Week 7

Today, November 17, 2009 wraps up my 7th week at the CHAMPS after school program. This week I attended 3 hours of observations on Monday and Wednesday. This makes my total hours at CHAMPS 36. I would consider this week a successful one. The children were well behaved on both Monday and Wednesday. Today I saw something interesting. A child with Aspergers disease, who is normally uncontrollable, found something he really enjoyed and got hooked. The child was taught Chess last class from another mentor in the program. Today he came in and all he wanted to do is play Chess. It seemed as if he could have played all day. Now, what was so interesting to me is getting this child to sit still in a chair for more than 5 minutes can be a real challenge, let alone for one full hour. I have actually heard that people with aspergers have the ability to focus on one thing for an extraordinary amount of time but I have never witnessed it. I heard about a surfer named Clay Marzo, who has the disease and is one of the best in the world because he has the disease gives him the ability to practice for as long as 6 straight hours. I think this is great to know because when teaching a child with Aspergers, finding that thing that gets their attending can be life changing. I can not say that Chess is that thing for this particular student but something similar could be it.

Here is the link to the E:60 Story about Clay Marzo