Ho, Ho, Holidays

Argh, so I know it's been a while since I last posted. Time has been getting away from me lately...quite a bit more than it already had been. As if working full-time as a teacher, taking two graduate courses at the university, and being involved in a plethora of activities on my work job campus (i.e. being Technology Facilitator, being on School Site Council and our Instructional Leadership Team, and being Waterford Coordinator) wasn't enough, I have gone back to tutoring part-time for a tutoring agency, working an additional 10-15 hours per week. Add to that the stresses, challenges and intricacies of being a special education teacher and you get an idea of what life has been like for me the last few weeks.

So to say that I have been busy would be quite the understatement. But I did want to post something - especially with the holidays coming up and all the hustle and bustle that brings with it!

Christmas is my most favorite holiday! Not only do I get two weeks off from the little "angels" I teach, but it also means that I get to spend some much needed time with my family. My mother's side of the family has a tradition of getting together every Christmas Eve and having a nice dinner. Our Christmas Eve is spent entertaining the younger kids, eating my mother's yummy meatballs and lasagna, and exchanging gifts with my mother, sister, and grandmother.

Here are some photos from Christmases past...

A Christmas gift from my mother, wrapped like a teacher's desk - ruler, post-its, apple and all!

My Christmas break this year will be spent doing a little less relaxing and a bit more working. Although I am off from work, my tutoring continues throughout break. Boo.

Anyway, I've been getting into the Christmas mood at work, as well. We started Christmas decorating in mid-November...before Thanksgiving even hit. Here are some photos of crafts and holiday decor that has been seen strewn all over my classroom...

I will try and post some of our Christmas crafts during the next week. My students are getting so excited about Christmas! We are doing a Secret Santa gift exchange and even having our PTA dad come in, dressed as Santa, for our Christmas party. I'm probably just as exited as my kiddos!

Until then friends!

Just a Reminder

Pointing Fingers

I know I haven't posted in almost 20 days and I'm sorry! With all the drama that's been going on in my classroom, I haven't had the time - and even less motivation - to talk about the things that are going right.

So, to give y'all a brief recap of the "challenges" (and that's putting it nicely!) I have been having in my classroom...I had a parent complain to my principal that my classroom staff and I - and the school as a whole - were not implementing and following her child's IEP or BSP. In short, she made some pretty hefty (and false) allegations about the classroom. She then proceeded to pull her child out of school and was requesting a non-public school (NPS) for her child because she felt the district was not doing an adequate enough job. 

We ended up having an IEP meeting with my administrator, the mother, an aunt, our school psychologist, the speech and language assistant, an advocate from the Regional Center, along with the special education director, program administrator, and myself. What usually is a one or two hour meeting turned into a four-hour ordeal - just to give you a scope of how long and tedious this meeting was.

To sum up the meeting, the aunt went on a wild, inappropriate tangent multiple times during the meeting and completely detracted the team from focusing on a resolution to the situation rather than just blaming someone (and when I say someone, I mean me). She even had the audacity to question my credentials as a special education teacher. 

And here's the kicker - the mother didn't even sign the amendment meeting paperwork. 

Now, I am - apart from my students' parents - my students' top advocate for the education they receive from our school district and for any additional services or resources that I think that the child may benefit from. However, a NPS - in this particular case - is not the answer...nor is a more restrictive environment. (To be honest, I don't think the mother even knows what a NPS is and how they are usually reserved for the more "severe" students.) 

The meeting really upset me because - despite what they thought they were trying to accomplish - the family is doing a disservice for the child by requesting services that are completely inappropriate for him and will detract from the progress he has already made in the two and a half months he has been in my classroom. I was also really upset about some of the family's disillusions about how I should run my classroom (i.e. the mother wants to monitor the books I read in class, eliminate time-out for all the students, and do away with my behavior clip chart) - but I can deal with some highly opinionated parental bullsh*t. 

Anyway, the meeting is over and while I should be spending my Thanksgiving week-off break celebrating with my family and indulging in some much needed time off, I get the stress and anxiety of wondering if the mother is going to decide to send her child back to school come Monday or not (and all the stress that entails). 

