places in cutting-edge buildings, newly built out of funds from cleverly worded grants.
The only thing that would have made these trainings cooler, was if we also got to spend some time appreciating the places where our participants came from. I mean, when you're in a single age group for a long time, people start talking about rumors of what the guys in high school, junior high, and grade school coulda/shoulda done. The general consent becomes that they weren't really trying hard enough, and that the classroom we were working in was that much more stellar for being able to overcome those challenges. Which, honestly, couldn't have been further from the truth, though it took until I became a substitute teacher in that same school system to fully appreciate the wealth of caring, hard-working individuals that I didn't know I had been working aside all along.
Those are the types of trainings that I've had, which I was paid to participate in. At least, they WERE, until I landed in my current organization.
Extracurricular Activities:
You see, where I work now has this cultural anomaly. On Wednesdays, after the students leave, but during our paid planning time, all the menfolk get together and guilt-trip one another who try and ditch out. They file into the gym, and put on exercise clothes. And what do we do? We play basketball, of course.
Now, let me preface this a little bit. I never really played basketball growing up, but it should not be any surprise that, like everything, I have a natural gift at playing ball. Especially shooting. I felt that I was so good at making mad dunks and shooting three-pointers that I decided that it was unfair to my coworkers to have to compete with me. I gave myself a proper handicap, and now only shoot the ball by wildly flailing my arms in the air, and letting the ball go wherever. As for defensive skill, I have been complimented so many times for how good I am at it, that I felt that it was necessary to let you all in on my secret. At one point, someone told me that a good defensive person "sticks onto their opponent like white on rice". If there's anything I know how to be, guys, it's white.
You may be wondering, "Hey Barry, what does any of this have to do with special needs, or staff training?" First off, we play alongside people who are in the residential part, which really is quite amazing, actually. These guys know how to play, and because of that, the staff members hold nothing back.
Which actually brings me to the part which makes this activity particularly interesting to me. The staff members play their all, and go running back and forth across the court. Games are short, but intense. Teams are evenly matched, and push each of us to give our all. In a field where on a rough day, you could be called to be exceptionally fit, this is exactly the kind of thing that more programs should be doing. The most active members hired face off against the rest of the group, and for the less active members to keep relevant in the game, they have to push themselves harder to keep up. In the end, the it's sort of a reverse of the 'weakest link of the chain' parable. You've got this one guy, who is in better shape than anyone there, and the guy facing off him, who is only slightly less in shape. As people keep trying to play amongst them, those fit guys drag the rest of the team, kicking and screaming, into cardiovascular health.
While I feel badly for the guys trying to keep up with me, it really makes the team stronger if they end up shooting for the stars.
My only regret about this tradition is that the girls don't join in. I mean, sure, it's fun when one of the young ladies wanders into the gym to go do some small errand and covertly check out the game. But in my vision of what these sorts of extracurricular activities could be to the special needs community, it limits the team to not have the ladies pushing themselves alongside us. Plus, growing up with the whole 'women are equal' thing, it's sort of weird for me to see an actual gender divide presented to me. Yet, no one seems to complain about how the game is set up- it seems only to serve as an amusement to the ladies that the guys get together to do these sorts of things, rather than some sort of "boys only club", but I only get to see from my perspective.
Regardless...
The interesting thing about this basketball game, is that before I knew that programs had this sort of thing, I had been trying by myself to make this sort of thing happen in other programs. There's a lot to be gained from the community of people who have fun together, and keep in shape together. Better working relationships, better team-working skills...
And when you apply that mentality to other types of extracurricular activity, it really opens the door for other non-conventional staff trainings. Lots of people pulling muscles, getting sick, getting stressed? Try including a cheap-to-free yoga course before or after school one or more days of the week. Want to help get your staff into a mentality which is quick thinking, and empathetic? Screw the 80s movies, and pony up for a Improv Comedy class. In each of these, you're building a better paraprofessional, a better community, reducing stress, and increasing morale. Maybe they cost a little more than traditional trainings, but they don't have to. When you're hiring, look for people who are able to do these sorts of extracurricular activities, hire them, and then offer them a stipend to do a couple things at your different buildings a few times a week.
