My First Day At Abilities First

To begin, this blog will serve as a diary of sorts. I will do my best to record my daily experiences working at Abilities First, in Poughkeepsie, NY. Abilities First is a program that developmentally disabled people attend in order to learn life and social skills. Anytime I am referring to a person in the program, I will not use their actual name due to privacy laws.

I was told to arrive this morning for my first day of work by 7:45 am. Upon my arrival, Mike, who is my supervisor informed me that there was a slight change in plans for my first day. I was hired to serve as a floor supervisor, where I would oversee the program participants as they assemble different items. Mike told me that a couple of the staff in the "day hab" classrooms called in sick for this morning, so they would be shorthanded. At first, when Mike told me that I would be working in the day hab, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed. I had arrived on my first day expecting to be in the warehouse, not in a classroom on the other side of the building.

Any feelings of disappointment that I had initially were quickly quelched once I set foot into the day hab classroom. Mike introduced me to Robin and Yvon, the staff assigned to that room. Upon entering the room, Mike explained to Robin and Yvon that I am a college student who would be working there for the summer. It was only 8:00 by this point, but a couple of the program participants, or consumers, had already started to shuffle in. The first consumer to whom I was introduced is named Vito. Vito is a 71- year old man, who suffers from a severe form of Tourettes Syndrome, among other things. Vito cannot control anything that comes out of his mouth, and very often uses the F word. He and I spoke briefly while the rest of the consumers enterred the room.

Once everyone was in the room, Robin asked me if I like to walk around the room and help out with whatever the consumers were working on. I quickly learned that there is not a set curriculum for the consumers. Rather, there is a list of objectives that goes along with each consumer. For example, one objective that many of the consumers have is that their expressive speech skills need to be worked on. Vito had this as one of his objectives. Robin mentioned that a 39-year old man named Jim was working on drawing a picture of his deceased father's pickup truck. His father only passed away a couple of months ago, and I'm thinking that this is a way for him to cope and grieve with his loss. So, I worked with Jim for a little while before beginning to circulate through the room to see what other people might be working on. One older woman with Down's Syndrome was sitting sort of alone, intently coloring. Another woman, apparently mute, worked with Yvon on a painting of a butterfly. Other people worked on puzzles, and some played games with each other.

I decided to go back over to Vito to see what he was doing. He was actually just sitting in his seat talking idly to himself. I went over to say hi, and he asked me how I was. I said fine, and asked him what he was doing. I decided that I would try to engage him in something productive. First, I attempted to complete a jigsaw with him. No dice. Then, I got the idea that we could play checkers. He was happy with this idea, so I set up the game board, and we began the game. We proceeded to play the most unconventional game of checkers that I have ever been privy to. Vito was skipping his checkers all over the board, and claiming my checkers left and right. It all made sense to him, though, and he was having the time of his life. He got board of checkers after about 10 minutes, so I went to the shelf with all of the games on it, and found a Bingo game. I brought it back to Vito and we played bingo for a few minutes, which Robin must have thought was a good idea because he decided that the entire class should play bingo. I sat with Vito and another man, who has Down's Syndrome, helping them decode the letters and numbers on their game cards.
Once the group finished with the bingo game, they had about 20 minutes before lunch time. I decided I would continue to work with Vito, since we were doing pretty well together. I went and fetched that same jigsaw puzzle from before, which he now wanted to complete. So we worked on the puzzle until lunch.

After lunch I went back to the room. Robin and I spoke while we waited for the afternoon consumers to come in. He's a really cool guy. He's from England. Robin is the main person who is training me for this job.

Once people started arriving, I pretty much did the same thing as I had done in the morning. I ended up playing more games with a small group of people for the entire time. We played Password and Wheel of Fortune.

After all of the consumers had left for the day, Robin showed me how to fill out billing information so that the agencies the consumers came from could pay for the services of Abilities First. My first day was nothing short of wonderful. I am happy that I got to try out the day hab part of the program. Hopefully, I'll get to work in the warehouse at some point, but I would be just as happy to work in the classrooms everyday.