Ayn's Multiple World

Ok, got a pretty good day in for the most part

Good morning. This is me. We’ve got a reprieve this morning. We were supposed to be going to a meeting 10-12, but had it changed to 1-3. Unfortunately, this might interfere with my Dr. Marvin appointment. We just sent him an email explaining the situation. It’s supposed to be 38 miles or 52 minutes from the afternoon meeting to Dr. Marvin’s. I need to be at Dr. M’s office by 4:15 to make the appointment – so theoretically there is only an extra 23 minutes to spare, but I told him I would try if he’d be willing to keep the appointment open given that I might have to cancel if traffic got too heavy. We’ll see.

But, for the moment that’s the best I could do. I had forgotten about it being Thursday when we rescheduled the first meeting, by the time I thought of it the woman had already switched me over and it would have been too rushed, though I’d gotten through the shower. According to the new time schedule, I should be leaving at 11:30 am, and it’s 8:45 am now – so I’ve got 2 hours and 45 minutes left to go.

This is a good thing. I need time to write and settle down.

Ok, so next … As to an update to the OH blog … I met another potential patient of Dr. Ayloo this morning – so that’s pretty cool. We’ll look forward to all that. I didn’t go into the chat room this morning, but we were there for a short while last night. It was pretty good, but we had to remind ourselves to jump in again.

Sometimes we feel intimidated. I keep saying that … maybe we need a self-intervention here. What seems to be the problem? I guess it’s often a matter of coming in and having the sense of it being “bigger people” out than us. They are talking fast between themselves and usually teasing each other in a sexual manner.

We know as older parts that this is just playing around and its fine, but we need to have a plan of how “we” as a system are going to handle it.

I think maybe the first rule should be that we not be afraid of being in the room when we know it will probably happen like right after work. People seem to be releasing pressure from there day at that time. We can also keep in mind that its not serious. Most time people talk about going to spend time with their spouse and such. We can choose to sit back and just to watch and jump in later when it dies down, or come in more often when new people come in … it seems often like we’re more comfortable saying hi and good-bye to people. That’s ok. We also like asking how they are doing. Because sometimes others like to talk about other stuff than the “foreplay” stuff. Also, we noticed that one of our parts volunteered a few things toward it the other day … so maybe it would help to develop our own “out loud” sexual personality. That’s a thought, hmm? We'll have to take "notes" as to how the relationships work, so that we can maintain our feelings of safety. I know this is more a mental problem than an actual one. Ok, slow down … Just one step at a time. For right now let’s work on just being comfortable in the room whenever we have those opportunities to be there.

Ok, and as far as diet? Where are we? Hmm … We had one candy bar yesterday, but I think that was the only extravagance. We had vegetables waiting for our soup, and I think there was one other thing, do you remember? Oh, I do … just an orange for something sweet. That’s it. Ok, so this was a mediocre day. Let’s see if we can get through today without stopping for something. That means we eat only at home … no stopping by anywhere. We won’t be at work direct, so we won’t have to worry about those blessed candy bars for sale. YEEKS! It will be a little tricky, because we are going to need asking for money for tolls and parking. We need enough without too much for stopping somewhere. Still no credit card so we’ll have to ask Sweetie. *Sigh* Ok, let’s not get down … time to post now please? It'll be ok.

Now … back to the regular blog. We were just checked on by Sweetie … he said that something had gone wrong in the coffee department … well, he didn’t say it that way exactly, but it was an alert nonetheless. It was like oh no … I’m not doing my job … we’ll give it a few moments and then go in and fill it for him. I like when we’re nice to each other. Earlier he’d come into to fill my cup … just those nice things to let each other know we’re thinking of each other, but respecting the space we each need. I really like it. It works good to have two computers in the house.

Hehehe I don’t think we would have ever survived only having one. Besides clothes that’s all he really brought to the household and BELIEVE me it was ENOUGH!

There coffee chore fulfilled! We delivered it with a kiss. Hehehe He let me be a little more frisky this morning. We snuck up on him when he went to the shower – nekid. WOOHOOO!!! He’s so hot! Touching him melts our hands and lips. Just an incredible melt-out. Wow!

*Sigh* But, if I think like this all day there will be NO work done … silly girl!

It’s already 9:30 am. What do I want to accomplish over the next couple of hours?