Or hell, just start looking around in your current hire pool. How many paraprofessionals have a cool talent or trained skill that they don't even think of bringing into work on a daily basis? How many other paraprofessionals might appreciate a class in auto-repair, computer repair, cooking, cleaning, accounting, paranormal forensics...? And what if you have a whole team of people who know how to repair cars, play basketball, and teach trigonometry? Well maybe you'll be able to supply the first program in Illinois that teaches participants math, while they do trick shots off of junked cars. That'll look really spiffy in the next issue of Special Parent.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Care Campaign Update:
Alright, so a few things:
First off, my bad, I couldn't find the cord to my phone/I didn't really look hard enough for the cord until I got a new phone, and now the photo I promised about the flier on The Care Campaign is up. Fancy? Swift.
Secondly, because I didn't get the picture fixed in a reasonable amount of time, I decided to go get an interview with Bob Sandidge to make up for it. As soon as everything is compiled proper, I'll be posting the interview on the blog. I know, I'm so cool.
Finally, my company hinted to me in an e-mail on Monday that today and tomorrow, that I'm supposed to be calling Governor Quinn ((312) 814-2121) and telling him that 1. "My name is Barry Petersen, I am a DSP in a community disability agency who needs a raise to support my family," and 2. "Mr. Governor Quinn, please support the Care Campaign and include funding into your budget for a $1/hour wage increase".
(This final part will be the remainder of the post, heads up)
By hint, I mean that the e-mail told me that I 'had to'. Apparently there's some sheet that I'm supposed to record when I made the call, and what my name is. Now, for those of you who know me, I don't really like being told that I 'have to' do anything. I don't mind doing rough work, and I'm willing to do less preferred jobs. But the minute someone says 'mandatory', the first thought in my head is "or what?"
I think it's a familial thing. We Petersens are stubborn assholes.
Also, they attached a note reminding me to do this thing onto my pay stub.
Now, the reason why everyone is all up in arms is because March 26th is when Governor Quinn will announce his budget, and (I believe) SB 2604/HB 3698 are being deliberated upon.
I tried to find some information about the bills from an unbiased source (see: made a single Google search of the bills), and couldn't find much there. However, if you want to read about them from OTHER biased sources, feel free to adventure through the links below:
Illinois Association of Rehabilitation Facilities: SB 2604, HB 3698
AFSCME Council 31
PR Statement from Little City Foundation
The Arc of Illinois
Now, I'm not big on pushing politics, so I'm not going to tell you to do this, and frankly, I'd love to see more than just a synopsis of the bills before I told you all that things are kosher. BUT I also really like cash money bling-bling. So hey, if you want the people that pay out your taxes to pay for more of my paycheck, I'm all up for it. Frankly, it is your duty as a citizen of the state of Illinois to make sure that more of your tax dollars end up in my bank account. So feel free to go ahead and practice democracy to go make and me a wealthy man.
(P.S. For those of you confused about how tax dollars make it into my pocket when I work for a private institution and am not a government employee, stay tuned. I plan to either have answers for how paraprofessionals get paid in an upcoming feature (most likely the interview))
First off, my bad, I couldn't find the cord to my phone/I didn't really look hard enough for the cord until I got a new phone, and now the photo I promised about the flier on The Care Campaign is up. Fancy? Swift.
Secondly, because I didn't get the picture fixed in a reasonable amount of time, I decided to go get an interview with Bob Sandidge to make up for it. As soon as everything is compiled proper, I'll be posting the interview on the blog. I know, I'm so cool.
Finally, my company hinted to me in an e-mail on Monday that today and tomorrow, that I'm supposed to be calling Governor Quinn ((312) 814-2121) and telling him that 1. "My name is Barry Petersen, I am a DSP in a community disability agency who needs a raise to support my family," and 2. "Mr. Governor Quinn, please support the Care Campaign and include funding into your budget for a $1/hour wage increase".
