I’ve been teaching for 4 years now, and while I love my job, I know I won’t be doing it forever. I guess I should say that I won’t be in the classroom forever. Working for a school district has helped me gain a great deal of experience, but it doesn’t allow me to be the best professional I can be. The limitations put on me as a service provider by a district are tremendous. I just can’t do my job the way it needs to be done within the confines of a classroom setting.
Last summer, instead of begging for hours at the bookstore (I had been there so long that they could pay two people for the price of me), I took my first steps towards going into business for myself. I decided to try seeing students privately. What does this mean? Well, if I taught older students you might call it tutoring. However, since the children I work with are preschoolers with disabilities, tutoring isn’t quite the right word. If I worked in Early Intervention, you would call it developmental therapy. I called it a “therapy solution” with the idea being that instead of paying for expensive therapists that insurance doesn’t often cover, clients could pay me to come to their homes and work with their children. Now, just because I’m not a therapist doesn’t mean these families are getting the short end of the stick. I’m a highly qualified child development specialist (yes, I’m tooting my own horn). But back to last summer…I did some advertising, talked to some families, and ended up with two clients. Better than no clients, right?
While my idea wasn’t a success right out of the gate, I loved working with those first families and I knew I wanted to try again this summer. I have 9 clients this summer. I essentially increased my caseload by 500%. Not bad.
This summer, in addition to seeing a lot more kiddos, I’ve been working on building my business. I now have a website and snazzy new business cards designed by Heather at Tres Hermanas. I have also been busy working on a line of picture books specially designed to develop emergent literacy skills for children with special needs. It’s a project that I am very excited about! Thanks to Audrey for editing the first book for me. Shameless plug: If you know someone who would be interested in these books, please e-mail me. I’d leave the link here, but I like to keep my personal and professional internet lives separate.
Despite the increase in caseload, being “just a teacher” means that I really can’t go into business for myself and make enough money to live on. If I were a speech therapist or OT, let’s say, I could charge considerably more money per hour. It ridiculously unfair since I have just as much training, and in many cases more training, that therapists do. (No offense to therapists who read. I love you all, but there is some serious therapist snobbery that goes on.)
Earlier this summer, I took a chance and traveled to Michigan all on my own for a two-day introductory seminar in Relationship Development Intervention (RDI). It was a trip that I believe has changed my life. At the seminar, I sat and listened to Dr. Steven Gutstein talk about the program he developed and I was amazed. Usually I sit at seminars and agree with maybe a handful of things that are said. I come home with a couple new ideas, but I’m never really excited about any of them. It’s usually just the same old thing. This time, though, I was at a seminar that was not only something knew, but that really connected with how I’d been feeling now for years.
Let me try to explain. I grew up in a Montessori classroom. I learned by doing. In my regular early childhood classes in college, we endlessly discussed the benefits of learning by doing. In my special education classes about family supports, we talked about families learning by doing. In my special education curriculum classes, though, we talked about behaviorism. We talked about picture schedules, routines, clearly defined boundaries, discrete trial, etc. At the time, I felt a disconnect, but I didn’t really understand what it meant.
As I started my first year of teaching, I met a teacher who was a behaviorist to the extreme. She’s still considered the autism expert in our program. I visited her classroom and was overwhelmed by her work tasks, schedules, and PECS books. I actually cried when I left her room because I thought I was expected to do that too. She spent the day showing me how independent her students were. The thing is, I didn’t really feel like they were all that independent. Sure, they could navigate their routines with the aid of picture schedules all over the room, but I wondered what happened when you took the picture schedules away?
I started teaching and found that many of the behaviorist techniques produced results. Students made progress. Parents were happy. I still wasn’t satisfied, though, with the level of learning. I was still struggling to figure out how to teach my students to function in a world that isn’t all neat and tidy like a picture schedule.
I had a disturbing wake-up call shortly after we got Rufus. Like all good puppy parents, we took him to puppy class. While we were teaching Rufus to sit, it dawned on me. I teach my students like I train my dog. Do this, get a reward, do that, get a reward. I instantly began pulling back on my behaviorist techniques. I tried to mix it up in the classroom. I saw positive results, but I still didn’t have a clear guide.
At the RDI seminar, I found a clear guide. Here was someone who was talking about building dynamic intelligence instead of training kids like animals. Here was someone who was giving kids the tools to deal with life instead of just a script to recite. Here was someone who knew that kids with autism are kids, not little robots. I was thrilled.
I came home and did a lot of research and a lot of reading. I tried a few RDI techniques out with my clients and their families. I saw amazing results. A little boy I’ve been working with actually used meaningful nonverbal communication this week. He pointed! He pointed meaningfully. I realize that many of you don’t really get what that means, but trust me when I say that it’s huge.
So, I’ve decided to become and RDI consultant. I’m applying for the program and will hopefully go train in Houston next July. I’m so excited. Becoming a consultant will allow me the flexibility to do the work I love with children and their families, it will allow me to get out of the behaviorist school environment, and it will allow me to work from home (which will allow me to be a mommy). It’s a big change for me, and certainly one that won’t happen overnight, but change is good. Keeps the mind thinking dynamically.
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