I just learned this week that my internship will end on June 5^th – that’s insane!  I cannot believe how strange it feels knowing that in 18 days, I will no longer be a part of the Stepping Stones team or the songbird of the FRC department.  On a side note, Wendy and the rest of the team are ordering pizza for both me and another intern for our last days!

            I had to write that on the notepad, the only way of communicating with Felise that I have nowadays.  I don’t like it at all, but I don’t suppose I have any other way.  Email seems almost impersonal.  Anyway, she is coming back from Korea on Monday, so she should be reading my updates while I’m putting these in the mailbox marked “Astor.”  I do hope I get to see her in person before I leave.

            The twins are sick again this week – nothing serious, just congestion – so I’ve been working more and more with the boy whose language skills have been developing very rapidly lately.  We all have been working on filling in each other’s’ gaps in the Spanish language, and our teamwork does seem to be paying off.  This boy’s mother has reported that he is responding verbally to her all the time nowadays rather than just pointing or glancing like he was doing just one month ago.  It’s amazing have quickly he’s picked these skills up.

            I made the Welcome packets this week – 4 hours’ worth of them.  Gracious professionalism once again (although I did get to sit in a chair while the copier was going for quite some time, which was nice, even if I did manage to cover the entire counter in the resource room with copies, files, and staples.)  I really am glad that I got those done, though, since we had just run out of them.

            Speaking of packets, I actually consider the cancellation of class on Thursday to be a blessing when it comes to time management – making Welcome packets is so time consuming that with the amount of time that I usually have left after all of my other duties, I would scarcely have time to set up the whole process before having to put it all away again.  Having such a huge chunk of time worked very well, in this case.

            My goal for next week is to make sure that the twins have not regressed much in the time they have been gone (that is quite common when the kids go on vacation or get sick for extended periods of time).  As for long-term goals, a measurable mark of long-term effects my internship is having on these kids is social blossoming of the student with social anxiety – we’ve all been working on getting her to open up and speak (audibly, if at all), and in the last few months (and especially last week) we’ve been seeing our efforts being paid off.

            I have been writing to Felise every day I am in the office – nowadays, we communicate through a notebook on her desk, since she is at the Bothell location on the days I am in.  However, she has been in South Korea for the past few weeks, so I have been writing all of my daily updates on that notepad.  It’s a bit odd, writing update after update with no reply, but she’ll be home in another week, and I’ll get to read all about her trip!

            The twins have been sick this week – poor kids.  However, I spent my time in class working with a kid whose language skills have just started developing at an astonishing pace this past month.  He hears both Spanish and English at home, that that is definitely reflecting in his speech patterns in class as well.  Because of this, we must use teamwork – our classroom leader (Wendy) does not speak Spanish, and the rest of us only have high school-level proficiency, so we must all fill in each other blanks to understand what he is trying to say.  Also – very funny – he knows exactly where the power lies in the classroom.  I have to struggle with him, physically and mentally, to have him do something he doesn’t want to do, but he listens to all of the adults – especially Wendy!

            I also learned today that there will be no class next week Thursday, which means that I will be filing and creating Welcome packets again for four hours.  Not the most stimulating work, I can assure you, but it must be done, and it makes everything  and I suppose it is all part of gracious professionalism.  I do wish it was easier on the feet, though.  There is a lot of running around involved.

            Lastly, we had some problem-solving to do, since one of the girls was afraid of the toy snakes.  We had to do a whole routine of hitting the snake on the ground and pretending to give it kisses to get her to even come near it.  Thankfully, we didn’t have to do it for too long, and she eventually was able to hold one of the snakes in her hand without any anxiety.

            My goal for next week is to get through making all of those Welcome packets that Felise left for me – I want to get her whole list of things to do done before she gets back.  As for long-term goals, an example of a way of measuring long-term effects that my internship has on these kids is the increase in language abilities in the one child I wrote about above as a result of the combined efforts of the team (his speech patterns also reflect the phrases and sounds we often use for the children to learn to imitate and associate with certain activities or objects).

Just when we got an enthusiastic, happy boy to join the class and be the ideal companion for our first enthusiastic, happy boy, the first one turns three and leaves.

            It was all so perfect!

            So, it looks like we’re right back to problem-solving.  Luckily, we just got a new kid in class who seems like he has the social potential to be a great foil to the other new kid – of course, no kid is ever completely comfortable and happy on their first day, but after a few days, we might try putting these two new boys together.

            Gracious professionalism came up again – my work with the twin girl is going splendidly, but for a while on Thursday it was starting to look like she was getting a bit too attached.  She would not willingly go to any of the specialists and kept running back to me and making sure that I was near her as much as possible.  I agreed with the therapists that perhaps she should stay with some of the other teachers for part of the class, and it seemed to work for a while, until she came running back. I suppose now I probably should start making sure she spends time with the other specialists, but I can’t say I won’t be disappointed to not be able to work with her as often.  I love working with ALL of the kids, but I’m starting to think that the attachment the twin girl has goes both ways.

            In other news, I was very surprised to hear that one of the TA’s, and one of the nicest people at Kindering, is leaving!  She is moving to Eastern Washington, just a couple months after she joined!  I don’t know how I missed this information, but however it happened, it looks like my streak of lovely communication has been destroyed.

            Lastly, I think I’m getting sick again – not a stomach sickness, but a good, old-fashioned cold.  If I have to miss more days on site, my time-management is going to be severely thrown off, since Felise is going to Korea for the next few weeks.  At this point, I really couldn’t be more exasperated at my immune system, but there we have it.  If I’m going to be sick again, at least I can be thankful that it probably won’t last through my AP tests – I hope…

            My goal for this week is to take care of myself so that I miss as little work as possible!  And, of course, my long-term goal is to make a difference in these kids’ live in whatever way I can.