Today is Friday, August 12th, 2016, and a mandatory teacher work day. This is the only day we get paid to prepare our classrooms for the upcoming school year. The gen ed teachers had 7 hours free and clear to do what it is gen ed teachers need to do. I am a special ed teacher, which means that I am also a team leader. On my team I have the paraprofessionals that work with me daily, as well as the individual specialist (such as a speech and language pathologist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, and so on). I should include the parents of my students, my program specialist and my administrators since they are all part of the IEP team, but that is not really relevant to today’s post, and I would never really feel comfortable saying I “lead” over them.

As part of my role as ‘team leader’, it is my responsibility on this one day a year to train my staff. This training includes reviewing pertinent policies (what to do in the event your injured at work, what to do if a student has a medical emergency, and such), classroom policies, daily schedule changes, and the individual needs of EACH of the students in my class. Since I am responsible for filling an entire work day for them, and truly I also have a classroom to set up for school starting Monday, I also use them to help me prep.

Like I said in yesterday’s post, I had a To-Do list that fit on only one sheet of college rule binder paper (both sides). Last night I wrote an agenda of all things I needed to review with my paraprofessionals as the ‘staff meeting’ portion of my day, but I also selected some of the many things that needed to be done and assigned them to my individual staff members based on their individual strengths, or so I thought!

I could drone on and on about how my best laid plans went ridiculously off track today, but I am really not into this blog to bore you, so I will summarize it to say that the bulletin board I thought one person could handle took 3; the labels I needed made took reiterating the directions 3+ times (and 2 people, not 1); and,  the one project I thought to be so simple went so far off course I need to completely redo it and I am not sure how to without hurting this person’s feelings, but really?! with demonstrating an example of how I want it, and offering assistance countless times during the process, I am at a loss at the finished product.

I don’t know if I am more physically tired from today, or mentally, but days like today remind me that working with children (even children with severe special needs) is easier than working with adults sometimes.

OH, and not counting my time spent blogging (I never will), I put in a 10 hour work day! Almost ready for the 1st day of school!