Hmm? I could try to get something productive done … not sure if I want to go there though. But, I’m equally not sure if there is something personal I have to get accomplished. We did try to have a conversation about what we were doing in work with Sweetie last night. He had said something about wanting to here the good stuff – gossip from work. Hehehe I think I’m teaching him that bad trick. We told him it was a slow day with the exception of Candice being called in because of not being prepared for the meeting. I really believe it is a developmental thing … she just needs to know where she stands. Sr. stated later she’s frustrated because of Candice always trying to blame someone else, but its really a matter of owning up to the point that she wasn’t prepared for the meeting. She hadn’t completed the goals by the morning and she didn’t have clear time to be working on it before the meeting because she had a group that she shouldn’t be compromising. Sr. keeps repeating to her that she should have plenty of time to do the work, because she has only one other day of commitments. She’s had though the Q meetings for the last two months, and last week she had 2 days off. She had taken home the computer, but then didn’t get any work done. We’re against the idea of her counting on home time to do the work. I know we do this sometimes too, but its not the way to go.

Anyway, Rich seemed pretty in touch with what’s he’s seen in the office … he’s pulling in his own information from sharing the same office with her. He’s pretty perceptive. I asked him what he sees from us. He chuckled and said something about us being more elusive or … sneakier, but that he knew where we were at when he walked in … and then he described about 5-6 different ways we could be when he walked in. I recognized them all, so I thought – eh, he could be on to something there. Then we asked how he knew it, but he wasn’t giving in on his secrets. That makes us think that Sr. knows too when she walks in and we’re not focused. But, for the most part, we are focused on something. So that counts in our favor.

Yesterday, she was generous and pointed to the part of us doing work with program development and all and that was taking our time – so that we had less clients but other things to be doing.

It’s true that the program development has been taking the majority of our time.

Yesterday there was a lot of it … I think I just wrote a couple of conclusion paragraphs let me check. Nope no conclusionary paragraphs. We just wrote we were going to IL State Ed site. We spent the majority of the day there, with the exception of the time we spent with Maria’s group … YAY!!! Got something done that was a little harder that we’d planned on doing! That’s the good stuff. I had a pretty enjoyable time in Maria’s room. She did goals for the first half hour – had been doing them, and then went over to the art room for the next hour. I don’t think everyone was doing critical work during the goal period, but she was working the best she could with many of them. And, then she did well in getting everyone started and working during the art period. She first worked on a project where she was having them glue beans onto a ¾ inch x ¾ foot wooden bear cut-out. For the four people who had finished the project, she had them work on a project where they were using a glitter-glue stick and a paint brush to spread the glitter over the light bulb to cover it. She used a Styrofoam cup to hold the light bulb by poking a hole in the bottom of it. I was impressed that she not only gave it to the most able students, but also to an individual who was not as able. Pretty risky thing to do with a glass light bulb. One of the individuals did drop the bulb, but fortunately it did not break.

There was about 8-9 pages of notes. I brought it home and I might do it over the weekend or tomorrow at work, but I don’t I’ll get it done today. We’ll see how it comes out. Oh, that’s what we were talking to Rich about while we watched him eat last night … was basically – well, not too much gossip … sorry, but about the part of using these sessions and the old program development guide and the state curriculum to assist us in setting up our own curriculum. We’d told him we spent quite a bit of time reading yesterday in trying to understand the state “system.”

This included reading not only 1-12, but years 1-3. We haven’t gotten to pre- and Kindergarten, but we’ve seen it in there too. We are very impressed with it because its developmental. Rich was playing devil’s advocate and saying that if they haven’t learned it yet, which belies the point that they may just be slower at reaching the milestones. The point would be if you don’t know what the milestones are – how can you plan on reaching them.

The school district has something similar to St. Rose School’s performance levels.
We had 3 levels and they have 4 levels, which I’m fine with working on … they are starting, approaching, meeting, and exceeding. Then they tie it cleverly to range, frequency, facility, depth, creativity and quality. I don’t know how they got all those things and if they are really parallel. But, it seems like something of interest to look at. They place it in a matrix that looks like this.



I think this is very creative on someone’s end. Maybe this kinda grids been around forever, but I don’t know much about education per se. It seems it has to deal with how much one has learned, how often one can apply the learning, how quickly he applies the knowledge, how good is the coverage of knowledge, how new is the self-material, and how good is the quality. That seems pretty excellent to me. Someone really had to think to do that. Seems there are quantity and quality assessments, which is pretty darn neat. I like this a lot. Somehow, we’ll use it.

