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...