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On Monday in Mark’s weight training class there was a food nutritionist who came in to speak to the class. This was very interesting in many different ways. She brought up a lot of different things having to do with nutrition that I had no idea about. After the presentation she gave I asked Mark what he thought about it, and he said he found it interesting as well. We both joked together about how neither of us follow the healthy food guide pyramid she showed us.

Mark and I spent about 30 minutes after the weight training class lifting weights in the gym. I think that Mark really likes our routine every Monday of working out. I don’t think he gets a chance any other time during the week to go and lift weights, so this is his opportunity to do some exercising. Mark brought up the fact that he is currently signed up for an intramural basketball league that starts very soon. This was the most enthusiastic I have seen him about anything in quite a while. I was sure to ask him a lot of details about it because I could tell he enjoyed discussing it. Originally I had an interest in possibly getting on a team with him to play, but unfortunately I decided that I wasn’t going to be able to do that because of the schedule and workload I currently have. However, I was sure to let Mark know that I had an interest in coming to see him play. I plan on finding out the date of one of his games so I can go down and watch. I think this basketball league will be great for Mark to participate in. I knew from the start he had a lot of interest in it, and I can still tell he hasn’t lost one bit of it.

One thing I have noticed about Mark while being either in the gym, library, or his class, is that he really likes communicating with people. Even if he doesn’t know the person he still acknowledges them if he has seen them before. I’ve come to realize that even though Mark is a quiet person for the most part, he is not hesitant at all to initiate a conversation with someone he has an interest in talking with. One surprising thing to me is that Mark doesn’t tend to hang out with friends much during the week or on the weekends. I have heard of him spending time with some family members playing basketball every so often, but never really have I heard of him doing anything with a friend. The reason I find this surprising is because Mark is the type of person to recognize and talk with a lot of different people.

With this in mind, I couldn’t help but to relate it to something I read from the textbook recently. The part in the textbook I am referring to has to do with learning disabled students and who their peer groups tend to be. For my research paper I spoke about the role of peer groups and tied in the fact that learning disabled students often aren’t in peer groups with individuals from their class. The reason for this which was expanded on in the book is because these students aren’t as accepted as they should be by their classmates because of their learning disabilities. The reason I am relating this to Mark is because I wonder if maybe the reason he doesn’t have as many friends from campus is because maybe they see him with an assistant and automatically stereotype him as not being “smart” or “intelligent.” I don’t know if this is the case, but I do know that according to some of the research I did things such as this aren’t uncommon. If this is the truth, it’s very upsetting to me, because I know what type of person Mark is, and I know that he’s a lot of fun to be around. So if people are in fact stereotyping Mark because of the fact that he has an aide with him, they are making a mistake.

This coming Monday, Mark and I won’t be meeting because he will be out of town. We will pick up on the following Monday though. During our next meeting we plan on finishing his project for his weight training class. I look forward to it!

SU student weekly journal reflection (example #2):

Today Melissa came a little bit tired to our session. It was so cold out today, so we decided to go get hot cocoa and sit in the warm schine building. Melissa said that she wanted to do a crossword puzzle, so we worked on that for a while. While we were in the Schine, a girl and Melissa walked right into one another, and instead of just saying excuse me, like the girl would have to anyone else, she said, “O my God, I am so sorry. I did not mean it” and looked towards me while apologizing. It really bothered me that she assumed Melissa might not be able to comprehend or be capable of accepting her apology, and that she had to make a big deal about it. People walk into one another all the time, it does not seem like this case should have been any different. It reminded me of the woman and the dentist in the movie we watched in the beginning of the semester, how the dentist babied her. I wish more people would actually be educated to the fact that babying an individual, disability or not, is not beneficial to their development in any way. Whether it is baby-talking to an infant that is within normal development standards or a learning disabled individual, babying and not providing good speech and action models only hinders development.

Today we also had the opportunity to meet Melissa’s boyfriend. It was funny to see her blush when he came into the room and the interactions between the two of them. It was funny to see a different side to her than just the usual outgoing, bubbly self, she became quiet when he came into the room. But it was nice, because then we were able to discuss their relationship and she opened up a little bit, telling us how long they have been going out for and how they met. When I get into deep conversation with Melissa, I absolutely feel like I am just talking with one of my roommates or friends from home, and the conversations we have are completely engaging and sometimes last the entire two hours.

Also, I picked up a few of Melissa’s insecurities regarding math. The past few weeks, she has been balancing her checkbook correctly, but every week she still asks me to look at it and go over it to make sure she has done it right. She had been 100% correct each week, and this week again this happened. She balanced her checkbook, correctly, but then asked me to look at it. I finally wanted to know why she doubted herself so much, so I just asked “Well do you think you did it right?” She said, “Well I dunno, I want you to look and see…” Of course I did, but it really brought out to me the fact that even though she is capable and successful of balancing her book, she still lacks a little confidence in herself, and therefore she has a constant insecurity. In a way it reminded me of what the text was describing as Self-concept, because it made me feel in a way that Melissa would be able to achieve even more if she had a little more confidence or a stronger self-concept of her actually abilities and realized that she is in fact very intelligent.

STUDENTS LEARNING FROM EACH OTHER
STUDENTS LEARNING ABOUT EACH OTHER