Getting Pepper Sprayed is no bueno.

I thought I had left most of the dangerous occupational hazards behind when I left the ambulance. And I certainly didn't think that I would encounter these hazards in graduate school. Yet, yesterday I was pepper sprayed by one of my clients. It wasn't a direct hit, nor was it fully intentional. It was a middle school aged kid making some very bad decisions. I have no doubt that there was not malicious intent. Another student brought a canister of pepper spray to school disguised as a pen, and he thought it would be funny to discharge it about 5 feet away from me in my direction. Almost immediately everyone in the room, including myself started coughing. We evacuated the room, but my asthma was already severely flared up. 1 ambulance ride, CPAP, Continuous A&A, solumedrol, and sub Q epi later... I finally got to come home and rest. What a day.

Teaching... sucks.

I've hit that point in my MSW internship where I just dread going... I've been told it happens. But here I am, on a Sunday evening, near tears because I just don't want to go tomorrow. The biggest things that I can focus on that I've learned right now are 1. That I do not want to work with middle school age kids. 2. That I do not want to work in a school environment, and 3. That I HATE teaching.

Not very strength based... very anti social-workey. But here I am.

The last 2 times I've taught, the class got rowdy and totally out of control. I had no idea how to handle it, and actually had to excuse myself to the bathroom once because I was about to cry in front of the kids. I don't feel like I have a lot of support in that department. L., the just recently graduated MSW there is one of the teachers, and she has no idea how to handle the classroom, because she is SO strength based, that she can't consequence. And J. (my task supervisor), a veteran teacher with this demographic while having the best intentions, has a "figure it out yourself" teaching approach for me, that is just not working! I have NO training on how to teach, and I'm expected to teach for 1.5 hours.... and I have not been able to hold their attention for 1.5 hours yet.

I am supposed to teach an A.R.T. Lesson tomorrow (there are words like respect, team work, caring, etc. that I have to develop a lesson around). I decided to do a bully prevention lesson, and incorporate those words into what I'm doing. It's a great lesson - I start with an empathy game, followed by reading an excerpt from "Dear Bully", some other stuff, and finally empathy activity by listening to music and talking about what the musician is talking about. I got a phone call saying J. is not going to be there... so once again, I have no support for my lesson... and the more I look at things, the more I'm losing confidence that it will be a good lesson.

I know I need to go in with confidence blazing... but I just don't have any.