Oh, for heaven's sake, I'm late again:

This week at Kindering, I was required to gain job-specific skills – specifically, dealing with a temper tantrum.  Every class, we take the children to the motor room, where they are allowed to run, climb, ride tricycles, play on slides, and jump on trampolines.  One child wanted to place one of the cars from our “roller coaster” (a small, shallow track with for small carts of glide across) on the slide and ride down the slide upon this cart.  This was incredibly dangerous, and I, as the closest supervisor, had to physically stop the child from doing so, leading to a temper tantrum.  I had never had to deal with such a situation before, so I had to quickly figure out how to get the child to calm down without giving in.  I ended up taking the cart away, but explaining to the child (while holding onto the child very firmly, to prevent him from thrashing and trying to run away) that while the cart couldn’t go on the slide, he could – by presenting an alternative, I promoted the idea that the rules could be just as fun as more dangerous forms of play.

            There have also been some developments this week in communication.  My mentor has to attend home visits right after class, so there is no time to orally present her with my observations anymore.  However, the first time this happened, I wrote down my notes about every student and left them in her mailbox, and she has decided that I can begin documenting their progress using official progress notes that will be filed with the children’s records.  This provides an efficient way to communicate with my mentor about the children while making sure that the information is kept secure.

            There was also a notable instance of teamwork and collaboration this week.  In a position such as Kindering, it is essential that the entire team is constantly on the same page and works together.  However, there was one instance that stood out to me this week – we were attempting to assess the development of one of the students.  However, each of us had only observed one aspect of the child.  When we began discussing this child at the meeting, we were able to pool all of our knowledge and even think of some new ideas as to how to treat this child’s condition in the classroom setting.

            Lastly, time management had its place among the notable developments of the week.  I have been assigned the task of making sure that all of the active and exited files on past and present patients have been properly alphabetized.  While this is not a particularly difficult task, it is very easy to drift off into a daydream while sorting through the files.  In order to ensure that I did not waste time (since I only get about an hour and a half every day to work with the file sorting), I had to keep myself muttering the first letters of each name aloud.  In this way, I was able to get through more files, quickly and efficiently.