my footprints

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

i had my second day of work! let me give a little brief explanation. rainbow centre has two different programme for early intervention for children from young toddlers to 5 years old. namely EIPIC (Early Intervention Programme for Infant & young Children) & Early STEP. Well, EIPIC caters for young children with other disabilities except for ASD (autism spectrum disorder), while E-STEP caters solely for young children with ASD. which these children with ASD would graduate from E-STEP into STEP when they turn 5 years old.

the programme i'm teaching in is E-STEP & i work with 2 other co-teachers in my class, which one of them is my senior teacher who's currently mentoring me. in E-STEP, there are daily & part-time classes. my class' a part time class, where kids come in 3 times weekly, either mon to wed or wed to fri. meaning we get kids from both sides on wed. besides weds are swimming days where we go in the sch pools to allow them to work out their gross motor skills!

each teacher gets 2 kids everyday, 1 for the first half of the day & another for the 2nd half of the day. but mind you, even though you only take a child for that few hours, the intensity of mental, physical & emotional strength is quite enough to tire you out.

in my class, our kids are 3 to 4 year olds. pretty adorable despite their frequent tantrums & random shouts/screams. well, i have cayden who's turning 3 coming in from mon to wed, who didn't turn up this week cos he wasn't feeling well. i've another 3 year old ethan who starts his first week next wed to fri. and i think i've another girl coming in at the end of the month, also wed to fri too.

so actually, it just means that i don't even get to see my own kids for my first week of work! however i did helped out with one of my co-teachers' kids today since its wed, a combined swimming day. it was a pretty interesting experience while i tried to take charge of this boy. well, he had many attempts of running out of class to the next room, throws himself down on the floor and rolls around when he couldn't get his way. which i either spent half the time chasing or running after him, or the many repeated times of getting him to stand up & stop lying down or even just waiting for him to finish his shoutings & screamings.

truthfully, i was kinda afraid that i really couldn't manage him. but thankfully, things didn't turn out that bad and i picked up quite a few pointers here & there. it certainly was a fruitful few hours with him today. yayy. thank God for today! :)

she pens down @ 9:02 PM --------------------------------------------------------------