Hi. One of my pet peeves is when we're called to go into a classroom or we see a student in the classroom who, because of certain behavioral challenges or learning difficulties, has been assigned a shadow. And I feel like the name shadow has gone a bit of a bad reputation.
I am your shadow. Because that's what they do. I've been in classrooms where the child who has an assistant, the assistant will literally sit next to him, help him with the printing. tell them everything what to do, let's do this together.
That is not what's needed in this situation. Here's what a shadow really should do, and we'll call it an instructor or an assistant. What they should be doing is getting themselves out of the picture as quickly as possible. So how do they do that?
So one of the ways is that they can use visuals to prime the student. So if the student's about to go to circle time, they can have a little visual that says, remember, here are the rules for circle time. Let's review it before you go.
and then send the child off and go to circle time. Another thing that the assistant can help with is by making friends with all the other kids. So they're almost going to all the other kids and becoming their best friends so that they can go and say, hey, go ask Johnny to sit next to you at circle. And then that kid goes over and says, hey, Johnny wants to sit next to me at circle time. And those are really the best ways I've seen that shadows can be used to help support the student.
And not make them become dependent on having another adult sitting beside them getting them through all the tough stuff of school.