Hi everyone,
Well January was a very hectic and crazy month for us. It was a good thing that we had the Christmas break because we needed it to rest up for this month. We had a lot of coursework and crazy scheduling to contend with. Fortunately the scheduling came in bits and pieces and wasn’t all month long.
We had our regular day courses and then we had an evening course online as well with SET BC. The good thing about that course was that we were able to do it from at home on our computers. It was an interesting course as we learned all about the assistive technology that is available to help students who have exceptionalities. Then we had two Saturday courses in the month as well.
I found the key to January was striking a good balance between my home life and school life. I really needed to keep that balance. It was hard at times especially when I had the day class and then only a few hours and had to be back on line for 3 more hours in the evening (but that was only for a week). I was able to do this by keeping a strict schedule and making sure that I did schedule in downtime for my son and I to just have fun. My family and friends were a big help this month. Don’t be afraid to ask for their help when you are in school, it really does make a difference. I found that I needed to keep up with my volunteer activities as well as they recharge me and help to keep me going. I’ve found that it doesn’t work to make everything about school. You need to make sure you still do other things that are important to you and help keep you recharged or you will burn out.
The course work has really switched now from being mostly theory to practical and applied work in class now. It’s great! I’m absolutely loving it! We just finished a course on learning how to adapt curriculum and during the course we actually adapted curriculum for student profiles. We also got to go out into the community and interview either an SEA or a teacher working in a Skill program at a high school of a choice. It was a great experience to see how things work at the high school level. This course has helped me in my work with my son and I am now much more confident in adapting work for his needs. We are also learning how to use the Boardmaker program and now creating communication boards for student profiles that we create for students with exceptionalities. The course work is really coming alive and taking on real world applications. It is exciting to see it all coming together and how we will put this to use in our future careers.
This is such a great course. We learn so many things that I can see will benefit us in our work. I know that Stenberg College was the right place to take this course. The instructors are always willing to help and we are getting so many things here that are not offered elsewhere like the SET BC training, the first aid training, the non-violent crisis intervention training and sign language training.
