When I knew I made a difference.

When working with the student population that I do (CBC3/CBC4) making a difference in a students life is often something that seems very small to some but is a mile stone in adaptive physical education. A great deal of my students are so impacted that even the smallest change in behavior can be a huge success. One of my students in particular will take off running the minute he sees an open door. This is an extremely dangerous behavior for a very mentally retarded student. There have been numerous incidents in the past were this student will take off and none of the Aids in his classroom are able to catch him. He has ran into traffic on several occasions and will keep running until he is caught. I have to walk this class down from their classroom to the gym each day making sure he and four other students don't make a break for it. I introduced the use of a rope that each student must hold when walking to class to help minimize this dangerous behavior. Over the course of a year we slowly progressed away from the rope to marching in formation (It's the army in me). After a year's time I no longer use the rope and no longer have any students who will run for the hills the moment they see an open door. This may seem like a small victory but I consider it a huge one. I have curbed a very dangerous behavior that may have eventually resulted in the injury or death of one of my students. When working with severely impacted students you often have to look at the smallest changes in behavior as a monumental success.