My heart really breaks for my student. Because ultimately his education is what's at risk here and the parent can't see past her misconceptions about what my classroom should be like (in her opinion) to realize that he's already in an environment that is nurturing, professional, and uniquely tailored to his individual needs as a student and a child. 

The Aftermath

I know, I know...I'm behind on my posting schedule but I swear I have a legitimate excuse. I've been up to my eyeballs busy with parent-teacher conferences, field trips, classroom Halloween party plans, and getting sick. 

Our kindergarten and transitional kindergarten (TK) classrooms have an annual Halloween parade and this year we actually had it on Halloween...rather than the Friday after or the Friday before. Most of my students showed up - I had one stay home because he does not celebrate it, and another student was sick. I loved seeing my students so excited at getting the opportunity to walk around and parade with their kindergarten peers. 

I even dressed up. Can you guess what I was? (I apologize for the picture quality - the picture was taken with a cell phone!) 

My class got to go over to one of my colleagues classroom's and spent an hour participating in Halloween activities; they kids were making popcorn hands, cereal necklaces and bracelets, decorating Halloween cookies, and making ghost pops. My aide also had a station where the general education students could make ghosts out of paper plates...and that turned out to be a hit.

After that, my students came back to our classroom and our parent volunteers showed up for our classroom pizza party. The students had fun eating pizza, enjoying Halloween treats, and grooving to the Halloween music we had playing on my iPhone. 

After our party, the parents decided to take their kids home (because we had a short dismissal day), and so I had no students by 1:00. My aides helped clean up the classroom and put away all the Halloween decorations we had strewn up. (I TOTALLY forgot to take pictures for y'all to see!) Here is just one of the things we had up...

For Halloween Night, I ended up staying home with a date and my dog. Not wanting to waste my Halloween spirit, I had my dog dress up and we took her for a walk for all to see. She was quite popular as a bee.

Since Halloween, I haven't had much down time. We had a field trip to the farm yesterday and although I am sick, I still went. (I didn't trust my kids on their first field trip with a substitute.) That probably was not the smartest thing for my health, as I woke up this morning feeling worse than I did yesterday.

However, I don't have much time to be sick - I've also been planning our class reunion, which is this coming week. I invited all our students from my class last year to come back to our school for a reunion and pizza party. I can't wait to see all my kiddos from last year and see how they are doing in their first grade classrooms! I have so much planning and prepping though before our reunion on Friday.

So, for now...I leave you with a picture from last Halloween and my older sister's Halloween party. Note my costume (I'm big on recycling) and my younger sister's make-up - I did it! Until next time...

My New Favorite Blog

While I was perusing educational blogs this afternoon before class, I stumbled across Miss Allison's Class blog and was blown away by some of the stuff she had up. It is rare that I find blogs that garner my attention, let alone special education blogs that pique my interest but Miss Allison's really did.

Not only does she have some AWESOME ideas and blog entries (taco recipes and a blog on paraprofessionals...sounds vaguely familiar!) but she also put together a resource packet that had my jaw on the floor as I was looking through it!

The majority of students coming into my classroom have speech and language impairments, but this year I have two students who are diagnosed with autism. And while I've worked with students with autism before in both the private and public sectors, I am at a loss at what to do with one of the students in particular, who seems to be having sensory issues.

Low and behold, I come across Miss Allison's blog and find that she has created an entire "must-have sensory supports" packet, including pictures (for us visual learners!) Hallelujah! I immediately printed it out and will be taking it into my classroom tomorrow!

If you're a special educator and want some great ideas, I suggest browsing Miss Allison's blog. The least you will come away with is a slow-cooker recipe for chili chicken tacos!

RtI

We began RtI this week at my school campus and although I'm a special education teacher, my class has the opportunity to participate in RtI with the other kindergarten classes. Each kindergarten teacher - including myself - takes a group of students to work with and sends some of our students out to the other classrooms.

While RtI is mandated for all kindergarten teachers, what we do for RtI is completely up to the individual teachers. We aren't necessarily doing "interventions" in the sense the special education community would think of interventions, but we do work in small groups with specialized instruction.

