Took a teacher certification exam yesterday. What a ridiculous procedure: we had to walk single file, like Sherpas climbing a mountain, round a big hill to the main entrance (why not open the back entrance that was nearest the parking lot, you ask? Well may you ask). We had to present tickets, two pieces of picture ID, and I forget what else. Water bottles were not allowed on the table because we could put answers on them (or read them off the bottles, I suppose). We were fingerprinted (little towelettes were thoughtfully provided to wipe off the ink, though). The proctors were very sweet but quite punctilious.

The asinine essay question was something about penalizing students (take a position! Evaluate the arguments! Reach the sixth stage of Bloom's Taxonomy!). I decided to go ABA on the question by noting that positive reinforcement was more effective than negative and that no replacement behavior was being taught. I happily wasted four sheets of paper bloviating on the subject, finished at about the two-hour mark, and had a very nice Thai lunch.

Imagine a transition.

The day before that, I was in a bookstore doing my usual flamingo pose in the Special Education-Parenting section at B & N. Someone was buying the Michael Powers book on autism, which I don't much care for. So I said, "There are better books," and we started talking about special ed and all kinds of cool things, and turns out she's a horseback riding instructor at this place my kiddo used to go to, and she had a kid w/ADHD, not autism, but she wanted to learn more in a general way re autism. Must've been there a good twenty minutes chatting about Temple Grandin and executive function, etc.