As a Special Ed Teacher, positive reinforcement is an every moment, of every day reality. I am constantly give verbal praise, stars on token boards, handing out earned reinforcers/desired items throughout every activity, every day. Every student and even every para, is receiving positive reinforcement from me, all day.

“I really like how X is sitting in his chair!”

“I really like how Y is keeping safe hands!”

“Thank you for giving N the chance to get off the floor all by himself!”

“I really like how this para is giving that student choices of her reinforcer instead of choosing for her!”

Some days I feel like I am just spending it kissing ass trying to get students and para’s alike to work and not spend the day verbally protesting. It is a powerful tool. Showing appreciation for even just the smallest of accomplishments keeps people (children and adults alike) motivated.

So positive reinforcement is my reality…giving it that is. Until yesterday!

Third week of school, half my regular staff decides to go on vacation, one para has been given the reality that this is not the right job for her by HR (THANK YOU HR), so of course that means it is time for an observation! My perception of my classroom during the observation drastically contrasted what the observer saw. I thought it was chaos. I am trying to do our morning meeting and morning work routine, during which I have a couple of kiddos having behavior meltdowns, and one is just screaming for the sake of screaming, but I do have a few engaged and for them I kept things moving.

What she saw she felt the need to email to everyone up the latter from me! An email that was later forwarded to me from my admin.

She raved about how well I was adapting and modifying my curriculum to make it accessible to everyone; using low tech and high tech devices to help my students participate; all the while tending to the behavior needs of all the students in my room.

When I read the email I quite literally cried. It is so rare to actually RECEIVE POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT that I was at a loss for words. It was such an attitude adjuster for me! I have been working so hard, and I am so exhausted. I still don’t know how to express how fabulous it feels to have someone notice, AND take the time to tell those in charge of judging you, that you’re doing a wonderful job!

It was a wonderful reminder for me of just how powerful and important positive reinforcement is. So with 15/185 days in the bank, I am rewarding myself a desired activity….PJ’s and Wine Time! The prep work will be waiting for me tomorrow!!

I set the bar pretty low for professional development days, especially the mando ones before school starts. Experience has just taught me that if I don’t expect much, and I remember my laptop to covertly work on classroom prep, then the day tends to be less of a waste of my time and less frustrating all the way around.

I think this year, even if I had laid my fictional bar on the ground, the reality that was my 2 PD days would have found a way to tunnel underground beneath my bar!!

(Disclosure, this is most likely going to be my bitchiest, whiniest blog post to date, but I have concluded that if I don’t rant this out, there just isn’t any hope my BTS mood is going to improve before the bell rings tomorrow! Please excuse any grammar and spelling errors)

How hard is it for admin to look at the list of required staff members they are herding into the meeting room to at least get a head count, and THEN actually make sure there are enough chairs for everyone??!!!

For the third year in a row, we walk into the staff meeting, with pretty tables decorated for each of the grade level teams BUT NOTHING FOR THE SPECIAL ED TEAM!! No table, no chairs, no acknowledgement of our existence. And this year it wasn’t even us neglected. All the specialist (music, science, PE, SLPs, nursing) were left out. We are so use to it that we just start filing towards the back joking among ourselves that we will just be exercising our rights to flexible seating; and, heat rises so it’s cooler on the floor anyway.

After participating in the high energy ice breaker, the grade levels divide up and start talking math curriculum. YAY! Super relevant to those of us in the back row. I flat out asked to be excused this year. I just didn’t have the time or patience to pretend to be interested this year. Plus, I still had not put the finishing touches on my paraprofessional training for the next day.

So let’s fast forward to that. No need to dwell on the many other waste of time activities I was dragged back to interrupting the actual productive time I was having with my SPED team.

Instead of just reading from the page, I made a PowerPoint presentation. I know they are over done and boring, but I added transitions, animations and pictures to try and break up the boring.

MY TITLE SCREEN WASN’T EVEN UP FOR 10 SECONDS BEFORE ONE OF MY PARA’S POPS OFF WITH A COMPLAINT!!!

“I can’t really read that font, can you change it?”

“It’s kind of hard to see, can you make it brighter?”

WTF!!! Put on your glasses, and let me turn off a couple of lights before you open your mouths! STFU!!!