I like RtI because it gives my students the opportunity to mainstream into the general education classrooms. Of the seven students that are currently in my classroom, four of them go out into one of the other RtI groups...which I think is pretty darn good!

Being the "skilled special education teacher," I get to take and teach the "super low" group of students. I only have two of my students stay with me for the RtI rotation and have about 7-8 other students from the three general education classes.

For my RtI group, I'm working on very basic skills such as learning to write their name and letter recognition and sounds. Our activities include singing a couple of different ABC songs and an alphabet sounds song and usually completing some sort of hands-on activity or worksheet.

This week we are working on the letter "A" and I had the kiddos complete an activity where they used magazines to find different "As." They then cut and paste the "As" onto the worksheet I made for this activity. (So, they're working on fine motor and phonics - double whammy!) Here's what the worksheet looks like...if you want a copy click here.

Hope y'all like it! I will try to post my next activity for RtI, if I can remember. Have a wonderful weekend...TGIF!

A Tale of Instructional Aides

My classroom, like many other special education classrooms, can only run smoothly and efficiently when all components are working cooperatively and effectively together. This is especially true in regards to classroom staff.

I am very fortunate to have three aides working in my classroom - two of which who have been working in this particular classroom longer than I have. From my four years as instructional aide and from working with aides now in a supervising teacher role, I have come to the conclusion that they are an integral part of my classroom and in order for my classroom to run smoothly, so must my work with my staff.

Although I have one new aide this year, my two "veteran" aides are wonderful. They provide the support when I need it, take initiative without direction, and ensure that things go according to plan...even when they don't. They go above and beyond and I feel very blessed to have such wonderful co-workers.

However, everything wasn't always peaches and sunshine in my classroom. I started my first year teaching working with an aide who had worked in this classroom for several years. I was the sixth teacher in six years, and I could understand how the aide felt entitled to the room. However, she did not make my first few months of teaching easy. She tried to assert her opinion at every turn and told me point blank that "this was not how things were run last year." She was very confrontational and the tension in the room was palpable. Although she was great with the kids, her professionalism was seriously lacking and it made for a very difficult work environment. Needless to say she did not last the year in my classroom.

I'm always amazed at the different teacher-aide dynamics that I have witnessed while working in the public school system. When I started my first year, I wanted to make sure that my aides knew what was expected of them in my classroom and that I had the same high expectations for them as I hold my students accountable to. (Not such a difficult request, right? Apparently it was though.)

I never made demands of my aides that I didn't think they would be able to accept. I showed them respect and consideration and I tried to make them feel that their opinions were always valued. I wanted to make sure that my classroom support felt a sense of ownership for our classroom...because that was a huge thing for me when I worked as an aide.

I always try to be the best teacher I can be, not only for my students but also for the other adults in my classroom who are watching me. I hope that I'm proving to be an exceptional role model...someone that they can respect. Because really, without that you have nothing.

The Good and the Bad

I have been really bad about blogging lately, and I'm kind of ashamed to say that with all the craziness that has been my life lately, updating my blog hasn't been high on my priority list. (Sorry, faithful readers!)

However, I did have time this evening to work out some of the design kinks in my blog and to post an update. I don't know what Blogger's deal has been but they need to get their business together! I was checking their Known Issues site and found that I must not be the only one experiencing issues with HTML edits and proper saving of changes. It makes me cranky that my blog doesn't work right and isn't esthetically pleasing!

In other news, this past week has been CRAZY at work! I had a new student start during the last week of September and he's been really tough...and I mean REALLY tough. He's thrown a major tantrum every day that he's been in class. And these aren't your average, run-of-the-mill, crying and screaming tantrums...these are the "grand Mal" of tantrums! He throws himself on the floor, will kick and hit anyone in close proximity to him, he bites (he's already drawn blood from one of my aides), he spits on my staff and myself, he uses profanity (he's only four and he uses the f-word and "bit*h" - among others)...all while he screams at the top of his lungs.

