A New Year in Spirit and Time

Today is January 2, 2005, a Sunday in California. Tomorrow will be January 3, 2005, and I will resume work as a teacher of physically and cognitively impaired children, ages 5 to 8 years-old. There are 5 five-year-olds and 3 over that age. Wow. Three of the children are autistic. Three of them have severe orthopaedic/cognitive conditions. One has Down's Syndrome and another a nameless cognitive thing. I have two aides and a nurse in the room. One of the aides sexually harassed me a couple of years ago and I didn't nail him. Now I have to deal with his subtle leers and nosiness. The other aide is also a man but he is a gentleman, kind and thoughtful. There are actually two nurses; they trade off weeks. The nurse I find most helpful to me will be there tomorrow. Something to be thankful for! She makes me laugh and see through the obstacles toward making this teaching situation less tense. Many people who think about K-12 education and especially that of special needs children have no idea how difficult it is to find like-minded people to work with in helping these children. I'm saying that someone doesn't have to have a compatible personality to work with me they just have to have the needs and safety of the children in mind first and not that of their egos. Find ego gratification in helping a child recognize a letter or learn to paint.

So, since I don't want to go to work tomorrow (for reasons implied above), I went to see Almodovar's 'Bad Education' today. This is not a film I would recommend to my co-workers. I saw it because I've seen practically everything else out there!?! (not really). This film taught me a lot about dreams and dreaming and film-making and image-making. I recommend it. It's getting to be about time to try to sleep so that I can get up tomorrow for my first day back of service. I'll write more about this film and others I've seen over this holiday break.