The book I read is Let Me Hear Your Voice by Catherine Maurice.

My favorite part of the book is when Catherine enters Anne Marie into a new school without telling anyone at that school that she was previously diagnosed as autistic.  This is my favorite part because I am just so amazed by how she could basically become undiagnosed within just a couple of years of therapy.  I never knew autism could be cured or helped so much.  I always thought it was just something that has to be dealt with and that we have to do the best we can, but never did I imagine that the changes that occured in this book could occur in real life.  Anne Marie becomes the same as any other “normal” child and thrives in school.  This gives me hope for the future of autism and makes me feel slightly less worried that if I ever have a child who is autistic, there is a possibility that I can help them the same as Catherine helped her children.

I found it very interesting that Catherine and Marc had two autistic children.  I do not think I have ever come across a family with two autistic children and considering they said the chances were something like 2% I found it quite shocking.  I also found this interesting because of how different the two children were, as far as their autistic tendencies.  Michel was very aggressive and yelled a lot, where as Anne Marie just cried all the time and was fearful of everything.  I also think it is amazing that both children responded so well to the therapy, especially since there are many children who do not respond at all or only do a little bit.

I love that Catherine shared this story with the world.  I liked how she is honest about everything; from her denial in the beginning, her belief that Dr. Welch was her savior and that holding therapy could be the cure, to finally realizing that is is behavior modication that truly helped her children recover.  I enjoyed reading her thoughts about her children versus other children and the comparison she made between them.  I like how she included two stories at the end about other families struggles and the information on the financial aspects of having autistic children and the therapy for them.  It is great that she has provided information for other parents to find doctors, books, different types of therapies, and anything else that would be useful in helping their autistic children.  This is an amazing book that I would encourage anyone to read.  I think this book is so helpful and could really be a guiding force for other families in their own struggles with autism.

Oh, the things I would do if I hit the jackpot.  First of all, I would make sure I have the best living conditions and necessities for all of my family.  I do not just mean my immediate family, but all extended family too.  I would make sure everyone is living happily and comfortably.  Next, I would buy a bigger house (if needed) so that I could have one room per child and one spare bedroom for guests.  I would also want the house to have a decent amount of land.

Before I do anything else, I would put away a large amount of the money from that jackpot and save it so that I do not become one of those people who loses all of the money within the first few months.  I would save enough for all of my children’s college funds and a little extra to give them a boost for weddings, houses, etc. when they are older.  I would also save for my retirement and enough to help my parents and siblings in their futures, in case they have any financial difficulties.  I have always been a big saver so this is all really important to me.  The large majority would definitely go into savings.

With the little bit that I would probably have left after saving it all, I would definitely want to travel.  I would set aside a vacation fund and have enough for one great, 2 week long family vacation per year.  I would want a new car, but not one that is overpriced just because of the name.  Last, I would go shopping-not just for me but for my family and friends too because I love buying people gifts, especially when I do not have to for birthdays and holidays.  I like buying gifts “just because” so that is exactly what I would do.

Balancing work and family is definitely tricky.  I love teaching and always knew I wanted to become a teacher, but this is actually another part of the reason that I definitely decided to go into teaching.  I believe this is the best profession if you want to have a large family, and that is what I want.  I do not want to be one of those moms who works and never sees my children though.  Teaching is great because I will have weekends, vacations, and summers off with my children.  The hours are great because I will get home early enough in the day to help my children with their homework, cook dinner, clean up a little, and spend some quality time with them before bedtime.

I think balancing work and family is the most important thing for relationships (marriage) and for children.  I have heard and seen instances where the parents to not find this balance and the children grow up with many behavioral and emotional problems because they are unhappy and feel unloved.  Children need to bond with their parents.  They need support and they need to know how much their parents care; not through words but through actions.  Relationships will also only work if there is a balance.  It is difficult for those people who are constantly working, getting phone calls and emails to their cell phone at night, at nonwork times, and on vacations.  These people cannot really enjoy their lives, their significant others, and their families because they are so busy with work and it over time it will take its toll. Some people really treasure work more than their family, or they begin to just because of their work load.  Family has always been so important to me all my life, that I have always made sure and kept in mind that I will find a great balance between work and family so I can enjoy my family.  Life is too short not to.

