Mac is in the final weeks of finishing Year 10.
He wasn’t keen to continue populating the blog until he knew how high school would pan out and so we haven’t posted since he finished primary school.
BUT… this gorgeous, grown-up dude did agree we should share pics of him heading off to his school formal last night.
Love him!
It comes so naturally.
No grown-ups required.
Kids get it, friends get it.
On a sunny morning, waiting for the ANZAC Day march to set off, you need nothing more than your ‘glare weather friends’.
Filed under friends, Inclusion... straight up!
A homework assignment saw the need for Mac to develop an ‘about me’ portfolio. We talked about what he might want to include, what it is that is important to him about himself.
We nixed the idea of a poster and decided to use PowToon and their built in templates. We picked the template, decided on an image to use and then put Mac’s words into the online program. Some of the items Mac just gave me single words and we discussed how we could expand those ideas into sentences. We also talked about how to split that information across different slides for visual effect.
So if you were wondering just who Mac is… here’s what he thinks you need to know (audio description available below video).
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AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Coloured slides with image of blond cartoon boy. Text reads:Hello, my name is Mac Burns, I am 10 years old.
I am a son, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin, friend.
I’m a bit of a thinker; I like to listen and learn;
but I don’t say much… yet!
I use switches to speak and wheels to move.
I particularly love playing football and handball with my mates.
My favourite subject is maths
and I like learning about politics (with my Dad).
In my spare time I like to listen to music and books;
watch movies and TV;
learn new things on my computer;
and swim… I love to swim.
I really like funny things, stuff that makes me LAUGH.
I love my life.
Filed under Accessing the Curriculum
Today, on arriving at school I found out Mac’s aide would be arriving a bit late. Mac also had a fill in teacher (but one who has been around the school a fair bit).
What I LOVE…
there was NO suggestion I needed to hang around until the aide arrived.
And better still…
when I offered to hang around they reconfirmed that it was ‘totally unnecessary’ so I happily went on my way. Mac just settled in for roll call with the rest of the class while a couple of kids busied themselves setting up his gear ready to start work.
One of Mac’s IEP goals has always been ‘to become an independent learner with the long term goal of aide support needed only for personal care and not for meeting his education needs’.
It’s one of Mac’s more powerful IEP goals for a number of reasons:
A typical school day for Mac has a period of half an hour where where no aide is in the classroom. During the lunch time period the aide was helping develop and facilitate more inclusive opportunities for Mac which has proven successful and has allowed her to now assist other students who actually need more help with the chaos of the playground instead.
So Mac is on his way in meeting that long term IEP goal… days like today only confirm this.
Filed under Inclusion... straight up!
I could see them scooting along from the other side of the playground, three boys, one pushing Mac in his wheelchair, the other running beside. There was a look of intent on their faces, they knew where they were headed… I had no such insight.
Across the basketball court, along the path, turn, oops steady the chair, back on the path, down another level, now heading away from me.
It’s too early for lunch, I thought… why are they headed down to the dining hall?
Across the pavement, turn again, sharp right, and then…
straight into the boys toilets.
It dawned on me… you know I have never taken Mac into a boys toilet block. I guess you don’t when a) you are female and b) they aren’t actually accessible.
I chuckled as I thought about the fact there was no hesitation that Mac went with them, the other two (or one… who can be sure) obviously needed to go, so they all went.
I never considered part of Mac having an ordinary and inclusive life would mean going with his mates “to the dunny¹ for a leak²”.
As they were heading back into the playground Mac’s aide & I walked up to them and said, “we might take Mac to get ready for canoeing and go to the toilet” (adult code for diaper change).
“We just went” was the response by Mac’s mates in unison…
“Did Mac go?” we asked (somewhat bemused).
“Oh, nah, he didn’t, just us” they said flippantly, “alright then” they offered as they gave Mac up to Miss M and scooted back off to where they were going.
I love that they didn’t think twice about Mac being with them, I love they presumed they’d all gone since they were all in there, and I love they weren’t even the slightest bit phased by Mac ‘not going’. It was more a case of “nah, he didn’t get his act together to go” rather than “OMG how would that even work”.
But, more than anything, I love that by being in amongst his peers Mac learns more age appropriate boy stuff than I could ever teach him.
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1. dunny: Australian slang term for any toilet/lavatory 2. leak: slang for urinating
Filed under Access all Areas, friends, Inclusion... straight up!
