Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'special needs'.
Found 1 result
-
After being in my shop in downtown Springfield for a little over a year I've moved again. I'd made connections with Oesterlen Services for Youth and they kept asking me to move to their campus so I could work more with their residential kids. I finally gave in and made the move. They had an extra building that they weren't using so we are trying to get program going to give the kids some introduction to some vocational skills. There are two larger areas where I am setting up my main wood working room with the machines, and another area we will use for wood storage and probably some finishing. Down another hallway are smaller rooms which used to be dorm rooms. I'll be taking four or five of those rooms and setting up my printing equipment there so the kids will get an introduction to screen printing and small offset work. The electrician has been working on getting power run for all my equipment and he was supposed to be getting it finished up this weekend. Everyday the guys ask me when we'll be starting in the shop and I have to keep telling them it's going to be a couple more weeks. Right now they've got an open house scheduled for October 1, so I guess that makes it a little more definate. For the last four weeks I've been working with the girls for 2.5 hours in the morning and 2.5 hours in the afternoon with the boys doing some simple introduction to drafting work. Some of the are seeing it, and just like at high school, some of them just don't quite see it yet. One of my best students is a girl that all the sudden the lights just came on and she's getting it, but I think she may be leaving this week to go to a foster program in Columbus. All of these kids have some type of mental/emotional/behavioral issues and it can get a little challenging at times, but overall I'm having a good time with them. From what I'm understanding some of them could be there a couple years and some of them work through their program in four or five months so there will be a constant turnover. I was forced into an early retirement in 2010 when my school got a new superintendent and he decided to drop the industrial arts program as well as give the bus and custodial jobs to private contractors. It's good to be back working with kids again, even if they do make me crazy some days. (First time doing this on the new system so I don't know if I'm doing the pictures right or not.)