We should probably remember this too … it will help us keep in mind the scope, especially in teaching the staff and applying. The following is the section as it applies to one of the seven program areas – language arts – that ISBE (Illinois State Board of Education) covers. I need to study this because I think it’s a very essential description of the key elements and how they cuddle together.

Ok, you’ll see it in a few moments … It’s already 11 and I have to be ready to leave in a half hour, plus, I should eat before I go and I have to get dressed YEEKS! I was skimming through material – more toward becoming orientated to the site. I found myself back to something I’d looked at before … they have something called a NETS program that is a National educational program for technology systems. It comprehensively covers the 7 program areas and how they relate to technology. The social studies department went all out and has 10 different areas of their study and then they have sections in each of those for low, middle, and high grades. It’s pretty cool … I can’t even wrap myself around what they cover because it seems so huge to me. I think we’re going to do those other things and see if I can squeak out any loose minutes. You know how I hate to be torn away from here … trying not to whimper.

Whoops I gotta go. Been on the phone with Rich … he left already … luckily he left about $7 quarters on his dresser that he said I could have. We’re worrying about tolls and Dr. Marvin’s parking. I’ve allowed plenty of time. 90 minutes when it’s supposed to be 52 minutes, but I gotta find the place within a compound and nothing is marked well. So, better be on our way … maybe more later.

Umm, I just want to save this part for later, so

SCROLL DOWN TO THE END OF THIS
SECTION…

INTRODUCTION

Design for Performance Standards

The Illinois Learning Standards are content standards that describe “what” students should know and be able to do in grades K – 12. Each content standard includes five benchmarks that describe what students should know and be able to do at early elementary, late elementary, middle/junior high, early high school, and late high school.

The challenge for the 2000-2001 school year was to produce performance standards that would indicate “how well” students should perform to meet the standards. To address this challenge, a number of perspectives needed to be considered. For example, the National Governors Association raised two pertinent questions policymakers should consider for the design of performance standards:

• Do the performance standards indicate the levels of performance students should attain, descriptions of performance at each level, and rules that enable educators to determine whether students have reached a given level?

• Do the performance standards include a range of work . . . to show that students can meet the standards in a variety of ways?

The performance standards describe how well students perform at various points on an educational development continuum. This continuum shows how students can demonstrate mastery of progressively more difficult content and cognitive skills over ten incremental stages of development. Performance within each stage can be assessed by the extent to which students are meeting the standards (i.e., starting, approaching, meeting, exceeding). Performance standards include four essential elements: performance descriptors, performance levels, assessment tasks, and performance examples.



The performance standards are classroom resources for voluntary use at the local level. They are not intended to replace the Illinois Learning Standards. Instead, they supplement them by providing sufficient detail and examples to enable teachers to establish appropriate grade-level performance expectations for students. The performance descriptors are a direct outgrowth of the state goals for learning. Whereas the benchmarks filled in detail on each of the standards at five grade-level clusters, the performance descriptors provide additional detail at each grade level.

Definitions




performance standards: the knowledge and skills that students are to perform at various stages of educational development (performance descriptors) and the performance expectations (performance levels and assessment tasks) for student work (performance exemplars) at each of the stages.

performance descriptors: statements of how students can demonstrate the knowledge and skills they acquired.

performance levels: descriptions of how well students have achieved the standards; that is, the range, frequency, facility, depth, creativity, and/or quality of the knowledge and skills they acquired. Students can demonstrate levels of achieving performance standards along six dimensions:



assessment tasks: descriptions of what students can do to demonstrate they have met the standards and a means for evaluating the levels of their performance.

performance examples: student work samples resulting from the classroom-based assessment tasks that illustrate performance levels.
Template For Expanded Performance Descriptors



Vision for English Language Arts Performance

An important aim of education from kindergarten through twelfth grade is to help every student learn to use language effectively, both as a tool for communicating and as an instrument for thinking, learning, and imagining. Guided by the Illinois Goals and Learning Standards, instruction in the English language arts is designed to help students become strong readers and writers, help them learn to speak and listen effectively, and help them develop skills as investigators capable of undertaking their own research.