Now, I've had students in my class before that have thrown tantrums and who have been behavioral challenges. This new kid surpasses all the rest. Although the child was absent from school on Friday, I had an anxiety attack over the weekend just thinking about coming back to work yesterday and having to go through this whole ordeal again. And I consider myself a pretty tough cookie when it comes to dealing with stuff like this! This new kid is really stressing me out. Argh! I'm trying not to think too much about it because then it's only going to stress me out more. (Trying to think happy thoughts here!!)

In other news, I have officially become a "new leader" with the teacher-student travel ambassador program that I applied for. I have several information meetings that I need to attend and help out at, but I'm glad to get the opportunity to meet other teacher leaders and get "face time" with the company. My supervisor also said that there is still room on two trips for next summer - one to London/France (and surrounding cities) and the other to Australia - and she's going to slip me into one of those spots. Yay! Something to look forward to at the end of this school year! I'm really excited and cannot wait to get started.

Anyway, I will try to update on a more regular basis...and include some new freebies! Until then, think happy thoughts!

Under Construction

I don't know what's going on with Blogger! It's not allowing me to update my background and HTML and the stupid background is NOT the one that's scripted in the coding.

I blame Blogger for this. Until I figure things out, please forgive the mess.

FREEBIE: Newsletter Template

Happy Saturday! I realized that I hadn't posted any freebies in a while (forgive me!), so I decided to kick off the weekend by posting a template for the classroom newsletter that I created for my classroom parents.

I'm a huge believer in reciprocal communication between myself and my students' parents, and a weekly classroom newsletter is one way I keep my parents in the loop with the many happenings of my classroom.

I try to keep the newsletter to one page and even translate my newsletters into Spanish for those Spanish-speaking families in my classroom because I want everyone to know what's going on.

Click here for the newsletter. Enjoy!

Education Fail

This December I will be done with the last two classes I need in order to clear my special education credential (I'm clearing my multiple subject credential through BTSA), and had every intention of applying for the master's program (in special education) for this coming spring. 

Yesterday I was given some fairly disappointing news - our university is not accepting master's applications for my particular degree for the spring semester. This is disappointing for several different reasons: (1) If I am not in school at least part-time, I will have to start paying back my student loans, and (2) I am only 3 classes away from getting my master's degree and just want to get done! 

I emailed my program coordinator at the university - half freaking out! - wanting to know what my options are. I'm supposed to go in to see her next week. 

I have no idea what I'm going to do if I can't take any classes at the university. I guess I can always take   a couple of bogus classes, but that means taking out additional student loans for classes I don't really need or want. 

There is an autism class I need to take by 2014 in order to get the autism authorization added to my special education credential, but the class is only offered during the morning hours and with working full-time this would be impossible. 

I hate that state budget cuts in education are affecting students the hardest and not the politicians that put them in place.

All Things Hello Kitty

Happy Sunday! I had every intention of blogging yesterday from my mother's house (where I spent the night "babysitting" my 86 year-old grandmother while my mom was out of town) but her Internet was down and I couldn't connect with my Mac. So, forgive my absence!

I've spent my weekend working on homework for graduate school, buying needed office supplies for my classroom, and indulging my love of all things Hello Kitty. Upon entering Office Depot - where I was headed to only pick up a couple of computer mice and mouse pads - a new Hello Kitty display caught my eye. Apparently, Office Depot is now carrying Hello Kitty electronic accessories - headphones, USB connectors, multi-port outlets, and iPad cases. I saw the HK iPad case and HAD to have it, as it combines two of my favorite loves - pink and Hello Kitty!

I also found some HK goodies at Target last weekend, as well - a daily planner and a journal. 

I also picked up a new backpack to ring in my new school year. If you hadn't already guessed...it is also Hello Kitty.

I'd like to say that my love (er, obsession) of Hello Kitty simply consists of some stationary and a backpack. However, it doesn't - I have an entire shelf in my walk-in stuffed with stationary, pencils, pens, erasers, stamps, and other HK items that I've collected over the last few years. I recently ordered another HK lanyard/ID holder and found a HK earring set at Payless. 

