Today is Tuesday, September 27th.

The most popular mantra spewed at behavior management training is “Reward the Positive Behavior and Ignore the Negative”. That’s CRAP! You know who likes to spew that line of crap….people who do not deal with extreme negative behaviors.

Yes, teacher unbelievably annoyed by the student who taps their pencil, needs a drink of water every time it’s math time, or walks too slowly in from recess every day. Ignore that behavior.

You know what behaviors you can’t ignore? Hitting, kicking, biting, aggressively screaming. These types of behaviors escalate into worse, scarier behaviors until you just can’t ignore the student any more.

And the king of all negative, attention getting behaviors…the one that once the student realizes the power it holds means the entire school is SCREWED is POOP!!!

One of the other special day classes on campus has a student who has learned the power that playing with her poop holds and today over the radio I heard a 911 coverage request for just this behavior.

This student has two behavior tech aides assigned to just her to keep behaviors from escalating to this point…it’s not working. So what crime scene did I run in on today, this student wiping her own poop over the walls, the books, the desks and herself. WHY??!! Because her aides were chanting the horribly ill-advised mantra “Ignore the negative behavior!” Apparently they thought if they just ignored her she would stop and get back on track? The thoughts of the safety of the other students not crossing their minds.

These ‘professionals’ were actually upset when we intervened, stopped the student, (evacuated the other students) and cleaned her up. We gave her ‘too much attention for her off track behavior’. If we follow their line of thinking, she would eventually bore of not getting attention and independently decide to sit back down and get back to work. YEAH! That will happen as her aides are cowering in the corner grimacing!!

As we are cleaning up the mess, joking about why the district doesn’t provide us with Hazmat suits and how much we think a case on Amazon would actually cost us if we all chipped in, I began thinking this is exactly why I started this blog.

This is my life as a teacher. Before I had this blog, I would have come home, poured a glass of wine and taken a long, hot shower! Than later that even (over another glass of wine) shared this story with my husband. Although things like this don’t happen every day (thank goodness) this is my normal! And how un-normal this is in the life of an average teacher is terms I am coming to understand as I blog my life as a Special Ed Teacher!

So I’ve showered, I’ve prepped for tomorrow, I’ve now blogged…it’s time for my next glass of wine! Good Night and Cheers to a Poop Free tomorrow!!

Today is Monday, September 26, and I had to most fantastic school day yet this year!

This is most likely is because I took a mental health day and didn’t go in. It’s funny how I will drag myself into school on my death bed, but when a member of my family needs me, I have no second thoughts whatsoever about putting in for a sub!

Thursday and Friday last week were  a blur of teaching, behavior managing, prepping and sub plan writing. I was motivated to NOT spend my weekend writing sub plans and having to go back into my classroom to deliver them. Going into my classroom, even to just drop something off, always leads to taking care of this, that and the other thing, leading to lost precious weekend hours. So lost sleep and staying up late (and getting up early) are way better alternatives.

I spent a fabulous morning with my husband and then had the rest of my day to myself. It is amazing how productive I can be at home with a quiet house and motivation. I cranked up the music today, sang loudly because no one was here to complain, and finished a ton of things on my never ending ‘To-Do’ list. I even had time to go shopping, childless, before I had to pick up my own from school.

Although I took a personal day, and not a sick day, I am feeling like I would so much rather spend future sick days on my mental health, and continue to suck it up with I have a cold. Next time though, I am going to gift myself permission to NOT check my emails. I did today, and I realized after about the 14th one before 10 am, they will still be there tomorrow and I am ruining the very sanctitude of a personal day by letting work invade my ‘me time’!

Cheers to Mental Health Days! Back to reality tomorrow!!

Wednesday, September 21 and today I had a realization that elements of my job are just unbelievable.

Truth is stranger then fiction, and this story illustrates that truth like none other.

I had a discussion with a colleague about the smell of a students farts today. Yes, his farts! This students passes gas like no other and it just can’t be healthy. I have even had discussions with the school nurse about it and we have never been able to put our finger on why. Until today…

My colleague has first hand experience with a loved one that has a lactose allergy, and she swears that this student’s farts after he eats his yogurt indicates he has a lactose allergy. The smell is apparently undeniable. Far from a medical diagnosis, but certainly a thought that had never occurred to any of us before. Which led to a long discussion of how to approach this topic with mom! How do you pick up the phone and say, “Can we talk about the smell of your son’s farts? I think he might be lactose intolerant.”

Yes, this is just a glimpse into the ridiculously insane things discussed among Special Ed teachers.

This cannot be normal!

Today is Tuesday, September 20th, and although it is my Day 29, it is only the 26th day of school. And it has taken this long to get my first complaint of the year from my Frequent Flyer Parent!

Every teacher has one! That one parent that doesn’t seem to realize that there are other students in their child’s class. The parent that thinks the teacher actually lives at the school, anxiously awaiting their next email.