Easter time again so for Mac’s school that means eggs-on-legs, egg-o-ramas as well as the more traditional hat parade.
The benefit of getting two years of “eggs-on-legs” means the ability to ‘recycle’ – we embraced the chance to re-use one of the ‘eggs’ from last year’s walking egg / wheelchair contraption.
This year we added an Egyptian pharaoh hat left over from a fancy dress party a couple of weeks ago, some ‘walk like an Egyptian arms’ and covered the blue pants with two pieces of fan folded A4 paper stapled together with some glitter cardboard triangles. A final flourish of some glittery paper around the eyes and our 2012 egg was now and “EGG-gyptian”. It was a pretty good pay-off for about 20mins worth of work.
Here’s Mac, Luca and Miss A showing some of the finest eggs-on-legs I’ve ever seen.
And a blast from the past… I found this gem of Mac (R) and Luca (L) way back in pre-school circa 2007 when they were gorgeous little four year olds.
I strongly believe full and authentic inclusion in the pre-school and daycare settings should be the norm for ALL children. Too many families are buying into the idea that Early Intervention centres are where you go ‘instead of’ pre-school. Early intervention (the action not the place) is important but not at ‘any cost’… be wary of those claiming early intervention can only happen in a segregated setting – you might just end up on an undesirable path where your child loses their rightful and valued place in their community. I spoke about this some years back at the Early Childhood Intervention Australia conference… my stance remains unchanged.
Click the folder if you are interested in reading the paper I presented to the conference.
Filed under Access all Areas, Inclusion... straight up!
I know there are people who wonder why some of us fight so hard for the philosophy of inclusion to simply be the norm.
Today was a reminder of why we do what we do. The concept of inclusion isn’t really about Mac, it’s not about me, or us as a family… it’s for all of us, our entire community, our entire society. It makes us all better people.
According to Mac’s teacher, this is how things went down today…
Friday is sports day and today’s activity was touch footy (touch football/AusTag/flag football/toque de futebol).
Under Mr B’s guidance the team captains get four picks each – then Mr B divvies up the rest to avoid someone being the potential ‘last pick’.
Mr B was absolutely amazed when Mac was the second pick on one of the teams. He said, “it wasn’t something I expected – but it was awesome to witness”.
It is these little moments that make you realise what great young people we are growing by ensuring they are ALL together, authentically together. Not as part of a program, or a unit or by special invitation for part of a day, or for certain subjects or by volunteering to be with the ‘special kids’ as a rostered job.
To these kids Mac is just one of them. Sure, they know he has a disability… they just don’t care.
For the record… Mr B & I both acknowledged we may not have picked Mac if we were captains. He kind of sucks at touch footy and we are both, clearly, a little bit too competitive and perhaps not as ‘evolved’ as these kids…
As it turned out he played briefly then switched it up to become a touch judge/linesman.
To be honest, I’m not sure what is funnier – Mac playing touch footy in the chariot or Mac being a linesman (bearing in mind his vision impairment). I guess touch footy at CPS just became a ‘game of chance’.
Filed under Access all Areas, friends, Inclusion... straight up!, the big picture
So the last day of Grade 3 has arrived. This is Tim’s last day as he has now completed his teaching degree and next year moves onto the local casual rosters with the hope of picking up a full time teaching position in the area.
We always knew we only had the year with Tim in the teacher’s aide role and, while we are sad to see him go, we know there is a bond between he and Mac that will likely stick. I chuckled when one of the teachers told me about the boys at the class party and how Mac was eating green icing of Tim’s finger… like it was the most natural thing on earth.
I am really proud of Tim – he has been so open to learning and embracing the mindset we share about disability. He is going to be a very different teacher to the one he would have been 12 months ago. It is wonderful to hear him acknowledge those same sentiments. Tim has established some great opportunities for Mac that I believe will set him up for the remainder of his primary schooling in a very social and engaged way with his peers.
As a farewell gift for him from Mac and the class I had to sneak around to all the kids for them to give me ‘words to describe Tim’ and develop a ‘wordle’ which I then framed for him as a piece of art to hang on his wall. He was pretty thrilled with his wordle and the kids were blown away seeing their words turned into something so permanent and lasting.
Thank you Tim for the most amazing year. Mac will be working on learning about text messaging & emailing in 2013, and since he has your details in his iPad I expect you’ll be at the top of his list ;-).
