I am really up a creek today! I have played the last 2 weekends with no thought to getting any prep work done!! AND TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN!

There will be no sleep for me tonight as I plan and prep all the festive Halloween stations for my classroom party tomorrow. I shouldn’t even be blogging right now, but procrastination seems to be my middle name 🙂

I have no idea how I survived today. Luckily I did have plenty of learning activities planned and prepped as this years class seems to take a little longer to do any one thing, so I am way over prepped for the month of October (and apples go along with pumpkins so no one seemed to notice when I supplemented with an apple themed activity today). Let’s also not discount craftivity time! When the going gets tough, I grab a craft!! Today, free painting with water colors for everyone.

But all the while I am leading students through learning tasks, large group and small group alike, my brain was working overtime…you still have this to do for tomorrow and that, and don’t forget about this. OH, and you saw that thing on Instagram, you could pull it off. WHY DID I TAKE THE WEEKEND OFF???!!! Oh yeah, out of town family visiting…what I should have done is put them to work. That was a completely lost opportunity.

So now I have put off getting back to prepping long enough. Hopefully the pudding and jello has set. Anyone else planning very messy, sensory activities tomorrow in celebration of Halloween…AKA MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY!!!!!!! How could I let it sneak up on my without its due attention?!

Wine tonight will be served in my Halloween themed glass! Prep first…then WINE!! Because there will be no time for sleep!

I share the common feeling among special ed teachers that teaching a special day class on a mainstream campus is a lot like teaching on an island. Moving special day classes from their isolated, separate school sites to classrooms on “regular school” campuses does not automatically guarantee inclusion!

I find that I am in a constant struggle to advocate and insure my students rights to be included in the general population of my school. The SDC students are almost always excluded from assembly schedules, left off assigned seating for special school activities/concerts, and when my students do push into mainstreaming time for weekly specialties (like library, music, science, or PE) the gen ed teachers come complain that my students are interfering with their students abilities to learn. My students cause ‘too much of a distraction’! (Doesn’t stop me from sending them!!)

It is both frustrating and heartbreaking!

That is why this week was SO AMAZING!!

After years making suggestions of how my students can be included; finding out after the fact and explaining how that was a perfect opportunity to blend our two classes for some fun learning; or flat out begging to plan joint activities, my class finally got an invitation to push into Fall Fun Rotations with the 1st graders!! IT WAS AMAZING!!!!!!

Now, were my students able to independently participate in each and every activity? No. But did they try and did they have fun? Absolutely!! It was exactly the experience I have been hoping for. My students sitting side by side gen ed students in a shared learning activity, fitting in! I snapped about 100 pictures, and if you didn’t know who was who, you wouldn’t be able to point out my kiddos from the rest. Every student was working together, getting along, being supportive! They laughed together; got messy together; they had fun learning together!!

I feel like a ROCK STAR! I wish that this was the time admin chose to grade me. I think I would finally get a “making improvements in the area of mainstreaming students” on my report card!

I am hoping these opportunities will continue and that it was not just a one time day pass to the mainland. The island gets lonely and rarely are invites to visit accepted. So I will continue to check my mailbox and hope that another invite comes soon for us to visit and hold on to the happy memories of this vacation into gen pop! It was a lot of fun and I have the pictures to prove it!

AS teachers we all except the beginning of the year exhausted, and the end of the year exhausted, and even the count down to winter break exhausted (I do miss calling it Christmas break!)!! But today I have come to realize a whole new level of exhaustion…FIELD TRIP EXHAUSTED!!!!!

AND to complicate matters, I made the worst of all schedule errors today, as I am apparently I am a glutton for punishment, and I scheduled a field trip with my SDC class this morning and arrived back JUST IN TIME to shove an apple in my mouth on my way to the conference room for an IEP meeting. I don’t think I have 2 brain cells to rub together to make a spark.

