I just wanted to share an story. After reading all of this great stuff on self monitoring and recording, I decided to try to apply it to my current job, which resulted in some less than positive feedback from other school personnel.
I am currently a 1 on 1 aide for a 4th grade student who has diabetes, NO cognitive delays, and is in a general ed. classroom. He has a one on one primarily to ride the bus with him, but I have also been given directions to help monitor his behavior, as he is prone to behavior issues when his blood sugar is low. Every school day, Peter (the student I work with) tests his blood sugar 4-5 times. He is fairly independent with his testing and understands all the devices and numbers that go along with his condition. After every time he tests in class, he gets up and calls the nurse, who writes down in his log book his numbers, and advices him what to do if his numbers are off (which is only about 15% of the time).
After reading the last couple of chapters I began to think that Peter should be self monitoring and recording. And so I came up with the idea of having Peter keep his own log, as well as having the nurses log in the nurse's office. Peter (with my supervision) would learn how to fill out his log, and keep track of his numbers during the day. Doing this would be good practice for Peter's independent health monitoring and would give him a feeling of "responsibility" over his own health. It could also be a scaffold eventually leading to Peter being less reliant on calling the nurse several times a day (having to get up in class to call the nurse, even when his numbers are normal, is a big class distraction.)
However, when I approached the school nurse with this idea, she immediately shot it down. She did not think that Peter would be responsible enough and did not see the point. I was very disappointed. It seems like all this self monitoring and recording is a great idea, but I believe that a lot of adults would have a hard time relinquishing power to students. Thoughts?
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How is the student supposed to learn how to be responsible if he is not given a chance? You were going to do his recording in addition to the nurse's recording. Her objections do not make any sense to me. I am frustrated for you.
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