It’s hard to know how much involvement to have in assignments when your child has no chance of doing it on their own.
A lot of the assignments to date have been more about me teaching Mac the concept of choosing topics, researching and then deciding what to include – I guess this is probably much the same for everyone.
That being said… I wasn’t overly thrilled when he brought home the requirements for his assignment on “organs”. He had been assigned “the liver” and was to present to the class as if he was ‘the teacher’.
Ugh, the liver, I thought. How are we going to find age appropriate stuff and avoid the obvious drug, sexually transmitted disease and alcohol damage issues that seem to feature ‘way more prominently’ on the internet than any other.
With some focussed searching we did OK. We watched some cool videos, found some good websites. Mac had to decide what he wanted to include in his assignment. I showed him how to change up the information so it sounded like something he might say.
We decided to go with a Powerpoint presentation so he could progress it with his switches while ‘taking the class’.
We created his own avatar using the WeeMee Avatar Creator app (we like it because it has a wheelchair accessory).
We popped his Avatar into his CrazyTalk 2D animation software so it could speak with his dialogue.
We decided to use the Acapela-Box to download the voice. We had to pay for some credits to use this despite having his Dynavox. Thing is the Dynavox doesn’t really ‘hold its own’ for long tracts of speech. It gets crackly and breaks up a bit too much for our liking. With Acapela Box we can use the same voice he uses on his Dynavox but with greater clarity and no chance of it failing mid-sentence.
I poked around on the internet and found some pictures, bought some stock images to include and created some of my own elements. I discussed with Mac what his images might look like, what we could include and importantly made him choose the ‘liver’ image he liked the best. From memory… I think he over-ruled my first choice for making “liver dude”
Here’s the video version of his Powerpoint presentation
(you’ll need your sound turned on & be sure to read on after you’ve watched it).
Did you learn anything new?
Oh, and for those super-observant folk…Filed under Accessing the Curriculum
There was an in-class assessment task recently. Mac & his classmates have been learning about shelters and investigating the many different shelters, buildings and constructions. The assessment involved building a shelter during class time from materials they collected at home. There was no limit on where or what the shelter had to be – intergalactic, subterranean, subaquatic, floating were all viable options. I wasn’t really sure what Mac would be doing instead of building and, other than collecting scrap materials/cardboard cut offs for him, hadn’t done a lot of other preparation.
I chatted to him over breakfast about the in-class task that day. I asked him if he wanted to take in his cardboard etc and offer it to the other kids for making wheelchair ramps for their buildings – he liked that idea. He said “yes” he wanted to do the ‘ramp thing’ more than someone building him a building.
So apparently that is exactly what he and the itinerant vision support teacher did for the assessment. They went and offered ‘wheelchair ramping materials’ to all the other students. Mac was assigned the role of ‘building inspector’ checking they were meeting access regulations. I am not sure if they used any of his communication devices during this time – it would have been a good opportunity for Mac to actually be asking the questions… nothing like being ‘under the pump’ from a local government official.
From all accounts there was a wheelchair accessible cave, space station, cottage, farmhouse and skyscraper… just to name a few.
Just some more incidental learning for his classmates… can’t wait for them to be architects, builders, building inspectors, lift manufacturers and stair demolishers when they grow up.
Filed under Access all Areas, Accessing the Curriculum
The Easter Hat Parade takes on a different form at our school. For K-2 they work on your stereotypical “Easter bonnets” for the Hat Parade. The big kids (Grades 5-6) do Egg Diorama’s called “Egg-o-ramas” (usually with a specific theme) and are, literally, something to behold.
When you are in Grades 3 & 4 you produce “Eggs on Legs”. Generally, poster sized egg characters in many different guises that you get to carry around the parade circuit. This year there was a huge variety including Darth ‘Vad-egg’, Spongebob Square Egg, Princess Eggs, Bunny Eggs, Dinosaurs breaking out of their Eggs, the Jimi Hendrix “Eggs-perience”, Storm Troop-eggs, Harry Pott-eggs and so many more.
So, what to do when you’re a ‘wheelie’ who can’t carry their own ‘egg on legs’?
Isn’t it obvious…
You turn your entire wheelchair into an “Egg on Legs”!
The kids were very excited to see those legs walking on his wheels. His classmate “J” took on the role of ‘egg pusher’ in an instant.
