The official start to the school year was Wednesday, August 2nd. I was feeling pretty good about the start of the school year as I was counting down my remaining days of summer break. Unfortunately, an alarm on my cell phone reminded me that I had to attend professional development days on Monday, July 31st and Tuesday, August 1st. So much for relaxing the two days prior to the start of the school year. On the upside, and I have to be careful here, I spent two days with my new colleagues and the ratio of female to male was nineteen to one. For those not aware, I was the one. There was one individual, who will remain anonymous, that was bugging me for details about this ratio but no details will be discussed because if my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse reads the details she may raise some objectives to the fact that the ratio is 19:1.
When the alarm on my cell phone rang to remind me of the upcoming professional development days the reminder note that appeared with the alarm said Trauma Training. Totally clueless about trauma training, I checked with Gnu to see is she was familiar with the training. Her response was, "no idea." I had already attended Crisis Prevention and Intervention (CPI) training, how to defend myself from biting, hair pulling, choking, kicking, punching, and using therapeutic holds to control angry scholars, so I had no idea what to expect.
On day one of the training the big screen was pulled done in the assembly room, a professional speaker, female, so you know that changes the ratio to 20:1, welcomed everyone as they arrived and up on the big screen it read, Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), an attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention that is designed to meet the complex needs of vulnerable children. After reading this my first reaction was, this is going to be a long two days. I was wrong as this was an eye opening experience for me. This trauma training program was developed at Texas Christian University by Dr. Karyn Purvis, PhD, and her Institute of Child Development.
Rather than bore you with all of the details, I'll discuss the one that left a lasting impression on me. Dr. Purvis, in all of the short videos we watched, consistently referred to all of the children she worked with as coming from "hard places." I never heard her say, or for that matter the professional speaker that stood at the front of the room, say any of the following when talking about children: special needs, special education, troubled, or any of the numerous other descriptive terms that a child who came from hard places would be labeled. It was always, "these children came from hard places."
So where is this hard place? Dr. Purvis identified the hard place as a child's first year of life and the first time this less than one year old uses it's voice can determine it's future. So what is this child's voice? When it cries. How a parental unit reacts to this crying has the potential to lead this child down the path that leads to having a label attached. I sat and watched three short videos of parental units sitting in a room with their child playing with toys on the floor. As the child was playing with the toys, the parental unit was instructed to get up and walk out of the room. The parental unit was then told that when she reentered the room she had to stop just inside the room and not move. In the first video, when the parental unit left the room, the child began to cry immediately. The child continued to cry until the parental unit walked back into the room. When the parental unit stepped inside the door the child immediately started quickly crawling towards its parental unit. When the parental unit picked up the child, the child quickly stopped crying. When the second parental unit left the room the child went into an absolute rage. When the parental unit stepped back into the room the child remained in a rage and only went halfway towards its parental unit. The parental unit finally had to walk to the child and pick it up. Even when holding the child the rage continued. At one point the child turned its head away and used its hand to push its body away from its parental unit. It took a long time for this parental unit to get her child to stop crying. In the last video, the child completely ignored the fact that its parental unit left the room. No crying, no attempting to move towards its parental unit, it just sat on the floor and played with the toys. When the parental unit stepped back into the room the child continued to completely ignored the fact that its parental unit was back in the room. When the parental unit returned to her seat, the child did not move toward her and she didn't even pick up her child.
After watching the three videos I sat in silence racking my brain trying to recall how I reacted when my daughter came into this world and used her voice. When I picked her up, did I do so as a caring and comforting father or did I show frustration and/or anger because the crying did not stop. Little did I know back then that the way I approached my infant daughter when she used her voice played such an important roll in shaping her future. That's a scary thought.
Wednesday, August 2nd, the first day of the new school year. I walked into the classroom at around 7:15am and Gnu was already sitting at her desk. I went through my usually pre-scholar arriving routine and took a seat. The first to arrive, with a parental unit in tow, was our car rider. Shortly after, the bus riders arrived. Two of our scholars had been assigned a seat prior to their arrival. The other three could sit wherever they wanted. The scholars immediately recognized that their desk was on wheels, that could not be locked in place, and immediately started rolling their desks around the room. Shortly after that, the scholars figured out that when sitting in their seat, they could do three hundred and sixty degree turns while seated. So around and around they went. These desks are a pain in the ass and fortunately for us they are short term because the actual desks for the room were backordered and hopefully they will arrive soon. My desk. I have a table, too small, but I'll make it work. My chair. It's brand new, the first new chair that I've sat in as I enter my sixth year of doing what I do. And best of all, it has wheels and I can do three sixties in it if I choose to do so. My view. Slightly different as I now occupy the side of the room. There is a reason for that but I'll save it for later.
And now for the introductions.
Gnu - teacher
Me - instructional assistant, at least I think that is my official title.
Grab - scholar
Thumb - scholar
DQ - scholar
KVA - scholar
Cube - scholar
The above are supported by the following: Czar, Specialist #1 and Specialist #2. There are other overhead personnel but I'm not exactly sure what they do. I'll update you when I have more information.
So how did the first three days of school go you ask? We had issues, none very serious, so I'd say it was a decent first three days. One thing we didn't expect was the crying. I never worked with a group of scholars that would immediately start crying when things didn't go their way. A couple of the scholars started crying multiple times during the day. On Friday Gnu had enough. "Schultz, ignore the crying as it's nothing more that an attempt to get what they want. Unless the scholar is at risk of getting hurt, hurting someone else, or attempts to run out of the room, ignore the crying." "No problem," I responded. This is our fourth year of working together and when I get a directive that basically says ignore that crap, it puts a smile on my face.
There you go. Three days down and one hundred and seventy-seven to go. It's going to be different. If you want to know how different, you'll have to stick around.
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