(This final part will be the remainder of the post, heads up)
By hint, I mean that the e-mail told me that I 'had to'. Apparently there's some sheet that I'm supposed to record when I made the call, and what my name is. Now, for those of you who know me, I don't really like being told that I 'have to' do anything. I don't mind doing rough work, and I'm willing to do less preferred jobs. But the minute someone says 'mandatory', the first thought in my head is "or what?"
I think it's a familial thing. We Petersens are stubborn assholes.
Also, they attached a note reminding me to do this thing onto my pay stub.
Now, the reason why everyone is all up in arms is because March 26th is when Governor Quinn will announce his budget, and (I believe) SB 2604/HB 3698 are being deliberated upon.
I tried to find some information about the bills from an unbiased source (see: made a single Google search of the bills), and couldn't find much there. However, if you want to read about them from OTHER biased sources, feel free to adventure through the links below:
Illinois Association of Rehabilitation Facilities: SB 2604, HB 3698
AFSCME Council 31
PR Statement from Little City Foundation
The Arc of Illinois
Now, I'm not big on pushing politics, so I'm not going to tell you to do this, and frankly, I'd love to see more than just a synopsis of the bills before I told you all that things are kosher. BUT I also really like cash money bling-bling. So hey, if you want the people that pay out your taxes to pay for more of my paycheck, I'm all up for it. Frankly, it is your duty as a citizen of the state of Illinois to make sure that more of your tax dollars end up in my bank account. So feel free to go ahead and practice democracy to go make and me a wealthy man.
(P.S. For those of you confused about how tax dollars make it into my pocket when I work for a private institution and am not a government employee, stay tuned. I plan to either have answers for how paraprofessionals get paid in an upcoming feature (most likely the interview))
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Why Swimming is the Epitome of Everything Paraprofessionals Hate
Let me preface this properly. I don't mind swimming. It could be the way the water glistens off of my majestic body, or the fact that I can will the gross waters of a YMCA pool clean around me. I don't even mind working with participants in the water. I still hang up my "Great Pool Spirit Award" from my first year as a camp counselor on my wall with pride. I've made some really fun memories in pools, when there's really very little schoolwork to be done, and people can just chillax for a cool minute.
But I hate swimming. If there has been one complaint that I've run into more often than not, from program to program to program... If there's one place where staff delinquency is the highest among all, it's at the pool. In my experience, while everyone has a truly chilling 'poop story', if you really want to turn off the lights, and hold the flashlight under your face, and accompany the visage with a creepy voice, you'd better be talking about the pool.
Overwhelmed, under staffed:
I mean, the pool is stressful. Not only do you have to march your crew through the changing rooms, trying to figure out how the male staff is going to take care of the onslaught of oncoming students, but then you have to get yourself changed, meaning that you have to trust that someone else has your pupil's attention while you try to rush through changing into your just-a-bit-too-tight swimwear, you have to carefully avoid touching ANYTHING, since it happens to be a universal rule that every pool locker room is the most utterly disgusting, awful place known to mankind... And then you have to get into the water yourself, with the iconic slow-wade as your sensitive bits come into contact with ice cold water. Meanwhile, someone is reliably slacking off, and you have to dodge between vanillas.
Why it's the epitome: Everything is worse at the pool. Everything. The bathrooms are grosser, and the bathrooming is more abundant. If someone poops in the hall? Gross. If someone poops in the pool? They literally have to evacuate the pool, drawing attention to yourself and your charge. Put even a small bit of effort in your appearance for the day, and by the end of the pool, you have walk-of-shame hair, and a chlorine smell.