As I packed the eggs away in the wardrobe I thought “at least we’re done for next year 😉 “… although we may just get the kids to help us ‘tart up’ the old eggy so he at least seems ‘current’ in 2013.
And while is certainly good fun making stuff like this (and not terribly difficult) it does allow for some incidental learning for the kids. Today they got a little insight into animation, how to ‘pimp a wheelchair’, and how to easily create funny characters with carboard, bit of timber, a glue stick, paper and thick black texta. The whole activity gives them a great chance to explore character modifications/tweaks and start to really take in the whole idea of a ‘play on words’. It really is a fun activity.
Filed under Access all Areas, Inclusion... straight up!, The 'mod' squad
This is perhaps my favourite quote to do with inclusion – so simple, it just goes to the heart of the matter.
CLICK THE IMAGE TO VISIT http://www.PAULAKLUTH.com
Filed under fridge magnet friday, Inclusion... straight up!
Tough times for a child who can sometimes take on the form of a pretzel.
Depending on the time/place/moment/noise/temperature/season… Mac can be tough to get a decent shot of.
After an epic fail in Year 1, where I was meant to be helping, and subsequently Mac’s individual photo was atrocious, I have been banned from assisting by Mac’s dad.
So Shawn has had the task, and has done a great job, for years Kindy and Grade 2. As a hardened journo from way back, he isn’t shy asking for a ‘re-take or do-over’.
This year he wasn’t available so Mac’s aide, Tim, took charge and assured me he was up to the job and was going to make sure it’s a good one ( although I don’t think he realised how much easier said than done this actually is 😉 )
I do think it will work out ok – Tim’s nothing if not determined. On collecting Mac at the end of the day Tim advised, “we didn’t get him smiling, but he did look ‘a bit posh’ ”… hmm, intriguing… can’t wait to see it now.
Tim took the initiative for Mac to have ‘two sittings’ for individual photo at different times of the day and said the photographers “were extremely accommodating”. I love that Tim took the job so seriously – he and Mac appeared to have a good time, even if Mac wasn’t prepared to smile whenever a camera was anywhere near him. But Tim being a bit pushy helps the photographers know they can ask for a redo themselves and not feel like they are embarrassing anyone, in fact it would be welcomed. It also sends a message that it’s ok to set a higher standard for all kids photos, particularly those who aren’t always as easy to photograph.
In this era of digital photography there’s no real extra cost to taking those few extra shots here and there.
I actually think there’s almost a social role for photographers to ‘step up’ and ensure they are presenting those most at risk of being devalued, in valued roles through respectful and thoughful use of their art.
Still, glad they are done for another year but only ‘half glad’ that kid in the pic at the top of the post isn’t mine…
Filed under Access all Areas, Inclusion... straight up!
Time Timer (visual timer for visual people!) from Time Timer on Vimeo.
Another parent shared the Time Timer® with me the other day. Her daughter is using them at home and school to help her with time management, understanding time concepts and planning.
They are fantastic items and thankfully, just as good ‘in the flesh’ as they appear on the site.
There are watches, 3x timers with prices starting from about $35, software for $24 and via iTunes you can buy iPhone and iPad apps (AUD$1.99 and AUD$7.49).
For Australian families the best deal you can get is from Bilby Publishing and Consulting. A business I have just found out about even though it’s ‘just down the road’ (hmm, well four hours drive) – they have some other interesting items so will probably be ‘poking around on their site a bit more’. Bilby are the official Australian distributors for Time Timer® (which is why they can offer such low prices) and schools can order on account.
I will be using the Time Timer® to see if we can help Mac with motivation to get work done in a set time. I think the visual for him will be really useful and perhaps, at other times help him feel like there is an ‘end point’ to an exercise and that he won’t be working on something for the ‘rest of his life’.
It may even help him understand that “our” 10 minutes isn’t actually the equivalent of “everyone else’s”one hour. Unfortunately I have to take full responsibility for that one. I hate to think how many times I have told him we would do something in 10 mins and actually get to it so much later (even hours later) – poor kid never stood a chance in understanding time management.
And, yes, I have already downloaded the iPhone app and plan to use it ‘keep me honest’ at home.
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 | Gerri on when what you ‘don… |
 | Shandra Bujak on fridge magnet friday… |
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Inky Ed 