Over the course of their schooling, students who meet the Illinois Learning Standards become increasingly skillful in their ability to read with understanding and fluency. By the end of twelfth grade, students who meet these standards can read relatively complex and demanding material for a variety of purposes. They can analyze new words and interpret their meanings on the basis of the components of the words themselves and the contexts in which the words appear. Students can also relate their previous knowledge to new information encountered in their reading, and they can use questions and predictions to guide their reading of particularly complex material. Their ability to read effectively includes the ability to use tables, graphs, and maps as well as text to acquire information and to evaluate arguments.

Students can also direct their reading ability to the reading and study of literature. They can analyze various elements of particular literary works, such as character, plot, conflict, theme, and setting. They can make appropriate inferences that enable them to interpret key themes in specific literary works. They can use insight gained from their reading of literature to enrich their understanding of their own cultures and individual lives, and to deepen their understanding of the cultures and individual lives of others, both past and present.

By the end of twelfth grade, students meeting the Illinois Learning Standards can also write and speak effectively for a range of purposes and in a variety of situations. Students can communicate information and ideas in narrative, expository, and persuasive writing, producing grammatically correct documents using available technology. They can write effectively in a variety of academic settings and in actual, or potentially real, work-related and civic contexts. Students meeting the Illinois Learning Standards can also speak and listen effectively. They can comprehend and evaluate a speaker's verbal and nonverbal messages, and they can analyze and synthesize the spoken messages they hear. They can also deliver planned and impromptu presentations, use both verbal and nonverbal strategies for maintaining communication and resolving conflict, and participate effectively in discussions and collaborative work.

Finally, students who meet the Illinois Learning Standards can use their linguistic ability to acquire and assess information and to communicate the results of their inquiries. They can formulate a research plan, gather appropriate information, and analyze, evaluate, and synthesize the information they gather. They can communicate their findings and their own ideas effectively, supporting and defending a thesis by drawing information from appropriate sources and by offering evidence suited to the purpose and audience of the project at hand.

English language arts instruction seeks to tap the basic human capacity for learning and using language. In this key respect, the language arts are interwoven. Learning in one sphere (e.g., listening or reading) often supports learning in another (e.g., speaking or writing). People vary in the support they need as they develop specific skills in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. English language arts instruction must be especially attuned to providing appropriate support for students with special needs. People also vary in how they use their capacity for language, and this variation is often best understood as variation in cultural, social, and personal identity. The aim of English language arts instruction is not to eliminate or reduce the richness of linguistic diversity. Rather, the aim is to help students develop confident control over language as a powerful tool for comprehending, exploring, and communicating ideas in school and beyond, for succeeding in advanced study, for performing well in one's work, for contributing in civic and work-related arenas, and, most generally, for living a thoughtful and productive life.

END OF THIS SECTION…

HA! That wasn’t bad was it? Uh huh. I bet you didn’t read it … ok so I haven’t yet either, but I WILL! Most likely when I get back to the office tomorrow if there is time to work on this project. I am back from my meeting out in Elgin … like 38 miles West of here, but I didn’t make it to Dr. Marvin’s … where I cut back toward home I was about 20 minutes in good traffic away with 35 minutes to go. But, the traffic wasn’t good AND I hit the empty marker where the light comes on again in my gas tank. I had gotten $7.25 of quarters from Rich’s dresser and had $4.00, plus I found $2.00 in change in the car. There were no tolls so I put $5 in the car … I needed to save $6.50 for Dr. M’s parking so in total that meant I had $13.25 and needed to spend $11.50 so I had only $1.75 for emergency gas money … which now days doesn’t pay for a gallon of gas. It only pays for about 12 miles. I had farther than that to go to Dr. M.’s and back. Anyway … that’s the figuring. I did really well with setting myself not to stop at the BK when I got home, but coming down the last stretch, I’d forgotten about how good a seafood sub would taste since sweetie was going to be gone all night and there was only soup left. So of the available $8.25 … $5.95 got wasted on dinner and the rest got returned to the car’s change.

So that’s the end of that. I thought of putting it in gas, but it wasn’t enough to fill my tank. I figured it would be better to do that once and get it over with.

The gas usually lasts 11 or 12 days. Nothing lasts though if I’m hungry.

I guess Dr. Marvin isn’t going to call me back. I left him 2 phone messages and one email, it’s now 9 minutes into session time, so I’m guessing he knows what’s going on. I didn’t want to contact him a fourth time … figured he knew … last time this happened I had hoped so much that he would call I got cranky when he didn’t I have to watch that this time. I think we are going to pursue another conversation.