The problem I face is that I don’t get parents for just one school year like so many of my blessed colleagues! I get them for 2, 3, sometimes 4 years!! 4 YEARS of the same frequent flyer parent!!!!!!!! And mine is a doozie!

My frequent flyer parent frequent rapid fires off many emails in short periods of time, expecting an immediate response to all of them. And they aren’t short question emails either. This parent sends off emails that, if I printed them, would take up multiple pieces of paper.

Today’s complaint required me to be called into the principal’s office! Now, being called into the principal’s office use to scare me. I have a fast pass there now, so it no longer holds the dread that it once did. And what was my major transgression?? I did not answer an email fast enough! OH NO!!!! Really?

I am contractually obligated to answer parent correspondence within 48 hours, weekends and non-school days do not count. So when you email me after school hours on a Friday afternoon, I have until Tuesday afternoon to answer you. When you email me for information that I have shared with you many times, and you feel the need to quote your child’s IEP in the email,  I am going to take those 48 hours. Well, maybe I’ll be kind, and answer it in 46 hours. Like I did today. And it did not take tattling on me to my admin to get me to answer the email.

So tonight I am rewarding myself for having a functioning filter and deleting all the initial snarky things I typed in my email back to my Frequent Flyer Parent. I did feel better for typing them, but I do acknowledge that no good could actually come from saying them to this parent. So my reward is I am taking the night off from cutting, laminating, prepping, lesson planning, even pinteresting.

Today, Day 29, I am actually not working past my contractual hours. I clocked out at 4 and I will not be clocking back in until tomorrow morning! It’s Wine Time!

Today, Monday, September 19th I took the opportunity this afternoon to just sit in my classroom, at the end of the day, after everyone was on their way home, to enjoy the silence!

Some days, alright most days, my classroom is loud. Really loud. Rock concert loud! Today especially!! You know that humming, ringing sound you get in your ears after leaving a concert, and you tolerate it as a badge of honor because you had so much fun it was totally worth it. And thank goodness you don’t go to concerts every day.

Well I do! And the band playing…my students!

Sometimes I wish I had a way to measure decibels, but the information is probably depressing and will prove that the levels are dangerously high (and I know that already). And, I have no doubt in my mind that I will some day need hearing aides. (My family thinks I need them now!)

But back to the silence enjoyment…days like today feel like they will never end. When parents drop their children off and they are already screaming, and they just don’t stop. At all. The entire day. There is just no getting around it feeling like a ridiculously long day. So I decided today, instead of jumping right into cleaning and preparing for tomorrow, I would collapse into my desk chair (it was nice to actually sit in it for the first time today) and reflect on surviving the day. My room can be quiet and peaceful.

Then I remembered I can’t drink wine in my classroom, so I went about cleaning and putting away today’s mess, set out what I could for tomorrow, and now I am at home armed with my scissors and my laminator!

It’s FRIDAY EVE again! September 15th, and a pattern I do not like is starting to emerge…

I do not like that I am not blogging every day. An occasional missed blog day for ‘life happens’ is one thing, but this is getting to be a regular thing. A lot like the colleague that always arrives late or the student that always forgets their homework. I am going to work on that!

The trend of tardiness is stemming from the current suckiness of my job. But I have had long, hard, dark days before and I will have them again so I just need to put on my big girl panties and move on with it. So what if I came home with spit up on me again today, and it was the first thing that my husband notice…and I did not…and I ran errands all over town before I came home…apparently with student spit visible on my shirt.

And so what if I popped ibuprofen before the first recess, and again at lunch, and maybe again before the final bell rang for the day.

It is all just part of the job I love! Right?

So instead of dwelling on the negative (so much negative right now) I would like to share a funny thought I had today.

My kids (my actual kids, not students) love brunch and brinner. There is just something about eating breakfast food at not breakfast time that fascinates them. So if we can have breakfast for lunch (brunch) and breakfast for dinner (brinner), I vote that teachers can have Winner (wine for dinner)!!

Winner, Winner, Wine for Dinner! And I am off to have seconds!

Yes, today is Tuesday, September 13th, and no, I haven’t blog for three days. My last 3 days at work have been crappy!! And I just haven’t had to words (or the energy) to express how badly my job sucks right now.

Remember day 21…the day of 2 assemblies. Well, I have been the talk of the campus (although no one has had the balls to come up, talk with me directly and share their thoughts). Apparently I have several colleagues that do not think my students should be included in all school assemblies because they are ‘too distracting’ to the other students and mine ‘don’t get anything out’ of them anyway.

Although my staff and I paid for it later, my students were the quietest, and at least gave the impression of, being well behaved students. They sat still and didn’t talk to anyone else. You had to look really close to see that they all were playing with their fidgets and not really paying attention to the speakers, but not screaming/running/hitting/rolling/climbing over peers through the assembly was a bright hash mark in the win column as far as I am concerned. (I am ignoring the screaming/crying/hitting/biting/general protesting that happened later).

