esterday was the first time I felt completely comfortable in the infant room. It happened when I was reading the group a few stories towareds the end of the day. One of the stories was a book about how animals move their body parts and so the head touching, arms waving, hips wiggling game began. It occurred to me at that point that, while oral comminication is important for infants' speech development, they get so much more out of kinesthetic comminication. In other words, play is a better medium for speaking to infants than speech is! This is something I couldn't grasp in my kindergarten classes and frankly ignored in the toddler rooms I've been in. I can see now that this kind of play based communication can certainly be applied to anyone with less language skills or people who are less willing to use language.

Lunch shifts at the (three story) coop are crazy. I'm basically responsible for getting the food up to the classes (from the basement!) and spending some time in the "big kid's" room (kindergarten) serving and sitting with one of the groups. Then I have to clean up the trays and bowls and things, take it down to the chef and clean up the "mid kid's" room (which is always a disaster after lunch.) The shift is only an hour and a half long but is so busy that I usually do more on that shift than I do during the rest of my day.

I also have my interview with the man with autism today. His name is Matt and I know next to nothing about him or autism. Wish me luck!

I've given my valedictorian's speech. To my surprise it went over really well. People were interrupting me to clap and I had to yell over them what i was saying. I will link a video my wife made once I have it on my PC. Also here is a transcript of it.

I'm working now, doing supply for a few places, two of the unionized under CUPE (which has recently had a controversial backing out of an illegal strike over pension plans) and one of them under the Mothercraft umbrella, who I schooled with. I am working most of my shifts at a place called Hester How which is a workplace childcare center inside Toronto's New City Hall. I would certainly like to work there as full time staff as the people are great, the directors are slow-speaking and thoughtful (like me.. and unlike most childcare workers,) and the children are among the brightest and most interesting I have ever met. Oh, and there are no male full-timers on the payroll. The other CUPE site is simply called University of Toronto Campus Coop and is run by a woman who used to work at the Margaret Fletcher Childcare Center which was born of protesting the lack of childcare for women UofT workers. It also has about four other men working there which is almost unheard of. The other site, Robertson House, is a Mothercraft childcare center which means they adhere to the policies I was taught in school, which are actually pretty congruent with my own policies of childcare. The center itself, as the name implies, is a big house which was built from day one to be a childcare center and so has all of the appropriate accommodations and built in furniture associated with children and their specific needs. There is also an Ontario Early Years Center in the front half of the house which is basically a drop-in, meeting place and resource center for parents. I am interested in doing wome work with the OEYC program but as of now I haven't persued anything to that end.

I've been offered a job working with a 29 year old autistic man and I am going to call about that today. I met the contact, Linda, at an autism workshop I attended on Tuesday. She was sitting beside me and struck up a conversation, steeled by an earlier encounter when we were both asking the instructor questions about her lessons. We were talking about chelation, about the root of the word and how the medical chelation process takes place when she mentioned to me that she had performed a chelation process on a client of hers. I asked her what she did and she told me about her energy healing. I then told her about how I had some experience in energy manipulation in my past studies and experience. She told me she liked the term "energy manipulation" and then offered me a regular, part-time support work job which I said I would think about and get back to her.

I have begun guidance counseling as a client and have been sick for about three weeks. That reminds me, I still haven't done my Guidance homework yet.