Project MARS/AmeriCorps collects “Great Stories” from its members in which they reflect on their experiences mentoring in the classroom and the progress they see in students. This month’s story was written by Evie Davis, pictured.
Project MARS member Evie Davis
“In my school there is a third-grade student on the autism spectrum who has difficulty staying focused in class. He gets easily upset when others try to give him instruction or assistance, and it has been challenging to communicate with him when he is giving up and distracting others. When he interrupts the class repeatedly, the teacher asks him to move into the hallway for one-on-one remediation.
Eye rolling, sighs, snarky remarks, sliding into a puddle onto the floor, you name it. Typically, it is like pulling teeth to get him calmed down enough to sit and get started.
One day I tried a different approach. In the hallway, when we sat down to do three pages of multiplication, I decided that this time I would just play along. When he slid to the floor, I asked “where are you going?”
I’m going down the tube to get my super star,” he replied.
No way! Get the super star and come back up the tube so we can finish this math!” I said.
We got back to it and I was in the middle of reading a word problem to him when suddenly I heard “I like b-b-b-b-b-b-butter. I like b-b-b-b-b-b-butter.”
I stopped reading and started to bounce my head up and down, dancing to his improvised song. He looked over in surprise, began to smile and told me to stop. I laughed and said “It’s a good song! Let’s dance to it once we finish the word problem.”
We got the answer and sang it together as I danced. We got back to work, and a few moments later he looked up at me and did some Avatar the Last Airbender moves. So I pretended to get sloshed around by his hand motions.
I learned that this child who acts out so much really has a wonderful imagination and just wants to make math playful. We finished the three pages in record time and rejoined the others.”
