New Visions

Sociology:

I got a 97 on our first test; a B+ on our first project. The class is very interesting to me; well, the reading is. A lot of the people don't pay attention; sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. He speaks a lot and the way he speaks, he's reiterating a lot of what I had actually read the night before. A lot of people *have* to listen because they never do the reading.

The college has a break this week, so I don't have to go to class. I plan to spend the extra time working on my spiritual and physical goals: meditation and relaxation. These past 3-4 weeks have been so busy. The future isn't looking any better:

March 18 - College visit: B-W
March 22 - College visit: Daemen
April 1 - College visit: UB
April 3 - College Visit: Nazareth
April 10-18 - Vacation: Panama, Belize, Costa Rica via a cruise
May 1 - College decision

Somewhere in between 3/20 and 4/10: a meeting about the state-wide bike trip I plan to have. Somewhere in there, Sociology HW, New Visions HW, Choir HW, AP Music Theory HW, AP Exam...

I just got told by the other administrator on my website, Danny, to "slow down" and take some time to breathe. I think I might take him up on that offer, after I finish everything...

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Website Building:
Since Feb break, about 20 hours, give or take. I fought with the search engine for three, and it still isn't working. I worked on some stuff last night after my concert, and again today, but the computer crashed and I lost it all, so I'm redoing it as I type this. I'm hoping to launch the site in a week or two, depending on Danny's ability to go over my work. He's busy from 4am to 10pm pretty much every day, some days more than that, so its kind of hard to get him to sit still long enough to get on a computer.
The one accomplishment I'm really proud of is the small script I wrote to display "houses" of my members in rows of five, plus the remaining members in a final row of 1-4. I had to take into account all of the variables of the situation - if the amount of houses was less than five, equal to five, greater than five but not a multiple of five, greater than five and a multiple of five...and write out situations for each.

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March 7, 2006
What: Music
Who: Ketchel, Adam

I had to leave early because of my Class Acts rehearsal.

Ketchel - we did a book again, Sponge Bob still our subject. We did things that Sponge bob liked, and things he didn't like. Pretty boring, although Ketchel is amusing to watch - he runs at a different rate, and he gets fixated on certain things, like hooking the markers together to make a sword.

Adam - we did the who questions again, but Adam made a comment that will probably keep me laughing for days on end. He was fixated on the idea that police went to the beach to patrol. But he explained to us in this most serious voice that the police couldn't go into the water because their sirens would get wet. It makes me smile still, and today is the sunday after that tuesday. It was so awesome.
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February 28
What: Music
Who: Ketchel, Adam

I had to leave early today because of my Class Acts rehearsal.

Ketchel - we did a book, like usual, this time with Sponge Bob and his friend Patrick, whom neither Chris nor I knew how to draw, so he turned into a snowman/pink batman. It was rather amusing and a good way to spend a half an hour. We sang the book, and began to underline words to see if Ketchel recognized them.

Adam - we had a paper full of job pictures, like a policeman, a teacher, a principal, a nurse, a doctor, etc. And the object of our game that day(after Chris remembered how the song went. I seemed to be wrong - his musical memory isn't perfect, just damn close) was to create "who" questions. Ex - "Who teaches the children all day?"

February

February Break Week
What: Website building
How long: 3 hours for the Quill

I finished up the administrator interface and realized that I couldn't do the archive function, so I emailed the teacher and asked her if it was okay to not have it. I'm still waiting on a response. I had a to do several little things to clean up, but mostly it was just tedious work, no real brainpower involved except for trouble shooting.

I would have done so much more this week(kind of disappointed) but I got sick on Monday and had to go to the doctor and stuff, still am a bit sick 6 days later...

February 14, 2006
What: Blood donation
How long: 2 hours

Well, i went in at 1:15 and got out around 3, so it took about 2 hours for me to give blood. I didn't mind, but the needle fell out of my arm, and today(its the 26th) I still have bruising all along my arm. Its slowly fading.

