Using your hands to talk

I've mentioned how thin money is on the ground at school for things like training, especially for teaching assistants, who are so undervalued. There is currently a scholarship for teaching assistants at a certain grade. It allows them to claim half of any tuition fees, (up to £2000 towards the cost of a course) which will add to their CPD (Continued Professional Development). So even though I am now officially on my Grade 2 brailling course (it hasn't begun yet), I am going to apply, as one of my other interests is sign language. It is a beautiful language to watch. It can be as varied as the many accents one might hear in the course of a day spent in a big city. It can be done well or badly. And it can change lives and make the difference between isolation and inclusion. Getting the scholarship will be a matter of timing, skill, popularity and luck. It's going to be extremely competitive. One TA wanted me to keep my mouth shut about it to increase our chances. But I have experience of the kind of seething resentment that sort of secrecy can cause, and I'm spreading the word. We can all compete for it together. It's quite likely none of us will be chosen. But who knows, perhaps someone will be lucky!

The Sulks

What do you do when an ASD student gets the teenage sulks? How do you know they are sulking? Depending on patterns of behaviour you might imagine they are sulking at you when actually they are sulking about something that happened at home last weekend. Or sulking about something that happened at school three years ago. Which is not to say all ASD students sulk. But one of mine does, and this behaviour is very difficult to penetrate. Yesterday was a sulky day. It was the third day in a row he grunted at me, instead of using words. I knew we were in trouble. How to 'break the spell'? I asked questions - how's everything at home? how have your lessons been today?, is there a problem?, all resulting in a growl. Finally, I reminded him that 'You are the Captain, I am the…?'. 'Cabin boy?' he answered, in his normal voice. It's something I used to say to him 2 years ago when we started working together. I was touched that he had remembered the response. He was fine after that - I think it perhaps gave him back a sense of being in control of his life - so much of what he has to do at school is irksome to him, and annoying, and ASD students often find it very difficult to accept circumstances they are not comfortable with.

I hand-washed my beautiful quilt last night, and it's hanging on the pulley above the bath to dry. It'll need a bit of darning and maybe a replacement here and there. Meanwhile, this is a picture of a beautiful cotton shirt I bought from eBay. It's French, and from the 40s. The collar, cuffs and pocket trims are a lovely duck-egg blue, and it has been extremely well-made with neat little darts at the waist to shape it, and beautiful button-holes (but no buttons). I had bought it intending to wear it as a light summer jacket over a dress, but when it came I found it was just tiny - child-sized. I considered cutting it up for my sewing projects, but it's so lovely, I think I'll hang on to it and use it to display my brooches. What do you think? Should I be ruthless?