My
name is Will Rosenbloom, a teenage boy with autism who was given the
opportunity to serve as an intern in a kindergarten classroom via my high
school’s Child Development class. I currently am a junior at
Dan
Schneider High is a large school. Our high school is named after the TV
producer Dan Schneider, a contemporary TV producer who has produced many
successful TV shows that are popular among children today, such as iCarly,
Zoey 101, and Drake and Josh. Our building and grounds encompass 80
acres, and the school justifies its large size based on the idea that we should
make our school “campus-like” in order to help prepare our students for the
typical size of a college campus. Schneider is large, as well—we have a student
body population of four thousand—with approximately one thousand students in
each graduating class.
Our
high school also offers a Child Development program that consists of a sequence
of 4 classes. Each class is numbered based on the sequence—Child Development 1,
2, 3, and 4. Students take the first Child Development class where they serve
as assistants in a laboratory preschool located inside Dan Schneider high.
Finally, after taking the second and third Child Development class, students in
the fourth Child Development class are sent to neighboring elementary schools,
where they serve as interns in classroom settings. I started the program as a
second semester freshman and, after taking the first, second, and third
classes, I enrolled into the fourth level at the beginning of my junior year.
Child
development classes at Dan Schneider High are no joke. They exist based on the
assumption that you are pursuing a career in the field of early childhood, as a
teacher, daycare worker, or administrator, and the child development teachers,
Mrs. Trainor and Miss Kress, stress the seriousness of this class, and that if
you aren’t willing to take the class seriously, you should drop before it’s too
late.
Mrs. Trainor is in charge of the internship program, and the interns are
required, as part of their assignments, to keep a diary of everything that
occurs, along with other related assignments to my work.
The following book is a publication of the diary that I kept during the first semester of my internship, as required by Mrs. Trainor. It also consists of the other required assignments that I produced during that first semester, as well as older materials I wrote for my previous child development classes. The diary covers my experiences as an intern in a kindergarten classroom at a local elementary school, as well as several writing assignments I was given that I had to complete while I served as an intern. I have decided to publish this upon my high school graduation hoping that my story can have any educational value regarding my triumph as a successful intern despite being on the autism spectrum, as well as the children’s lives that I touched as an intern.
I
have split this publication into three parts: the diary covering the first
quarter of the first semester, my writing assignments, and the diary covering
the second quarter of the second semester. In the end, I attended a total of 23
days, starting on September 14, and ending on December 21, my attendance
unfortunately shortened due to illness, and family issues—my grandmother
suffered a stroke during my internship and I had to miss class periodically to
visit my grandmother and help her get re-settled into her daily routine with my
mother and sister.
The
classroom I worked in was located at Shay Elementary School. It was a half-day
kindergarten, taught by Mrs. Shapiro. Mrs. Shapiro is someone who has known me
for a long time—she actually was my former kindergarten teacher, the teacher I
had as a student when I was six, having been held back a year due to my August
birthday. Mrs. Shapiro was happy to have one of her former students inside her
classroom, and looked forward to working with me in her class.
The
schedule of my internship reflects the scheduling system of Dan Schnieder High
School. We follow a block scheduling system where students, rather than taking
every class daily, take classes every other day. Days in our school are
designated as “1” or “2” days, and we take classes in the form of 90-minute
blocks. Blocks are lettered, with each block named after two letters.
Therefore, each day consists of Block AB, Block BC, Block DEF, and Block GH.
The third block of the day is split between a lunch period and a 90-minute
block period, thus the block has six letters. Students either have lunch before
their DEF class, after their DEF class, or in between, with a class split up
into two 45 minute segments.
All
students have a free period and study hall as well. Students attend their
internship sites based on the time of their Child Development class, but may
extend this into their free period if they wish. In my case, my Child
Development class was scheduled during Block BC on “1” days, but since I had a
Block DEF free period also on “1” days, I decided to extend my internship into
Block DEF. Block BC is from 9:15 to 11:00, and Block DEF is from 11:10 to 1:30.
I therefore created a schedule that fits with the schedule of Mrs. Shapiro’s
kindergarten classroom. Mrs. Shapiro teaches a morning class and an afternoon
class. The morning class runs from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m., and the afternoon class
runs from 12:15 to 3:15 p.m. I therefore arranged to work every other school day
in her classroom from 9:15 to 11:30, and then return to school. I worked
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every other week, and Tuesday and Thursday every
other week, except when I was absent from school due to illness or other
conflicts, and due to class days where the interns report inside the classroom
to receive additional teaching from Mrs. Trainor.
As
I did not enjoy sitting quietly in a study hall without much work to do at
times, on “2” days during Block BC, I served as a teaching assistant in Dan
Schneider’s laboratory preschool, taught by Mrs. Nelson. I had already spent
time in Mrs. Nelson’s preschool class for the past two years in my Child
Development classes, as the Child Development students all are required to
spend time inside the preschool and gain experience working with the children
in the preschool prior to joining this internship program. Ironically, as some
of the students in the preschool class ended up joining Mrs. Shapiro’s class
this year, I actually knew some of the students from my work in the preschool.
In
addition, while I was a freshman and sophomore, I volunteered at a daycare
sponsored by our local JCC. The daycare served kids of staff members who worked
at the JCC, and members who came to use the facilities at JCC (such as the
fitness center, coffee shop, or take a class offered there) and needed to drop
their children off while doing so.
I
hope you enjoy my story. As they say in Dragnet, “The story you are about to
hear is true. All the names have been changed to protect the innocence and
privacy of the persons involved.” Sit back, relax, and enjoy the diary.