You don't like it? Too bad:
And honestly, all this stuff is peachy in my book. But then you run into a student who doesn't want to get into the water, and someone that is heading your group is demanding that they get put into it. That's where the activity begins to truly lose the fun for me. I mean, it's one thing to sacrifice a year off my life, as the bitter cold and the germs eat away at my soul, so that someone I'm working with has a truly fun time doing something which would be prohibitively difficult without the protection of a structured programming institute guiding us into the waters. It's an entirely different thing when I have the spend the better part of half an hour trying to convince them to change into their swimwear so that they can get into the water, while my superiors get upset at me for not simply ripping their clothes off and changing them manually. Not that I have specific resource material for this gripe or anything.
Why it's the epitome: The effort to get into the pool is far greater than other efforts done to secure an activity. Don't want to do a T.E.A.C.C.H. Task? Cool, throw it on the floor. Took me ten seconds to get ready, and takes me twenty seconds to pick up. Don't want to go to the pool? Getting into the transportation = struggle. Getting into the building = struggle. Getting changed = struggle. Getting into the water = struggle. Getting OUT of the water = struggle. All the meanwhile that old lady is gaping and then going off to tell the people in front that you're making a person with special needs scream.
__________________________________________________________________________
That's where things feel frustrating, but it's also where some more subtle complaints begin to arise. And that's what brings me to the original topic of the article. I don't like the situation of having to deal with a student that doesn't get into the water. That's immediate. It's a sort of tangible dislike. The less tangible dislike comes out of something closer to pride. "Well," I ask, (to no one in particular,) "why are we trying so hard to get a student that doesn't want to swim into the pool?"
The buzzwords:
Inevitably, someone has an answer. Something along the lines of, "because it's therapeutic for x to go swimming. Study Y and Z blah blah blah." That person is my boss, and the one who is adamant about us going into the water, rain or shine. If you want to see a clear line of differentiation between those people who are considered 'administrative', and those people who are considered 'direct workers', look no further than a swimming pool. You see, because while this boss person may be able to quote IEPs, case studies, and familial goals, you can never find that person swimming come the -10 degree days, or sometimes at all, ever. Whatever anecdote you may have about a student not enjoying the pool is considered irrelevant and unacceptable because this boss person, who maybe hasn't ever even been to the pool, and certainly is not regularly in the changing rooms or in the water with the participants.
Why it's the epitome: Okay, so swimming isn't the end-all-be-all of buzzwords (that would be "Gluten Free Diet"). But it's one of the few bandwagons that we have to consciously engage with. It's specifically frustrating, though, to us because of how clearly invested in the buzzword some people are. Yes, for some individuals swimming is really quite therapeutic. I don't have the case studies to quote on it, but I've certainly seen how some people react to the water with joy and wonder and release. But some people don't. Just like peer inclusion, and art/music therapy, and any other thing that you could get some people to have great results from, swimming works well with some of the people, some of the time. They don't call it 'special needs' because everyone in the program reacts to the programming the same way, invariably. Hell, no two people, typically functioning or functioning like a badass or whatever, feel the same way about anything all the time.
Taxation without representation:
The boss person invariably is too important or busy to be able to do that little task. But considering how important it is to the students, and how much the families demanded that it be included into their children's life, it would look absolutely horrible if the program failed to include it. It stops being another part of the schedule which we can work around flexibly, and starts being an administrative buzzword that we have to live out while they get to sell it with gold leaf and cursive handwriting.
And worse, since it's uncomfortable, and since these administrative types don't have to do it themselves, the pool stops just being a frustrating task during the day, and starts becoming a reminder that we are not 'the people in charge', only 'the help'. The way it gets talked about breeds venom between a group of people who don't have to do the task, who get to drive Lexus' and attend organizational galas as guests of honor, and the supposedly 'most important members of the organization', who have to do the task, lest they want to see the other end of an unemployment line.