My SPED colleagues and I have spent the last few years really trying to build a bridge between Special Ed and Gen Ed and we thought we were making good progress, but now it looks like we were just the out of town family visiting, everyone is excited to see us at first but now it’s time to go home. And I’ll admit, it hurts a little.

But that is not even all of it…I am mentally and physically beaten up, both literally and figuratively. Even though the powers that be up the latter from me all came from working in a classroom, they clearly have forgotten their time in the trenches! I rarely ask for help from them, but when I do it is because my bag of tricks has failed miserably and my students are in desperately need of additional help! But can I get extra help from them? HELL NO! I can’t even get a visit/call/return email from my program specialist…or as I have come to view her, the gate keeper to specialist who can actually offer assistance. My staff and I are quite literally getting hurt every day from just two of my students who are not adjusting to being back in school and their preferred mode of protest is to hit, bite, kick and spit. Everyone. I have had to evacuate my classroom for the safety of all others. But that somehow does not warrant extra help, or even a returned phone call.

In this current darkness, if feels like these are the hardest days in teaching I have ever experienced. If there is a lesson to be learned, I am far from seeing it, and I am beyond frustrated. It’s only day 24 and I have 161 days left before the end of the school year (can you tell I am counting) and I have never been this burnt out, and especially this early in the school year before.

OH, and I still have several things to cut, laminate and prep for tomorrow. How many glasses of wine are too many glasses of wine on a school night?!?!

Thursday, September 8 was a very unusual day.

The first unusual occurrence was today there were 2 school assemblies. I can’t remember another school day in history that had 2 school assemblies in them. It seems like a weird scheduling oversight, but I digress.

School assemblies stress out my students. First, they don’t happen near frequent enough for them to be routine, and anything out of routine throws off my students. But 2 in one day, and they were beside themselves upset. But I find it extremely important, and in fact, place a high priority on having my class join school wide events such as school assemblies. Making sure my students are included and an integrated part of the school community is important, not only for my students, but for the whole school community. But with that comes a really, really rough day. My students are out of their comfort zone, and therefore act out like no other day. Hence, myself and my staff are at home popping ibuprofen and icing!

Next comes the extremely rare occurrence…visits by admin to my classroom.   My school site is almost the farthest away from the district office as you can get in my city. My classroom is almost the farthest you can get from the front office. I have never actually used any official measuring device to clock the distance, but my guesstimation has me the farthest you can get by sheer observational data…no one ever comes to visit…unless they need something!

So today I had both the principal of my school, and my assistant director of my department visit my classroom. And not together. And not to discuss the same topics. And not to ask the same things of me. Seeing both of these individuals, in the same day, at different times, not in at a training, is equivalent of seeing Big Foot in the wild, with his wife, and children! The visits also left me a little dizzy.

So to reward myself for surviving both school assemblies, and both visits from admin, I am taking the night off from prep work and report writing, and enjoying an extra glass of wine! Tomorrow is Friday anyway, so what could go wrong?!

Wednesday, September 7 was a very good day!

It’s incredible how the promise of a free lunch lightens the mood campus wide, and today was one of 2 days a school year we get lunch provided for us!

Cafeteria food is way worse as a teacher then I ever remember it being as a kid, and my friends and I complained about it as kids. Personally, I would rather go without lunch then eat what they are serving for hot lunch at school. This is a widely shared opinion among my colleagues. So every morning, just like from day 1 in kindergarten decades ago, I take my packed lunch box to school.

Not Today! Today when the lunch bell rang, there was an audible rush to the teachers work room where we laughed as we piled our plates with hot food that we didn’t make, pack, and didn’t come out of the cafeteria. Today is also 1 of 2 safe days a year to spend lunch in the teachers’ break room. No one ever seems to be grumpy today!

Teaching went fine today. Learning happened and yadda yadda. Oh, an no one threw up. But to me, that isn’t nearly as interesting or fun as Free Lunch! Now I am off to prep for tomorrow.

Tuesday, September 6th and today is the day!

As a Special Ed teacher, I deal with quite a few unique situations that Gen Ed teachers just don’t. And I don’t even think they are aware enough to appreciate how special that is.

Today is one of those situations. It is a rare day that any of my colleagues get thrown up on. And I don’t mean, a student gets sick on their desk in the classroom and they have to help them to the nurses office while the janitor cleans the mess. I mean, have a student lose their cookies on them! It happens so frequently in my classroom that I have had periods of time when I used that as a measure of a good day. Good Day = Not wearing someone else’s throw up. Bad Day = Have to run home and change before running errands after school.

One of these days I will get smart and just keep a change of clothes at school. And maybe have a shower installed in the bathroom!

On a positive note…I am feeling much better! Had a fun relaxing weekend, and thanks to Labor Day, I didn’t have to do home work on Sunday afternoon. I saved all my prep work for Monday 🙂