Searching for Normalcy

This has been a very difficult couple of weeks. I am stunned and amazed that my son Ethan has now been taken to Loma Linda Mental Health Hospital twice and he is only 5 years old. He has, supposedly, Intermittent Explosive Disorder. What does that mean? He gets extremely angry very easily.

On Wednesday, I had taken the day off due to a throat infection. He was with me all morning. He seemed fine. We spent a fair amount of the morning coloring his homework and talking about counting and such. Then, just before noon he goes in for counseling and therapy. He didn't want to go, but willingly enough went and seemed to really enjoy himself and behave appropriately. However, when he was told that it was time to go, he became irrational and extremely violent. Bonnie had to call the police because it was deemed no longer safe to even drive with him in the car. He then proceeded, once they arrived at Loma Linda, to pull off all his clothing and even started peeing on a chair in the hallway. They had to put him in the quiet room.

Yesterday, the orderly there at Loma Linda said that he was rational and was just choosing to use anger as a way to get his attention and get what he wants. Although we believe that the teachers and aids at Frost Elementary have been ignoring his outbursts the past two years, and basically catering to his every whim rather than help him develop some skills of self awareness and awareness of others, we do not believe that this orderly is correct. Something is seriously wrong with this child. He is not himself.

We desperately need to find some viable solutions to help him. We want him in our home. We want him to receive an education, we want to find the ways to communicate to him and with him that are effective and humane. The school district, insurance, and county Health office are not helping. We may be headed to legal counsel to see if there is any recourse in forcing them to do what they are legally required to do to help us help this child we so desperately love. We are bewildered, and it is difficult. But that is enough for today.

A visit from the Superintendent

Today I had a surprise visit from Mat Holton, our Superintendent, and Michelle Boyette, our principal here at Colony High School. Although a surprise, I was glad to see them. I shared what we were doing in class and also demonstrated some things I am doing with my iPad. That includes using it as a VNC viewer to remotely control my Mac with my iPad. This is particularly nice because I use Easy Grade Pro which is not available on the iPad as a standalone app for grading. My favorite feature of that program is that I can enter grades using the seating chart view. This way I can get out among my students more directly and not having to be tied behind my desk as much or having to print out a lot of paper for seating charts and such. Anyway, the main reason why I am writing about this is that Mr. Holton asked me to try to find an innovative way to use cell phones in the classroom. That is an interesting challenge. Obviously, I have my website that students use to access our daily learning activities anyway, but the problem is that we do not have ubiquitous WiFi here on campus. That is a pretty big deterrent. Well, the thing I want to research in this direction is how well I could offer online polls or something that would let them text in a response to a given question. That way, if it works, other teachers could use it to have their students respond to polls in class and quickly tabulate the data to check for learning. Now, I just have to find a free service that would let us do text messaging and tabulation. I know of paid services, but not any free services. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Did not realize this at first, but having Ethan evaluated means that he is there for 3 to 7 days at Loma Linda. Very emotional. Hard to realize that we really need this much help. I hope that he is okay. We will go see him later today. Congrats, Titan football! - BlogPress from my iPhone

Melt Down

Ethan had a melt down for the second day in a row at school. He was sent home both times. New IEP meeting Monday. Now at Loma Linda having him evaluated for Bi-Polar. Going to have to miss ALHS vs Colony football game tonight. I hope Colony obliterates them! - BlogPress from my iPhone

Twitter

It's ironic, but I think that I am a convert to twitter! I have mocked it for years without really giving it a try, but it really is pretty cool and I think I may need to start using it more than I use facebook. The difference is how clean the twitter interface is. In facebook, too many friends post all kinds of silly stuff, like what their high score to a given game is. I really don't care about that. I like the fact that twitter keeps you to a limit in how much you can say, and it allows you to so quickly and easily expunge the stuff that you are no longer interested in. For example, I thought I would want to follow tech Blogger Jon Gruber, but he is really foul in a lot of what he says, so realizing that I could very easily STOP following him. Quite convenient.

While my students type

Perhaps it is a silly desire, but I do wish to share my thoughts on occasion with my students. I love that some of them today chose to take typing a little more seriously. I love it when someone blurts out, "I am getting better at this." I love that most of them are actively engaged in doing what they have been asked to do. I hope that more of them in the future choose to make the most of their time, and I really hope that today's activity is one that they enjoy.

Excited, but tired.

As you can see, it is now nearly 1 in the morning. I am tired. But, I have thrown out my entire website and started over fresh and clean with a new page. I really do want to use this blog to do most of my personal writing, and I believe that my www.mrgale.info page will be kept very simple and that way allow me to keep up with it.

I am going to try out podcasting again, but I think that I need to keep the videos shorter. Soon, I will be relinquishing administrative control over my Mac at Colony, but hope that this leads to my being brought on the domain, given my teacher tools, and having an effective virtual environment using either VMWare or else Oracle's Virtual Box software.

Yes, I am a ridiculous Mac fanatic, but at least I do try to include as much other relevant stuff about the tech world around us in the realm of information management. I do hope that my students feel that I am pushing them to increase their skills while at the same time keeping them immersed in interesting trends that are happening all around us. I hope that by sharing with them media that is relevant to information management, some of the quality of the production will rub off on them and they will seek to produce relevant media someday themselves in the professional world.

Well, I am tired and should try to get at least a little sleep before I get up again at 4 am to conquer the world of Thursday.