This one's for you Elaine!!!!

Six months later! I will be more faithful with this blog thing.

Things have gone really well for me this school year. I have completed one school term and one placement. The placement was a perfect fit for me ... if only I could have stayed there and not had to go back to classes. I did a placement in a highschool. I mostly worked with kids who had autism or developmental delays as well as some with physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy. I was also working on an assistive technology project where I prepared a presentation comparing three different online keyboard programs that had voice output and word prediction. It was really interesting as well as applicable to a client. There were three rewarding aspects of this placement. I was teaching one of the students how to drive her power chair and she told me she'd miss me when I'd be gone. That was a special moment for me. I realized what a role model I am in situations like this because I use a wheelchair myself. The second was leading the music group. None of the kids in this group were verbal (i.e. they couldn't talk), but they loved music and looked forward to it each week. In fact, I am planning to continue volunteering to do this music group approximately once a week. The third thing was that I was able to get one of the students with a pretty involved case of autism to laugh ... something he didn't typically do on his own. This placement was the perfect combination of working with kids who have various forms of conditions that affect the brain functioning, working with physical disabilities and problem solving around using technology for students with physical impairments.