What we do most in a SPED class is give positive praise/reinforcement all day every day! I have to do it for my para’s as much as I have to do it for my students. That said, I wasn’t expecting them to blow sunshine up my ass with compliments/positive reinforcement for the countless hours I spent working on their training and catering it to exactly what they need to be taught/retrained on. BUT I did expect less complaining. That’s my fault. See, set the bar too high. Bar lower then compliments, but higher then complaints was too high.

I also spent a huge amount of time cleaning and reorganizing my classroom to meet the needs of the students I have coming in this year. For instance, I got all new (to me) desks that match. No one has a desk that is a different color, size, shape, better or worse than anyone else.

“I don’t really like it”; “Can we go back to the way it was?”, “I think the desks should be turn around the other way; this way the kids can get into everything in their desks”! The last comment was my favorite of the stupid classroom comments. Well, duh!! How else are they going to get their morning work binders I have spent all summer cutting, laminating, and cutting again, or their IEP work bins if their desks are turned backwards. Not to mention, student desks are not meant to be sat at from the back!

Again, set me bar too high! This time I guess I kind of did expect a compliment, or at least a kind word. A “hey thanks for cleaning up the HUGE mess we made over ESY” would have been greatly appreciated!

Those are my rant highlights! The ones that keep circling in my head. There were many other WTF moments over those 2 days but, hopefully now that those are out, I can get some peace.

Tomorrow starts the first day of instruction. When I left exhausted, feeling defeated and super frustrated on Friday, I left all work there. I promised myself a weekend free of classroom responsibilities and thinking. That of course was also setting the bar to high because I can’t stop thinking about classroom stuff; what needs to be completed; do I need to change my daily schedule; did I plan enough activities; back to school night is this week, do I need a new parent questionaire; look at what that teacher I follow in IG is doing for BTSN, should I do that?

I think it is wine time! Wish me luck tomorrow!!

What will you miss most when you return back to school?

I have a list of things I will miss:

• Drinking coffee while it is still hot
• Peeing when I have to, without waiting ’til I can
• Reading books without pictures, for fun
• Binge watching Netflix
• Leisurely surfing the internet (TPT, IG, Pinterest, Amazon, etc)
• Not having to answer parent emails within 48 hours
• Not sitting through meetings (Staff, IEP, Professional Development, yadda yadda)

But what I think I will miss the most is waking on my own in the morning with the entire day ahead of me to do what I wish. Where will I take my own children today? Will we even get dressed? Will I clean, prep for classroom, be productive at all? Or will I play with my kids, make waffles for lunch, and lounge around reading.  Yes, what I will miss most is the freedom summer brings! I did spend way more time than I thought I would prepping for this upcoming school year while binge watching old shows with my children on Netflix, because teachers truly do not have summers off.  But I enjoyed so much more too and I am just not ready to go back to the real world tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will be sitting in mandatory professional development, which is undoubtedly going to be a waste of my time. And I would be lying if I didn’t have things planned that I can slyly do on my computer while I am being “professionally developed” to make the time go by faster. And it makes me tear up to think that my own kids will be home, in their pj’s playing without me. I wish I could Skype in tomorrow!

So tonight we are staying up super late watching movies and eating ice cream. I don’t care if I am tired in the morning. That’s what coffee is for! I am enjoying this last night of summer!!

 

Sunday loses its awesomeness the moment you wake up!

No, hear me out. Friday’s awesomeness lasts all day because, as soon as you survive the work day, your weekend starts and you don’t have to set a work alarm the next day.

Saturday’s options are limitless because as soon as you start to even get the slightest bit anxious about all the things that need to be accomplished this weekend, you have the scapegoat Sunday to put off all responsibility on. Plus, again, you don’t have to set a work alarm the next morning.

Then comes SMonday!!! You get to sleep in, or at least not wake up for work, but then as soon as you start wiping the sleep from your eyes, the reality of all the chores/errands/tasks/prep work you put off doing yesterday is now due! There’s no putting it off ’til tomorrow.

Today, I am mourning the loss of my Sunday. I didn’t take advantage of being able to truly appreciate you this summer, and now your all gone. Replaced by your ugly cousin SMonday. I go back to school this week. No more is it an option to go in and “get a head start” and prepping for the new school year. This week it’s mandatory. Along with professional development that is always so very relevant (NOT!!!) I still have a mountain of things on my to-do list to get accomplished!

