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.