I think I blame my mom for this love of all things Hello Kitty. She first took me to Sanrio when I was eight-years-old and has encouraged and fostered this love over the years. My grandmother did also - she would take my sister and I to Sanrio every August before school started and she'd buy me a new pencil box and pencils for the school year. 

Thanks, Mom and Grandma.

Class of 2013

We have officially started the school year! I've been so consumed with work and school, and have had very little time to blog in the last week. But I did want to write a quick little blurb about my new class.

I have the privilege of being the only kindergarten mild-moderate teacher in the district I work for, meaning that all students who are placed in the mild-moderate special day class (SDC) - regardless of where they live in the district - get bused to my work site and I get to be their teacher. Unlike other SDC teachers in my district, I teach strictly one grade level...which is very fortunate and unique.

This year I have only six students in my classroom - SIX! Last year, I started the school year with thirteen students. While it is a smaller class, I still have several "challenges." Despite these, though, my class is relatively mellow...unlike last year's class. 

To give a brief recap of my first days of teaching last fall, I had one student who would throw violent tantrums - punching, scratching, head butting, and biting myself, my aides, and other students. This student was also a "runner" and would try to run out the door of the classroom on a moment's notice. He also told me - on numerous occasions - that he "was going to have [his] mom kill and punch [me]." 

Another student of mine would lay on the floor and self-stimulate. Our efforts to get him involved in the small group centers were rendered useless when he'd scream, tantrum and throw himself back on the ground. 

I had another student who would not stay in his seat for more than 30 seconds and who - in a matter of minutes - had haphazardly reorganized all my math manipulatives. On top of this, I had several students who would cry at the drop of the hat. Oh! And I had one student who was non-verbal and could only speak in grunts. 

Our school psychologist came into my classroom yesterday and actually called this year's class "boring." Although I miss my kiddos from last year's class, I guess I would rather have "boring" than what I had started with last year. 

I'm hoping to get a couple of more students in the next few weeks (I've already been told that one of the inclusion students in the general education class does not look like they're going to cut it.) We'll see if I can work my magic on this group of kids, as I did last year. Wish me luck!

It's a Jungle in Here

Happy Labor Day Weekend! For many of us teachers, it's our final hurrah before we have to return to our classrooms to start a new school year on Tuesday. I, like many of my colleagues and teaching fellows across the state, have been busily preparing my classroom for the students' arrival on Tuesday.

The last two days have been spent attending a district-wide training for Direct Interactive Instruction (DII) - a new mandate throughout our district. I attended this two-day shindig with my special education colleagues and friends from across the district. I won't say much about the training...apart from it was almost a complete waste of my time and took away valuable time that I could have been using to do something productive for my classroom.

The training ended at 2:30 both today and yesterday and while my friends went home after the training, I dragged myself back to my classroom. I was on campus this evening until 6:00, and even then I wasn't done. (I'm returning to work 8 a.m. to noon tomorrow!)

However, my room is coming together nicely. I got all my bulletin boards set up - with the exception of my word wall and "Student of the Week" board - and they look pretty nice...even though they're missing student work! I organized, cleaned, rearranged, laminated, punched, and prepared materials I will need for next week.

This year, I decided to create (and hopefully maintain) a single classroom theme for the year. I got so tired last year spending entire afternoons and evenings ripping down butcher paper, putting new paper and borders up, and switching out bulletin boards. I figured having one cohesive theme throughout might cut down on that work load a bit (I will only have to change out the student work).

I scoured the Internet (and Pinterest) to find ideas I could use for my classroom. Here's what I came up with...tell me what you think!

Calendar Wall - Still a work in progress!

Front dry erase board

Behind my desk

Technology Center 

Writing portfolio wall 

This tree is a work in progress!

New flannel board 

"First, Then" - Pinterest Idea

My behavior management system 

Close-up

Another Pinterest idea... 

The dreaded time-out chair

As you can see, I have several things that are "in progress." I want to get more "jungle decor" into the room...I might work on that tomorrow. But overall, I don't think it looks half bad.

Thoughts?