I have two elusive goals.

The first, to travel the world.  Perhaps this goal will be realistic way into my future, when my husband and I retire.  My aunt and uncle are both retired and they travel the world, so in a way it could be realistic.  However, for the next 40 years, it is totally unrealistic.  The reasons for this: money, family, children, work.  Unless I win lotto or find some filthy rich person to pay for my vacations, I will not have the financial means to travel the world for a very, very long time.  I want to have a large family with 4 or 5 children, and soon.  It is not possible to constantly leave children behind and go on extravagent vacations, but I would not want to take them either…so the vacations would have to wait until they are old enough to all stay on their own.  Again, this will not be for at least 35 years from now.  Lastly, I have to work, as will the person I go away with.  As a teacher, I could travel in the summers because I have off…but not all people are teachers and have the conveniency to take off from work all summer, they must work.  I hope to achieve this goal one day, but for now I will just keep dreaming and planning for the day it happens.

The second elusive goal I have is to spend my life volunteering, not working.  I absolutely love teaching, but if I did not have to work and I could spend my life volunteering for different causes, I would be so happy.  I think volunteering is so gratifying and I have volunteered for numerous clubs, oragnizations, and events all throughout high school and college.  Now that I am working two jobs and in graduate school, volunteering really is not possible.  It will be even more impossible once I am married and have a family of my own.  Volunteering has always been a strong passion of mine so it is quite upsetting to me that I have no been able to really volunteer for anything in over a year, espeically considering how much I used to volunteer.  Spending my life helping others and doing all different things would be amazing, but financially it just will never work.

ITALY! I I have always wanted to vsit Italy!  I am Italian.  My families are from Sicily and Naples.  This is obviously the main reason I have always wanted to visit Italy.  My grandma always used to show me her pictures of her trips to Italy.  The scenery and sites she saw were just breathtaking.  However, when I took an art history class in 10th grade, that is when I realized how much I really want to go to Italy.  The architecture, art, museums, cathedrals; it all just seems so amazing.  Seeing the pictures is just simply not enough.   Once I learned about the history of it all, I just knew I had to see it in real life because now I finally understood the meaning behind the beauty.  I would love to take a trip to Italy for a few weeks.  I want to see Pompeii, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the towns where my families came from, Naples, and Sicily, Rome, Venice and much more.  I want to spend days on the beautiful beaches of the Amalfi coast, but also spend a great deal of time exploring the large cities and beautiful art.  I have heard so much about the food and really cannot wait to try it out because I absolutely love Italian food.  I could eat pasta every day of the week and not get sick of it.  I want to sit down at a cafe with my family, drink a glass of wine, and just take in how amazing it is to finally be in Italy.  When I go to Italy, I want to go all out.  I want to really save up and make the trip as amazing, and long, as it can possibly be.  This is one place I have always wanted to visit and I know when I get there, I am never going to want to leave.

