Story of teh Day 10/7/2008

It was a dark and stormy night…well, it was dark, since it was night, but it was more like some scattered raindrops.
What it really was ….the moon was in a weird phase, or maybe the gremlins got out from the crawl space and were wrecking havoc.
Also, it wasn’t night when it started, so it really wasn’t dark.

Actually, I don’t’ even know when it started, but, one of the minor weird parts of the day was the uncaptioned video.

My son, who is deaf but projects an excellent illusion of hearing, has had a few occasions- well, more than a few occasions, but a few teachers who on multiple occasions have insisted he didn’t’ need to have captioning on videos.
They didn’t’ care what the IEP said, or what Aaron said about not being able to hear it, or even about what their co-worker, the Resource teacher said They were sure he didn’t’ need it- so they showed him videos sans captioning and would then test him on the material. The more recent were two high school teachers. But the first such teacher was, by far the most memorable.
She was a middle school teacher. She taught Health class. And she was sure he could learn the material from the uncaptioned videos.

When nothing I did managed to get them shown to him with captioning…actually, they didn’t have a captioned set- and they were a “necessity” since the textbook didn’t’ cover the material, ( and it wasn’t important enough for the deaf student to be taught the same material as his peers- or , at least, not important enough to warrant the teacher actually lecturing on it to the class…) -
it was decided that she would have to accept, on the test, any information he had acquired as correct.
In this case, information that was primarily given to him by his classmates and close friends. Boys his own age.
This meant that he was given full credit for vocabulary words like “boner”.

So, the minor weird part of the day was the uncaptioned video about which the students were quizzed….minor, except that this happened at the deaf School- in a classroom with a Deaf teacher and not just one deaf student, but…well, they were all supposed to have captioning! According to my daughter, there was a lot of talking on this particular video , but she has no idea what the video was teaching.

I thought about complaining to someone about this, but what do I say, “Excuse me, but we had an alternate universe experience today.” If you figure out what I am supposed to do about this, please let me know. At least, I can’t claim she wasn’t taught what the other students were taught…..they were all not taught it.

Then, there was this evening. As in night, as in it was actually dark. But only a little drizzly, not stormy.

I went to Herron to draw.

The model was a little late.
He has posed there, before. He is okay but fidgety- he breaks pose often.
So, he was a little late. That happens.
And then, at 9 PM, he announced that he was leaving.
What?
Well, we were sure we hadn’t heard him correctly.
“I have class tomorrow morning. I have to leave so I can get enough sleep.”
“But this session goes until 10 PM.””But I have class tomorrow morning and education comes first.””So why did you take the job if you knew it was until 10 PM.”
A shrug.


This might not have been so odd, except that he had, when he arrived a bit late, asked us to request that he be the model for the Tuesday sessions…

Now, I think we all felt a bit like the moon was in a weird phase, but the challenging part of this is that the uncaptioned video and the model were not the strangest parts of my day….

Tomorrow evening is Yom Kippur. I am hoping that none of this is an omen of what the coming year will be like. I think I am having a hard enough time with the regular senseless brand of reality that I am usually served.


One last thing, no, I have not been taking any more of Sarah’s codeine. Nor any of my own.