Case Study #1: (Mark)

On the first days of school I was introduced to a jovial young man named Mark. He and I worked closely together during the first days before I took over teaching responsibilities of his class; Mark has a comprehensive IEP put in place because of a diagnosis of autism. He has trouble processing information quickly, and also had some motor-skills difficulty, including poor handwriting skills. To accommodate him, I modified the curriculum and gave him opportunities to type or orally express assignments. Mark, according to the Special Education staff, succeeded more with me than with any teacher they have seen. He is a student whom I will never forget, as one who taught me more than I could ever teach him. I wish to share some of my reflections of his growth and mine here.

Teachers always call Mark “sweet.” Without fail each morning, Mark would greet me with a handshake (sometimes 2) or a fist bump. He always smiles to teachers and peers alike. My favorite part about Mark is just how caring he is; in fact, he remembered my December birthday and even recalled my favorite movies to talk about them sometimes. I could always count on Mark for a new joke, or to tell me something about one of his hobbies, including playing video games.

The first assignment of the year showed me some of Mark’s limitations, including critical thinking skills and handwriting:

You can see that he earned 7/10 credit for this; part of his IEP notes that Mark should be graded for quality over quantity.

A few weeks later, after spending time with him outside of class, we got him writing more thoughtfully by first asking questions and talking about the responses before writing:

Then, it came time for Mark to write his first formal essay of the year, on the novella “Herman and Alice.” He increased his writer’s stamina and, by using the computer, gave more insightful ideas:

“Alice and hermen had a bad relation ship because alice keeps going to clubs while hermen stays and waits for her all night. The story is called hermen and alice  by Nicholasa Mohr. My thesis is alice had a bad relationship with hermen.

“Hermen and alice has a bad  relation ship because  they don’t respect each other. ‘ you bitch. Hermens voice  with anger. He went toward alice ducking his blows’. This explains why they don’t respect each other because  hermen was trying to hit her because she keeps  going ourt to partys and go back home  at any time and she needs to take care of the baby…”

Mark continued to struggle with spelling and grammar, though he was showing signs of improvement.

He managed to improve this during the horror mini-unit, which he loved because of our ties to video games.

Here is a sample of this writing after we spent some time proofreading. He made the corrections himself while we discussed them:

“In ‘The Philosophy of Horror,’ by Noel Carrol writes ‘Horror novels, movies are marked by the presence of monsters.’ This is true of ‘The Werewolf’ and ‘Darkstalkers.’

“The Werewolf and Darkstalkers are the same because there are many monsters in both. There is both werewolf’s in both but I think the werewolf version is scarier because it sounds gorier. They both come out at night. In The Werewolf it states ‘It was a huge one with red eyes and running grizzled chops.’ This shows that werewolves are scary because they are viscous creatures…”

He worked very hard on his first memoir of the year, with good results:

When we saw the entrance of Six Flags, me, my brother, and my sister were hyped about this day.

My brother said, “YOU HYPED ABOUT THIS?!”

“HECK YEAH!” I said, screaming really loudly.

So we went in. We saw something amazing. The rides, the mascots, the prizes! So me and my brother went to the DC Super Hero Adventure place. The first ride ever was the Catwoman’s Whip. It’s a really good ride. But there was one ride that I was scared of…. THE BIZZARO!! IT’S SUPER TALL. IT’S REALLY FAST AND THE DROP WILL MAKE YOU FEEL SICK. I was scared to death after the Catwoman’s Whip.

My sister said, “C’mon, it’s gonna be fun.”

“No, no, I’m too scared,” I said nervously. My brother was so scared that he made an excuse saying, “Oh no, my head hurts.” So I went in line. I was saying to myself in my head nervously “IT’S OK I AM NOT SCARED. IT’S OK.” Then many minutes later, I was right next to the ride. I was terrified.

Bizzaro was in front of me. When it started I was really, really scared and I made myself a little less scared by saying “This view is nice”

And when the drop happened, it felt fast. I was amazed at the ride. That ride made me want to go on all the other rides. So I faced my fears of roller coasters that day.

But where he most shined was in writing his second memoir of the year in March. This pulled together his hard work on writing a draft, proofreading, peer editing, and sharing. He earned high marks for what amounted to his strongest English work that year to that point:

We were in Pennsylvania and I was at my aunt’s barber shop to say hi. They had the second floor house. I was talking to her for a little while, then her dog came down. It was brown and it had a Mohawk and he was a chihuahua.

“Do you have more?“ I said.

“Yea.”

She called them and all of them came down, even the mom. All the dogs were brown and some were furry but there was one dog that had white fur. He was the smallest and the fluffiest. He was as white as snow and fluffy as cotton.  She grabbed him and put him on the barber seat.

“This is Snowflake,” my aunt said.

“Awwwww, he’s so cute,” my sister said.

“I know,” I said.

My uncle said, “Can we keep him, please?”

“YEA,” we all said.

She said,  “Ok.”

We were all happy we got Snowflake, but we didn’t like his name so we changed it to Snowball, but then my uncle said to call him Chewbacca.

We all said “NOOOOOOOO!”

“OK OK!” he said.

That night we left to drive back to Massachusetts. We all were in the car. Snowball was in the middle of the seat and then we stoped at a rest stop and we all fell asleep except me. I wasn’t tired and Snowball was awake. He was awake so I put him on my lap and pet him and he was sooooo fluffy and I put him back and I fell asleep.

The next day I woke up and my granma was driving to Worcester and we got home and we went up stairs and we knocked on the door ‘KNOCK KNOCK!’

“Who’s there?”

“[Mark].”

She opened the door and SHE SAW SNOWBALL. She was excited to see Snowball. It was a surprise for her to see him.

“OH MY GOD A DOG!”

We took care of him a lot over the years, then we moved two times. I was home with my brother playing video games and then my mom came home with another dog. It was white like Snowball but it was smaller and furrier. My mom put her down and she was so happy she was here. She kept spinning a lot in circles so we cleaned her up and gave her vaccinations and we called her Princess.

1 year later they mated and Princess was pregnant. We were so happy about that but we didn’t know when they would come out. So we waited for them to come out.

Months later it was New Year’s Eve and my whole family was partying and I was looking for Princess and I went looking for her I checked Lino’s room and she was there she was in the closet. I went to check on her and she was laying on a towel and I was thinking she was starting to get labor. So I called my mom in and she checked and she was in labor so my mom called everyone in to see for a little and she said, “She needs space to relax.”

We left her alone in the room and for a little while my mom went in and they came out. There were 3 puppies. The babies were adorable. Their names were  Yogi, Kershina, and Lucky. A few days later one of them died. It was a tragic moment. It was Lucky. He was the smallest one there, too. So rest in peace Lucky… a few years later we kept Yogi and Kershina until my aunt wanted Kershina  and Princess and my uncle wanted  Yogi, so my granma gave both of them away. It was a sad moment, but we still have Snowball. Snowball makes me smile. He is fun to play with and he’s always happy.

* * * * *

Mark’s reflections show that he recognized that putting more time in was benefiting him. Note that he was unable to answer all the questions in the allotted time. We discussed their answers outside of class.

By third quarter, though, Mark surprised me when he completed the quarter’s reflection on his own, with every question answered. Even his special education teacher commented to me how big of a step this was for Mark…