Why it's the epitome: Swimming is a task which you don't want to do, and your boss won't do, and yet they won't listen to your complaints either. Any other task, and an administrator could possibly facilitate, but somehow when it comes down to swimming, they're never around. That's why I think that swimming shows the space between administrator and staff:
It becomes clear-cut. Who is on "our team", and who is part of "the administration"? If you want one way to pick out who is inclusive, and who is exclusive, pick out the people that don't ever have swimming duties because they don't have to. The teachers that we accept as "part of our team" groan and complain about being made to swim as hard as we do. Meanwhile, the teachers that are part of "the administration" send us out and don't ask questions. Hell, positions which may be considered administrative might find themselves on "our team" if they dive into the pool with us from time-to-time.
When we get together in days, weeks, or months following, we start to add up our paychecks and compare them to the bills due, we complain about it with our teams, and we start to wonder whether or not this play against our pride is really worth it anymore, or if it is the final straw to break the infamous camel's back. And sometimes we get a pat on the back, and we look forward to more pleasant things.
But sometimes... sometimes that's when the newly waxed Lexus of our favorite administrator pulls up, and with silent nods and hand gestures we begin plans of mutiny. Sweet, sweet mutiny.
__________________________________________________________________________
So, to any administrators watching: It doesn't have to be this way. Listen to your staff. Take a dive in yourself. Hell, complain about the water and deal with a Code Brown with us, and you're set. But when you use your authority to put that barrier between yourself and those tasks you'd rather not be doing... We remember. :)
But I hate swimming. If there has been one complaint that I've run into more often than not, from program to program to program... If there's one place where staff delinquency is the highest among all, it's at the pool. In my experience, while everyone has a truly chilling 'poop story', if you really want to turn off the lights, and hold the flashlight under your face, and accompany the visage with a creepy voice, you'd better be talking about the pool.
Overwhelmed, under staffed:
I mean, the pool is stressful. Not only do you have to march your crew through the changing rooms, trying to figure out how the male staff is going to take care of the onslaught of oncoming students, but then you have to get yourself changed, meaning that you have to trust that someone else has your pupil's attention while you try to rush through changing into your just-a-bit-too-tight swimwear, you have to carefully avoid touching ANYTHING, since it happens to be a universal rule that every pool locker room is the most utterly disgusting, awful place known to mankind... And then you have to get into the water yourself, with the iconic slow-wade as your sensitive bits come into contact with ice cold water. Meanwhile, someone is reliably slacking off, and you have to dodge between vanillas.
Why it's the epitome: Everything is worse at the pool. Everything. The bathrooms are grosser, and the bathrooming is more abundant. If someone poops in the hall? Gross. If someone poops in the pool? They literally have to evacuate the pool, drawing attention to yourself and your charge. Put even a small bit of effort in your appearance for the day, and by the end of the pool, you have walk-of-shame hair, and a chlorine smell.
You don't like it? Too bad:
And honestly, all this stuff is peachy in my book. But then you run into a student who doesn't want to get into the water, and someone that is heading your group is demanding that they get put into it. That's where the activity begins to truly lose the fun for me. I mean, it's one thing to sacrifice a year off my life, as the bitter cold and the germs eat away at my soul, so that someone I'm working with has a truly fun time doing something which would be prohibitively difficult without the protection of a structured programming institute guiding us into the waters. It's an entirely different thing when I have the spend the better part of half an hour trying to convince them to change into their swimwear so that they can get into the water, while my superiors get upset at me for not simply ripping their clothes off and changing them manually. Not that I have specific resource material for this gripe or anything.
Why it's the epitome: The effort to get into the pool is far greater than other efforts done to secure an activity. Don't want to do a T.E.A.C.C.H. Task? Cool, throw it on the floor. Took me ten seconds to get ready, and takes me twenty seconds to pick up. Don't want to go to the pool? Getting into the transportation = struggle. Getting into the building = struggle. Getting changed = struggle. Getting into the water = struggle. Getting OUT of the water = struggle. All the meanwhile that old lady is gaping and then going off to tell the people in front that you're making a person with special needs scream.
