I have a boy with autism in my classroom and it has been an amazing experience. He is always keeping me on my toes. One day I was having a chat with my students about something and I must have been getting a little excited or maybe raising my voice as I was really trying to drive the point home. All of a sudden my boy with autism pipes up from the back of the class...."Mr. McEntee.....CALM DOWN!". The look of shock and horror on my other students' faces was priceless. For me....I replied, "Thank you! You're right! I do need to calm down".
About a month ago one of the girls in my class comes up to me as she was getting ready to head out for recess..."Mr. McEntee! I'm going to name my children after you!".
Today as I was walking my class to the swimming pool, it was a little breezy out and we were running a bit late. So I set the pace at the front of the line and explained to my students that we were going to have to walk pretty fast so we can get into the pool on time. One of the girls who was right behind was telling me I was walking pretty quick and I was said, "Yep, you're right...so keep up". She replied, "We can't keep up Mr. McEntee, we are walking into the wind!".
One Monday morning my class was doing our weekly ritual of HALO (High, Acknowledgement, Low, Opportunity) basically a time for each student to share with the class what they did over the weekend. My boy with autism loves this part of the week. He was telling his story about going camping with his family and started talking about his little cousin. He was saying how she was being bad and then goes, "yeah and I had to give her shit!". I calmly asked him to make sure he kept his language school appropriate, to his reply. "What?! I had to give her shit!!"
Those are all the ones I can think of for now.....just a couple of reasons why teaching is so awesome!
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