The meeting went ok … I rather liked it. The State of IL was making a 2 hour presentation all over the state … they had like 2-3 session each day they had a meeting. I got in near the front of them meeting and I went far enough west that I avoided all the inevitable crowd from Chicago. Most people put off so I didn’t face crowds. There were only 4 of us at the meeting, plus the presenter and someone that he was working with … who took several notes from us as a means of improving the system they were working on.

Basically, the State now has a site where they’ve added information on all the Providers across the state. That means anyone that works with disabled people have their business in their program and after we get registered and obtain a password, we can update information about our center. It’s really limited as to our use, but very beneficial for the State Pas agency – ours is the CSO we’re always talking about … They can look at the site and search which programs have vacancies and they can also see which programs are thinking about developing new programs or centers.

The whole thing is though that I had no idea they didn’t have this kind of thing.

It’s like the PAS agencies and state are just catching up with the 21rst century.

Nonetheless I’m happy for them. Rah-Rah! Hehhe. One other lady was a provider like me, and the other two women were PAS agents, so between the four of us it was really a nice tight cozy deal and we were good question askers. Three times the guy taking notes from the state said, “Ok that’s a good idea” to things we were saying – loopholes we’d found. So, that made it kind of fun. It was all real friendly though and you can tell these people had put a lot into the project. The meeting only lasted 1 ½ hours since it was so small so that was nice too.

Hmm, the surgeon people just called back. Man those people are good. They’ve called back quite a few times. I wasn’t aware of having left any more than two messages there. I knew the answer to the first question, so I asked a second question. The first was about the information meeting. They said that since I’d already seen the Dr. that I didn’t have to go, so they took me off the appt. for the 3rd. The second question was about all those tests I needed to do. I guess the first things I have to do is the pulmonary tests and the psychology tests, and then those go back to the surgery people and if they accept, then they send it on to the insurance agency and somewhere in there the surgery place sets up the other tests and sets the surgery date.

I have to keep going to these other appointments for the nutrition too, because the insurance company is going to want to see that. I’ve got an appointment to see the psychologist I think on the 12th … that’s one week (on a Wed.) after the other appts. I could have really used the meeting time with Dr. Marvin today. I just couldn’t get motivated to leave any earlier than I had. I feel bad about that. If I could have I would have made both meetings. The surgeon said to make sure I made all the meetings. I think I have to show I’m responsible.

Hmm, just took a break to be over at OH for a few. I responded to an email and I looked at a couple of people’s sites. I like when they keep a blog or a “My Story.” I really will read these if I get to know you … so WRITE! Hehehe
Ok. That’s about enough of that.

I’ve been over to the chat room for a while. They got pretty graphic into swallowing something pretty obvious for the reason of protein, which was not something I wanted to listen to. But, there was a long discussion of other healthy stuff to be hearing. They were going over experiences with different foods and what happens at various stages.

I’m trying not to get into various personalities here, but it’s my natural bent … tonight there was a wealthy lady who spent a lot of money at spas who was 3 weeks out and one woman who had talked about her concern that no one had told her she’d turn into a ravin sex machine. She stated, “holy freakin Moses!” I thought that was funny. There was another woman who didn’t seem to get much support from her family or friends, but she was 4 weeks out and doing great although she had med concerns and she was told to her dismay it might be 3-4 weeks before she could really drink a real glass of water again. Those were all new people.

One of my favorites was in. She had her lap done 2 years ago. And, there was a sighting of one I met the first week who gave good advice. He said he’d have his two year surgery appt Feb 5th. My best buddy stopped in … but she was in and out in a short time and we weren’t doing any talking in the room … she didn’t seem to say much either. There was another we’d met who was going to have surgery on Dec 10th.
She was struggling with the fridge and being on a liquid diet. We’ve got that to look forward to as well.

I think I told you there was a food part that we were trying to watch over too. Tonight we learned that soft food includes lunch meat, moist chicken or pureed, baby food, eggs, fish, tuna, ets. We learned that when people plateaued one idea was to go back to liquids for a week and then go through the food phases again. We would need to keep our carbs down to under 15, and if we went over 20, we would dump. And, lastly if all else failed, we were to eat cheese.

Hmm, that’s my full report tonight. Well, actually its my first report, but it doesn’t seem too excessive. Does it? I figure I better be headed for bed. It’s now after 8:30 pm … Pretty excessive for me … See you in the am. Take care!

posted by Ann Marie @ 11/29/2007 08:36:00 PM Comments: 0