Another Chance

I have been working with BOCES to enable a young high school senior with Asberger's to work in the library to gain some real world work experience. He comes every Monday morning with his job coach, and we started him on cleaning the PC's and straightening and neatening the shelves. He began learning the Library of Congress classification system, but shortly after he began, my hours changed, and I never got anyone else to work with him. It was a short stint - about fifteen weeks, so I just let it go. The next step would have been for him to reshelve books, shelf read, and retrieve materials for ILL and Reserves.

His transition coordinator asked for a ten week review, and as I filled out the evaluation form, I realized we had never taken that next step. I felt it had been unfair on my part not to have done that, so I had decided, out of the goodness of my heart, that I would suggest that he stay on through the summer even though he would have graduated, so I could give him the extra training.

How unprepared I was for his reaction. I had no idea how much he hated the grunt work he was assigned. Turns out he is brilliant, but unable to interface socially. It would be like asking a doctor to clean garbage cans because his hands shake a bit. He repeatedly stated that he wanted to quit and quit NOW! He was fed up with being bored. I made my "magnanimous" offer of making sure he got to do the next step and move into more interesting work, but he was not interested.

His mother was beside herself. She told him that either he gets a job in a library with the training I am offering, or he will end up in a sheltered workshop for the rest of his life doing even more distasteful repetitive work. It smacked me upside the face. How unfair I have been to this young man. Both his job coach and his transition supervisor tried to get him to reconsider. It was going nowhere.

I finally interrupted the conversation. "What do you want to do, if you could do anything you want?" I worriedly looked at the specialists, for fear I had opened a can of worms. They sat silently, their eyes on the table. "I like computers." he stated quietly. "I'm really good at games. And I'm a whiz at PowerPoint. All I get to do here is clean them."

"Well," I slowly responded, "Let's get the training finished and get you shelving. Once we reach that point, I will turn over the creating of the PowerPoint slides for our LCD screen to you. Do you think you can work towards that?" He sat there, not responding. "If you do a good job with that, I will see what else we could have you do on the computers. Is it a deal?" His head was down, his mouth was moving without any sound.

His mother prompted him for an answer. Finally, he looked out the window and said slowly, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline." I thought his mother was going to kill him. With her lips tightly drawn, she said, "We will discuss this at home."

I felt terrible. I had not looked at this young man as a person much less a person whose path in life was completely dependent on the success of this program. IF I get a second chance, I will not blow it. I realize his future happiness may well depend on the amount of time I can invest in his efforts here. I will keep you posted. I hope I get another chance.