Coaching (Day 13 & 14)

Hi, Mapuana! I can indeed read your comments now--thanks for all the great ideas! And let me assure you that the Open Institute in July will be a lot like what we are doing in the Summer Institute--we can't do everything, obviously, but you will definitely get a good taste of NWP. And that reminds me, I still need to send around that e-mail to all our July participants. I'll do that this evening.

Today I had my coaching time for my demo (which will be on Tuesday). Mostly it involved listening to my ideas, making suggestions and answering questions.

Today's demo was fascinating. Not only was the presenter from another country (and showed the educational system comparisons), but she is also in special ed. To begin the demo, she handed each of us a post-it note with a typical special ed label on it and a few brief descriptions of what that label meant. We then role-played. She is a brave, brave woman to ask a group of teachers to role-play students to that extreme. But it was fascinating to think about how our particular disability or condition would affect our learning and how a teacher might have to work with us in a different way. My label, btw, was emotional/behavioral disorder. I was anti-social and couldn't control my anger, tending to act aggressively toward others. Interestingly enough, I was seated next to an ADHD student who had poor impulse control. We quickly figured out we were a volatile situation waiting to happen (and acted accordingly, of course). In any case, it was eye-opening, to the extreme. I am continually in awe of teachers who work with these special students.

Tomorrow, pot luck and guest author. It's David Rice, author of Crazy Loco. I saw him at the conference here in September, and he was a lot of fun.