February 7, 2006
What: Music
How long: 2 hours
Who: Chris, Ketchel, Aiden, Evan (Adam was sick)

It took me a long time to write this entry because I was horrendously busy and then I got sick. However, we didn't do much except valentine's day things with the kids.

Ketchel - we made a valentine's day book and sang it, the same as usual.

Aiden - we sang some songs, Aiden was extraordinarily hyper. He actually bit Chris he got so excited, and he took off on me when we turned the corner and ducked into another teacher's room.

Evan - we played with bean bags to work on sequencing, and Evan did relatively well, he got it right a few times with prompting. The inability or difficulty in sequencing must be neurological.

January 31, 2006

Last week... was exams and the beginning of the spring semester in college, so I didn't go to any of my internships. I did work briefly on the website, maybe a 1/2 hour, and added two more things. All that is left is to add an Update function, which is a pain in the butt because it has to be individualized for each type of submission. Fun stuff :)

Jan 31
Time: 1:30-3:00
Who: Me, Chris, Ketchell, Adam, Aidan - Evan went home, sick.

Ketchell did the same stuff - we made a book, we sang the book, we tried to get Ketchell to pay attention.

Adam - we made a word puzzle with him, questions:
Who do you live with?
Where do you live?
Why weren't you here last week?
What do you do after school?
I think there was another one. Adam , I'm pretty sure, missed me last time, because when he walked in, he walked up to me and said "Hello how are you today?" Which he never, ever, does, and he looked right at me. Maintaining eye contact and completing sentences is hard for all of the kids I get to work with. We sang the song, then (of course) sang it with the lights off.

Aiden - he was being brat-ish, but not too bad - he was sick and coughing, and probably not in the best of moods. I dinstinctly remember him picking his nose, wiping his mouth off with his hand and then touching Chris and I's hands, faces, and hair. Fun stuff. Aiden is adorable though, and he actually participated in some of the movements for periods of 5-10 seconds, which is better than originally, when he just sat there with his fingers in his mouth and stared. We sang hello, the movement song, five freckled frogs, mr. sun, in the jungle, the hokey pokey and goodbye.

I never realized how much I enjoy working with Evan, Aiden and Adam (not so much Ketchell, he's in his own world and I haven't worked with him as much as I did the others) until recently, when I was faced with the possibility of missing out on the sessions. Hopefully, I can stay there until the end of the year.

January 10, 12, and 17

January 17, 2006
What: Music Therapy
1pm-3pm

Ketchel - We've been doing the same things with him weekly, now, just making a list of things we're doing, the list says:
1)Get paper (x amount of sheets, Ketchel's choice)
2)Make book about ______
3) Sing the book
4) Clean up
5) Ketchel's choice of things to do

So we make a book with Ketchel, this time it was things he didn't like. Then we sing the book. Intermittently, Ketchel wanders off into a corner. The highlight of this day's adventure was his proclamation that a phtograph of Brooke Shields was "mommy". I think they want to move him into a special class at BOCES, because apparently he doesn't pay enough attention to BE implemented into a normal classroom.

Adam - He is adorable. We've been doing the same thing every week with him, basically. We make index cards of some sort, and then we sing some sort of song with them and he has to guess them. This week, it was "Things I like to do", so the cards read:
I
Like
To
Play
Outside
Play with
My Gameboy
Play Upstairs
Play With
Joshua

And we had to put them into a puzzle and "solve" it. It worked on his memory skills, and Chris's as well, considering he had to sing the song about 10 times altogether.

Aiden - he's saying more, and you can see more of his personality - he's spending less time inside of himself. He's not retarded, he was just slow to get speaking, if that makes sense. He understands, or seems to understand a lot, but he just isn't able to communicate. I wrestled with him a lot through this session - he loves to try to turn the lights off. I swear, the kid tried every route except *through* me to get to the light switch. Same thing each week with Aiden - just trying to get him to speak.