A memorable teacher from my students years is my 11th grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Hughes. Mr. Hughes was the only teacher in my high school, actually the only teacher I have ever known, who is blind.  Not only was he an amazing teacher, but he is an inspiration to all.  He lost his sight as a toddler and struggled a lot throughout his life, but he overcame those struggles and became a success story.  Mr. Hughes is married with 2 children, lives right near the high school, and is one of the best teachers I have ever known.  He is so passionate about what he does and it is obvious how much he enjoys coming to work every day.  I absolutely hated social studies all my life, but there was just something special about Mr. Hughes that made me love it.  I went from 70’s and 80’s in 9th and 10th grade social studies…to high 90’s in his 11th grade class.  He made me enjoy learning about a subject that never interested me before, far from it.  Mr. Hughes is a real inspiration to everyone because he shows us that we can achieve anything we want, just as he has done.  Everyone in the school loves him, students spend their lunch and free periods with him, go back to see him after graduation, and just talk about him forever.  In addition to his great teaching strategies and love of teaching, Mr. Hughes is quite the comedian.  He was always cracking jokes, which made the class that much more enjoyable.  He did some of the craziest things I have heard and seen from teachers.  There are two stories that really stick out in my mind and I do not think I could ever forget them.  The first is a story about when he was in school as a child and had to take a urine sample in school.  He had a big glass jar of his urine and for some reason put it in his locker.  Well, he could not see exactly what he was doing and the jar came crashing down and splattered all over the hallway.  I thought this was hysterical but I also love how comfortable he was with his condition to share this story with us.  The second thing I will always remember is when he was telling a story about his glass eye.  He started by asking us to move an entire room of desks and move out of the way.  For some reason the eye was not in place and he ended up dropping it so he demonstrated in class how he flew across the floor to get it.  In class, he literally dove across the classroom, without seeing what or who was around him, just to make this story even more real to us.  This is one teacher that my memory will never let go of.

A book I would love to write is about my part time job.  I work at a frozen yogurt store and I am completely amazed by the stupid and completely obvious questions that people ask, their ridiculous requests, and rude behavior.  I have always said that I could write a book about all of the things we see there but have never actually taken the time to write it all down, because it is just too much.  This book would just be purely for entertainment and to make people laugh.  Readers would realize how crazy some people in this world really are and I think it would give people good insight into how they, or people they know, might act and how absurd it can be.  I find that I am constantly saying to myself “wow, I could never imagine acting that way” or “I would never ask that to someone in a store I go to.”  It could be the location of the store and the population of people we are dealing with, or it could be that the population of self-centered people, dumb people is growing but either way, I am fed up.

For example, we constantly get the question “do you take expired coupons?”  Well, if we took expired coupons, why do you think we would put an expiration date on them in the first place?  We also get people trying to give us coupons from ice cream stores in Manhattan.  We are a self serve frozen yogurt store in Nassau County, what good would it do us to take a coupon from somewhere that is not even remotely close to being our competitor?  People just want something for free…all the time.  The question that really gets underneath my skin: Customer walks through the door, doesn’t even get within 20 feet of the machines, and asks for taste cups.  I respond by asking what flavor and they say “oh, I don’t know, don’t I get to do it myself?”  Clearly they are just coming in to taste as many flavors as they can, then a decent amount of the time they walk right out without buying anything.  Where have people’s morals gone? I could never ever imagine buying a frozen yogurt cake, eating 3/4 of the cake, then returning it and stating “it has freezer burn.”  Well, perhaps that is because you left it in your freezer for a couple of weeks after the party you had ate majority of it.  You might be asking yourself if we take the cake back and give the refund…of course we do.  The customer is always right, right?!  Then we get the people who don’t watch their children who are making a massive cup, since no one watches their children these days.  Once they realize what the child has done, they walk right over to the garbage and throw it out.  Yeah, sure, just go ahead and throw out our product that we could have made $10 off of..it’s no big deal, you don’t have to apologize either.  This is just some of the crazy stuff I see on a daily basis, which is why I would love to write a book about it because the book would go on and on and could entertain many people.

If I was a character from a movie/tv show, I would be…Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) from The Notebook.  I would want to be Allie because when she is young she falls in love and has an amazing summer romance with Noah Calhoun.  She is rich, which is nice, but she has many problems with her parents and they do not agree with her decision in being with Noah.  Despite their feelings, Allie and Noah stick out the summer together.  They do end up breaking up at the end of the summer, but years later they find each other again and fall back in love.  They pick up from where they ended and continue their romance for the rest of their lives.  They grow old together and even as sick, old people in a nursing home, they are still as much in love as they ever were.  They may have had their problems, but I think a love story like this is incredible.  I can only hope that one day I will fall madly in love with a man who loves me the same in return.  They are best friends, soul mates.  They do everything together and make their relationship work, regardless of what anyone else thinks or wants.  I also love how even when they are older they are still in love.  I feel like there are so many older couples who just cannot stand each other anymore and it is very sad to see, especially because often times they are all they have left or at least are the only two living in their home.  I would not want to be Allie just because she is rich or anything like that, it is all about the amazing relationship she has with the man she loves.  It is also not just about her loving him, it is that he loves her so much in return that he would do anything in the world for her.  I feel that there are so few men left in the world that are like that.  They get what they want and they stop putting in effort, they are not the same gentlemen that they used to be and to have someone who loves me like that is all I ask for. That is why I would like to be Allie Hamilton, who eventually became Allie Calhoun.