I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK YET! I’M NOT READY!!!

I am going to drown my misery with bottle of wine! (I mean a glass) [No, I really don’t]

So I was Back-to-School shopping with my children at Walmart today. I was buying both their school supply needs as well as some (more) things for my classroom. We were next in line with a full cart of fresh new school supplies when I was discussing with my teenager why I was separating our purchases (I wanted two receipts so I could keep track of how much I’ve spent this year on my classroom) and how I was fighting the urge to not over stock my classroom this year in preparation for the new students I will undoubtedly get over the school year while everything was still easy to find and on sale.

This is when the woman ahead of my in line asks, “Are you a school teacher?”  I, of course answered yes, and then she follows up with, “And your buying your own school supplies for your students?” Again I answered yes. It is not the first time someone has asked me in Walmart while I am Back-to-School shopping these questions….but what happened next is!!

She then proceeds to insist on making a contribution to my efforts to provide school supplies to my students, all while she is trying to put a wad of cash in my hand! I try and refuse, explaining this is what teachers do, but she is amazingly persistent. The thoughtful things she said about teachers, the work we do, and how meaningful it is almost made me cry! I had tears in my eyes as I tried to refuse her money, even stating I don’t even have parents of my students who try and contribute, but in the end she won. She wouldn’t hear of me refusing her kind gesture. I thanked her repeatedly, even as she was walking away out the door.

I am so touched by this act of kindness from a stranger. Even as I type this I have tears. So often as teachers we feel over worked and under appreciated. Even blamed for the problems of our students. This generous, kind woman, who took the money out of her own pocket to help me and my students, did something few others (who aren’t related to me) have done…made me feel valued and appreciated!

I did not ask your name today, but I do appreciate you and your kind generosity. THANK YOU!

SO, I think the toughest lesson I learned last school year (and there were many) was that my classroom cannot run without me. Should be flattering, right? But it really isn’t!!

I was injured and although I am still recovering, it took months before I could get the Work Comp doctor to clear me to go back into my classroom. I know my colleagues held images of my days spent in PJ’s binge watching Netflix! That is so very far from reality. My actual days were spent listening to reports (better described as complaints) about how my class was running and writing sub-plans, including all the prep work required. Which completely sucks all by itself, but then when you go in every morning to find that most, if not all, of what you had prepped for the day or two before hasn’t even been touched yet, you get completely overwhelmed with frustration.

Do you know what makes prep work fun? Or if not fun, at least keeps us motivated to do it? (And why we are spending our summers “off” doing it?) At least for me, the payoff comes when I get to actual use what I have prepped with my students! Seeing them learn from it, or seeing for myself that my new file folder game/activity/task box was a swing and a miss! And that was not happening for me. I would spend my days prepping and then go in the next morning to see it was a complete waste of my time!!!

My para’s made it very clear that they are not paid enough to “teach my students”, or clean up after them or themselves by the looks of my classroom! Instead they threw my classroom routines and schedules out door in exchange for all day play time and recess…and then complained to me that student behaviors were off the charts! WELL DUH!! When students lose their routine, and have no structure, they get bored and act out. This is a universal truth and students with severe special needs are not different in that respect. Their acting out behaviors may be different from other kids but the cause is the same.

So that is a whole lot of complaining in the guise of a background story. The lesson learned…I need to train my paraprofessionals better. I think I have discovered it is not enough to tell them the ‘what we do’ but I need to get them more invested by teaching them the ‘why we do’.  I also need to be more of a leader and less like a friend. I would never tell my administrators that it is “too hard so I am not doing it” because they are my bosses, not my friends. I need to somehow foster more of a “let’s figure this out” environment than a “give up and complain to a friend” safe place.

So that is how I have spent a lot of my summer time. In addition to prepping for my students and their new school year, I am prepping for my para’s. I get them for one whole day before the school year starts. A day they usually look forward to as time to catch up and gossip about their summers while I try and squeeze in a meeting packed full of important information. This year I am spending that entire day to train and prepare them for my ‘new and improved’ classroom. Hopefully at the end of this day they will take them that we are a team, and it is their jobs to teach the students in our classroom, to take data, and clean up after themselves! EVEN WHEN I AM NOT THERE!