Evan - He has a good memory and understanding too! He told me as I walked him back to the room that I shouldn't be doing it, because I had to go to work. I usually go to work right after Evan almost every time. That'll change now, unfortunately, I doubt I'll be able to stay the entire time with Evan because of the class I signed up for. We worked on the bells and rhythms again. He couldn't even get left to right vs. right to left correct. Chris and I are wondering if its a neurological problem, because he's intelligent - he just has a very hard time with sequencing, he needs a lot of prompting and guidance.




January 12, 2006
Time: 10:30-12:30
Physical Therapy

I met...I don't remember his name, I think it starts with a B. He's a funny guy, like AJ, they both have great senses of humor and they're fun to be around. I repeat - its pretty boring in there, but that's just because I can't really do anything but watch the therapists. I am learning about some of the tools they use. Part of the system for reviewing and diagnosing injuries involves a range of motion detector - its like a big protractor that measures how far someone can bend a joint. Another tool they use is one to test the ability to resist pressure - I saw someone use that (it was like a big button) on an injured ankle. And during the physical therapy, at the end of the session, people with knee injuries have their knee tendons stretched out with a piece of equipment that looks like a medieval torture device. It has several pulleys on it, attached to the floor that extends the knee. Another thing they use commonly is the tinge unit - the thing that shocks, relaxes and strengthens muscles (They attach electrodes to certain spots and turn it on. Fun stuff).



January 10
Music Therapy
1pm-3pm

This session I had to leave after Aiden to go back to school for a music audition.

Ketchel - We did the list and the song book thing. This time, we did "Things I like to do" which included running, running with dad, and playing with mom. And games. I explained in greater detail above, so I won't repeat myself.

Adam - We did the cards and numbers, up to twenty one. He kept mixing up 12 and 21, he had a *Really* hard time with those two numbers.

Aiden - Justin, the kid that usually goes with Aiden now, wasn't there today, so we just sang with him. He actually said "Bye" in tune with the guitar, which was awesome. He also can recognize rhythms and play along to the beat of a song for four-five times(About eight seconds).

January 5, 2006

Physical Therapy
10:30 to 12:30

It wasn't quite as boring today. I stayed in the main room a little bit more. I watched an old lady's body language as she waited for someone to pay attention to her; I watched Sheri and AJ take range of motion measurements for ankles and knees, and then I hung out in the pool area for the rest of the day, watching the people with hip and back problems. I met one patient, Chuck - he was in a car accident, but he was born and raised in Florida. I knew he was without asking because he had a heavy accent (I bet you didn't know Florida people had accents!) and the accent was the same as my boyfriend's. Granted, my boyfriend's only comes out when he's extremely tired or trying to amuse me - he knows I'll make fun of him too much if he uses it excessively. So Sheri and I spoke to Chuck about all sorts of interesting things - cooking(Do you know what the backstrap of a cow is? I do.), cleaning, differences between down there and up here - while he was doing his back exercises. I left at 12:30 because
a) I was hungry
b) I had work to do on the website, listed below.

Website Work: 2.5 hours throughout the day (9:25-9:55,1-3)

I spoke to the "client", Mrs Jaccarino, today on the status of the website, and showed her how to navigate the part of the site that I have completed. I explained how to get into the administration area, and how it was secure. I led her through the differences between the student area and her area, and explained how she could do it from the comfort of her own home. In return, we worked out several changes. She wanted me to

-Change "Short stories" to two categories: "Creative Fiction" and "Creative Non-Fiction"; I didn't have to add another table, but I did have to go through and change four or five different pages in order to make sure all the necessary changes were complete.

-I also made the "Anonymous" choice easier for students submitting work, before I had them typing in a 0 somewhere, now I just have them marking a checkbox. I still have to testrun that and make sure it works ok.

-I altered an image for the person who is making the t-shirt for the quill, and sent that to the librarian so she could get it to the person(I think her name is Amber.)

-I changed some of the text to make it easier to understand.

-Tomorrow morning I have to give the link to the technical person at the school so he can change the link on the school website. Fun stuff.