I have always been a very passionate person and I could go on forever and ever speaking about them, but I will only speak about my very top passions.

First, my family.  My family is the absolute more important thing in my life and I am so passionate about making sure they always stay in my life and that we stay close like we have been for years.  I love going out with my family, including extended family members.  I have a large Italian family and it is always such a great time to see them all and I always enjoy the time I spend with them.  I do my best to make them proud and treat them the best I possible can.  It is hard to even begin to explain how much they mean to me and how much I love them because there is just so much to say, and that is why they are my strongest passion in life and always will be no matter what.

Second, my friends.  I may not have many friends or be the most popular person ever, but that is what makes me so much happier and helps me to appreciate the amazing friends I have.  My passion here lies in how much I want to make my friends happy and do right by them.  I will always do my best to make my closest friends feel appreciated and let them know that I am always here for them.  I am passionate about having a good time with my friends, being supportive, and keeping them in my life forever; as if they were blood-related family members.

Third, teaching.  I did not become a teacher to have summers, weekends, and frequent breaks off of school like some do.  I did not become a teacher because I just claim to like kids and it seemed like the most logical choice.  I did not become a teacher for any other reason than my incredible passion for making a better life for people, particularly young, impressionable children.  All I can hope for throughout my future career is to make a difference in my students’ lives.  I do not care if they remember me or not, as long as I have left some legacy on their lives in some way.  I am passionate about being there to listen, to support, and to help my students in any way I possibly can to make their learning and their lives easier and happier.  I am very passionate about health because it is all about real life experiences and what students go through on a daily basis, which is why I went to school for Health Education.  My passion is to teach these important health topics and make a difference by improving the health of my students.

So, here are my biggest passions in life.  They all revolve around me dealing with people, because that is what I love.  I believe these things have shaped who I am and will continue to shape me for the rest of my life and that is because of how strong my passion for them has always been.

If I wasn’t a teacher I would have most likely become a cop and eventually a detective.  I wouldn’t really want to be a cop first, but obviously that is the first step in becoming a detective.  I am completely obsessed with watching Law and Order television shows, specifically Special Victims Unit (SVU).  I have watched every episode at least one time and have moved on to other shows with similar plots.  I find it so incredibly interesting and I love thinking in the way that they do to catch the criminal and solve the case.  I believe that it takes a very intelligent and passionate person to do a job like that and I know I would be able to do a great job at it.  I really like the Special Victims Unit in particular because it revolves around sex crimes and cases with children.  Since I went to school for Health Education, this job would in a way be similar to my passion for these specific health topic that I address while teaching.  Sexual education and child abuse/neglect are part of the health curriculum and as a detective I would still be working with these health topics.  Rather than educating about the topics, I would be putting away the people that commit crimes related to these topics.  This may just be a crazy dream that I have always had but I really think it is quite an amazing job.  This job would have many downfalls including dealing with many difficult situations and being so time consumed that it would be difficult to enjoy life and have a family.  Therefore, teaching is a much better option for me in many ways.  This leads me to the other possible option for what I would be doing with my life if I were not a teacher.  I would be working in some other way to help victims; mostly children.  I could either be a lawyer since I can make a very good argument, or I could do something related to social work and being a case worker for foster children.  Either way, my passion always comes back to exactly why I went in to teaching in the first place…for the children.