A Napoleon Moment

Just to address a few things, yes, I do dislike chicken. I'll eat it, if it's cooked right (not by me, in other words) and as long as it's not covered in cream of mushroom soup or barbecue sauce (my mom ruined those for me after we ate them for the billionth time).

Second, yes it was very hard to sum up two plus months of my life in a few bullet points. So that's why there's this post.

See I originally had this as a bullet point, but I took it out when it got ridiculously long.

It's regarding our end of the year talent show. There's always a few students that really blow me away with their amazing talent and it always makes me sad to see the students go (from sixth grade at least).

But this year it wasn't the amazing talent that really got me, it was Jay (or so we'll call him that). I had Jay when he was in sixth grade, but this was the end of his eighth grade year and his time at our school. Jay is autistic, and on the scale of autism, he's the furthest on the spectrum that I have ever seen in my classroom. He is the type that rocks and shouts out things at inappropriate times. He walked right out of my room one day when I lit a match (for a science demonstration I was doing) because he is scared of fire. He also has the anti-social skills common with autism, meaning he doesn't like or know how to talk to people.

Until this year, apparently. And he decided to try-out for the talent show.

Now, when he first tried out, he showed up in a Pikachu (from Pokemon- he was obsessed with that even in sixth grade) costume. So the teacher judges gave him a talk about something a little more "suiting" for his performance. So he showed up in his usual jean shorts and polo top that is typical of his everyday attire.

He stood in front of the entire school (three grades) and faculty, that's about 1000 people total and he sang the Black Eyed Peas song "I've Gotta Feeling." He had hand motions and everything! He did a turn at one point, but since we didn't have a wireless microphone, he got tangled in the cord. But he recovered. And the cutest thing was he kept signaling for the audience to clap along with the song- that's something I never thought I would have seen from him!

Don't get me wrong, he's not going to make it on American Idol or America's Got Talent, but it was still the most amazing thing! Even the eighth graders recognized how out of Jay's comfort zone it was and they participated and cheered him on. At the end of his performance the entire eighth grade student body (the sixth and seventh graders just don't know him to appreciate what he was doing) gave Jay a standing ovation!

Literally brought tears to my eyes.

My sweet precious Jay is grown up and ready to move on to high school!

I've gotta feeling he'll be just fine there...