Ah, the Life of a Teacher

Just a quick story about what happened at school this morning:

A student of mine that I will not name, a young man who is autistic, came into my room this morning. He congratulated me for my homeroom winning the "pizza party." My homeroom had the best attendance in our grade during our recent round of standardized testing, which won us a pizza party coming up this Friday.
When he said this to me, I immediately remembered that this young man had done some of his testing with my homeroom (even though he is technically not part of any homeroom). I asked if he would like to join us for the pizza party. His response was, "Of course! I would love to join you." I smiled at his enthusiastic answer and made sure he knew when the party was, which he did.
Just after he left the room, I overheard him talking to the lady who works one-on-one with him, saying, "I didn't even have to ask him!"


Another thing happened as well. This happened in one of the other teacher's classes, on the team I teach on, named Josh. A student had finished what the other students were working on, today, and Josh asked if he would find something else to work on while the other students finished up. He told the teacher that he had something he could work on. He took a folded piece of paper out and carefully spread it out on his desk. Josh observed that it was covered in tally marks, four lines with the fifth one crossing the other four, over and over all covering the paper. Next the student pulled out something else, something he unwrapped. It was a Tootsie Pop. The young man took a lick, then added a mark to his paper. He took another lick and added another mark. Josh already knew the answer but decided to ask anyway. Sure enough, the young man said he was doing a scientific experiment to see how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.