January 3, 2006

What: Website Building
When: 11:30-12:30

What I did: I finished working out the administrator password interface, which I designed myself; and I also began to work on the general layout of the administrator interface. I decided to use two secure features - one, the password interface, and two, randomly generated page names to prevent people from guessing, because the 'inside' pages are not protected like the interface page. I ended up writing the password script myself because I couldn't find any that seemed appropriate - they were all too complex for what I needed.

What: Music Therapy
When: 1-3:30
Where: Barclay, Ginther Schools

Ketchel - We made out a schedule - he wasn't that good, but he wasn't horrible either. He was wired from vacation. After we made out the schedule, we followed it - we drew pictures of Ketchel and things he wanted, and then sang about it. This worked on his communication and focusing skills.

Adam - Adam is so adorable! We played teacher-student today, getting him to read and identify simple words, such as "With" "Sit" "One" "Won" "This" "That" etc, as well as numbers. We shut the lights off at the end and sang about what we did for Christmas.

Aidan - We worked on speech with him, and focusing. The aide's new idea for getting him to remove his fingers from his mouth is, everytime that he does it, remove his fingers and rub them on a velcro patch on the weighted vest that he wears. At least then he will associate that with whatever feeling causes him to suck on his fingers, which is less abrasive.

Evan - We worked on rhythms again with him, he was doing better today, he actually stayed focused and attentive through most of it instead of trying to change the subject

I never realized until I worked with these kids how we're not really that different. When you feel challenged or in trouble, you try to avoid the topic because it makes you feel nervous. Evan and Adam both today showed that characteristic; I see many teenagers also doing that. I also see how "Group dynamics" fall into place - you sit where you feel comfortable. It shows in small children, and it shows in larger ones. Take a look at our classroom. We all sit in the same spots. And finally, everyone has a nervous habit. Evan's is covering his face. Adam is looking away, shyly. Ketchel's is saying "No!" repetitively. Aidan's is sucking on his fingers. I chew on my nails, although that's partly out of boredom...

that's all for now, folks :-)

December 26, 2005

What: Website Building
How Long: Six Hours - 11AM to 5PM

Yes, I realize I just did six hours of school work on my break time, but it was nice to get it off of my back, and I figure the sooner I finish this, the sooner I can start the next two website projects I have in mind:
-Renovating the Order of the Gecko
-Creating the Brockport Chamber of the Commerce Site

Anyway....
Well, let's see.

-I fixed the email/database problem a few days ago
-I created the rest of the submission forms and debugged them
-I created the display pages for each type of submission
-I created the "Authors" page, displaying each submission by the Author who wrote it, two sections: prior to the 04-05 school year, and after that time period.
-I created the "Contests" page

I finished the aesthetic section of the site, the part that everyone can see. My next challenge is going to be creating the Administrator Interface for the librarian who will be maintaining the site.

December 20

What: Music Therapy
Where: Barclay, Ginther Schools
How Long: 1-3 PM

Ketchell - I got there halfway through, but basically Chris was making a "story" with him, which they sang at the end. Ketchell was well behaved for once, only getting distracted towards the end of the session. Chris had tried something new - making up a schedule before the session began with Ketchell so Ketchell knew what was coming up.

Adam - We did the standard thing, the book rhyme and made up some new notecards. Chris and I learned that Adam isn't as slow as he pretends to be. Adam got 95% of the words right quicky, partly because Chris promised Adam that he would be able to make notecards when he was done. Adam tends to get fixated on things, and he was fixated on the promised reward.

Aiden - He was having some fun turning the lights off again. We did the pretty standard routine, trying to work on his speech through Music. He managed "zoo tomorrow" as the longest phrase we heard out of him. He's getting better each week, though I'm not sure how that will be after the holiday break.

Evan - Evan always feels like he has to be in a corner. He was a little bit antsy, but doing alright. We worked on his rhythms again - still no improvement, and Chris tries something new each time. This time, he tried to get Evan to associate colors with the drums. Evan only got the "Simon Says" repetition right 1/5 times.