Last Wednesday was my last day with my sixth grade class. Throughout my seven visits, I encountered many challenges, new opportunities, and accomplishments! My mentor teacher put me right to work. Every Wednesday for six weeks I was to lead the sixth grade class. I made slide presentations on the basic facts and techniques for sculpting with clay, and glazing, games and work sheets reflecting the famous artists the students were studying, teacher samples, and I even typed up some lesson plans.
   My most wonderful challenge was the fact that this was an all inclusion class. I had one student with multiple learning disabilities who wasn't lingual, and another student who was blind. Every week, I learned more and more about how to utilize the modification box in our lesson plan format.
   The blind students sketch book was fantastic! He used scratch-foam and a stylus. He used puffy paint and scented markers. It was brilliant aiding his attempts to make sense of the visual world which he has NEVER seen before through by utilizing his other senses; trying to picture color based on scent, and image based on touch. Needless to say, I made three-d examples of every project.
   I got a Picasso card for my mentor teacher, a Monet card for my students, and a bouquet of flowers for the class room to say thank you! My students made a thank you card for me too. I'm grateful for my time spent at the middle school.