__________________________________________________________________________
That's where things feel frustrating, but it's also where some more subtle complaints begin to arise. And that's what brings me to the original topic of the article. I don't like the situation of having to deal with a student that doesn't get into the water. That's immediate. It's a sort of tangible dislike. The less tangible dislike comes out of something closer to pride. "Well," I ask, (to no one in particular,) "why are we trying so hard to get a student that doesn't want to swim into the pool?"
The buzzwords:
Inevitably, someone has an answer. Something along the lines of, "because it's therapeutic for x to go swimming. Study Y and Z blah blah blah." That person is my boss, and the one who is adamant about us going into the water, rain or shine. If you want to see a clear line of differentiation between those people who are considered 'administrative', and those people who are considered 'direct workers', look no further than a swimming pool. You see, because while this boss person may be able to quote IEPs, case studies, and familial goals, you can never find that person swimming come the -10 degree days, or sometimes at all, ever. Whatever anecdote you may have about a student not enjoying the pool is considered irrelevant and unacceptable because this boss person, who maybe hasn't ever even been to the pool, and certainly is not regularly in the changing rooms or in the water with the participants.
Why it's the epitome: Okay, so swimming isn't the end-all-be-all of buzzwords (that would be "Gluten Free Diet"). But it's one of the few bandwagons that we have to consciously engage with. It's specifically frustrating, though, to us because of how clearly invested in the buzzword some people are. Yes, for some individuals swimming is really quite therapeutic. I don't have the case studies to quote on it, but I've certainly seen how some people react to the water with joy and wonder and release. But some people don't. Just like peer inclusion, and art/music therapy, and any other thing that you could get some people to have great results from, swimming works well with some of the people, some of the time. They don't call it 'special needs' because everyone in the program reacts to the programming the same way, invariably. Hell, no two people, typically functioning or functioning like a badass or whatever, feel the same way about anything all the time.
Taxation without representation:
The boss person invariably is too important or busy to be able to do that little task. But considering how important it is to the students, and how much the families demanded that it be included into their children's life, it would look absolutely horrible if the program failed to include it. It stops being another part of the schedule which we can work around flexibly, and starts being an administrative buzzword that we have to live out while they get to sell it with gold leaf and cursive handwriting.
And worse, since it's uncomfortable, and since these administrative types don't have to do it themselves, the pool stops just being a frustrating task during the day, and starts becoming a reminder that we are not 'the people in charge', only 'the help'. The way it gets talked about breeds venom between a group of people who don't have to do the task, who get to drive Lexus' and attend organizational galas as guests of honor, and the supposedly 'most important members of the organization', who have to do the task, lest they want to see the other end of an unemployment line.
Why it's the epitome: Swimming is a task which you don't want to do, and your boss won't do, and yet they won't listen to your complaints either. Any other task, and an administrator could possibly facilitate, but somehow when it comes down to swimming, they're never around. That's why I think that swimming shows the space between administrator and staff:
It becomes clear-cut. Who is on "our team", and who is part of "the administration"? If you want one way to pick out who is inclusive, and who is exclusive, pick out the people that don't ever have swimming duties because they don't have to. The teachers that we accept as "part of our team" groan and complain about being made to swim as hard as we do. Meanwhile, the teachers that are part of "the administration" send us out and don't ask questions. Hell, positions which may be considered administrative might find themselves on "our team" if they dive into the pool with us from time-to-time.
When we get together in days, weeks, or months following, we start to add up our paychecks and compare them to the bills due, we complain about it with our teams, and we start to wonder whether or not this play against our pride is really worth it anymore, or if it is the final straw to break the infamous camel's back. And sometimes we get a pat on the back, and we look forward to more pleasant things.
But sometimes... sometimes that's when the newly waxed Lexus of our favorite administrator pulls up, and with silent nods and hand gestures we begin plans of mutiny. Sweet, sweet mutiny.
__________________________________________________________________________
So, to any administrators watching: It doesn't have to be this way. Listen to your staff. Take a dive in yourself. Hell, complain about the water and deal with a Code Brown with us, and you're set. But when you use your authority to put that barrier between yourself and those tasks you'd rather not be doing... We remember. :)
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