Both activities were a success (only because if I don’t find a way to laugh I will cry so I am able to find the positive in most things, even if the bus ride there included me getting peed on) but both activities are completely mentally taxing. Being out in public with students who are non-verbal and have severe disabilities is a huge responsibility and I find myself constantly counting heads. I am taking pictures on my phone almost constantly just so I have a record of the last time I saw a student, and if need be, what he/she was wearing at the time they disappeared. Plus it is a change in their daily routine, so bring on the meltdowns!

Then there was my IEP.

I have been completely beaten up this year during IEP meetings. As an educator, I haven’t been able to wrap my brain around why parents think it is my job to “cure” their children. Thanks to random “D List” celebrities, every parent thinks their child’s autism can be cured, and I am on the receiving end of their anger when they are in another annual IEP meeting and I am not telling them their child is perfect and ready for full time inclusion in a mainstream grade-level class. It breaks my heart every time because I just have to sit there and take it. I can’t yell back; I can only point out the positives and the growth their child has made in the last year. And I am left wondering, do they yell at their children’s doctor as passionately as the yell at me? So I was very nervous going into this meeting. Will these be the parents I have met with in the past, or are they going to go all cray-cray on me? And I am already exhausted, as I pointed out, from the morning field trip.

I have sarcastically referred to “My Favorite Parent” in the past, referring to my most high-maintenance parent, but I truly got to meet with my favorite set of parents today. These are the text book parents that are written about when referring to how collaboration in the IEP team should work. They get it. They work regularly with their child and have an appreciation for her level of functioning. Today’s meeting went the way SPED teachers dream of. These parents came prepared, reviewing the reports sent home ahead of time; they had meaningful questions and observations; we actually got to spend time discussing how best to support this student. What works at home and what doesn’t. What is working at school and what isn’t. No yelling. No accusations that I am not doing enough for this student.

My body is still exhausted to its core. My brain still hurts. And it is still a whiskey night. But as I put my head on my pillow (is 6 o’clock too early?) I know that I did my best today and my best today was great enough.

So day 41 on was a no student day. Felt more like in school suspension, but technically it was called “Professional Development” day. Yep, 7 hours later and boy to I feel better prepared to teach on Monday and more developed (professionally)….NOT!!!!!

This PD was like almost all the ones before it. The gen ed grade level teams have their well planned training complete with guest speakers and full color handouts, and the SDC teachers get shoved in the tiny conference room to re-hash the same things we always re-hash. There really isn’t an interesting story there.

In fact I really haven’t had any interesting stories to share. I am on a Ferris Wheel this year, dealing with the same round of issues constantly at a dizzying speed.

I do have a 2 new parents contending for the top position of My Favorite Parent. I lost my MFF last year when his child graduated from my class and I thought I might be rewarded with at least one year off from cray-cray parents BUT less than a quarter of the way into this new year, I have 2 parents neck and neck in the race. Let’s hope that they don’t both win a spot! One parent wants to know why her child is having so many potty accidents at school when over the summer, when she took her child every 30 minutes, he didn’t have any. And parent #2 wants to know why, after being in school for 2 years, his son isn’t cured and ready for gen ed.

I also have new admin that has truly no appreciation for what the SDC teachers deal with on a daily basis, and asks border line insulting questions. “Can’t we hold the SDC students to the same standards as all the other kids on campus?” WTH??!! 41 days into the school year and I am still not getting prep periods during the school day and admin has no appreciation for how unreasonable that is, and how far behind I am getting. She can’t seem to process that we do not get pretty little gift wrapped boxes of curriculum materials each month like the gen ed teachers get (ok, maybe they’re not gift wrapped boxes but they are delivered with no extra effort or thought required). I have to create and print my curriculum. I have to adapt, modify and differentiate each lesson for each one of my students. Then I have to prep it, cut it, laminate it. As well as assess, data track and create lessons that target their individual IEP goals. It seems to be a shock, but all that takes time, that I am not getting while at school. I normally spend hours every night and on weekends working just to keep up, and that was when I got preps. This year without them I am drowning in work. OH, AND I have IEP’s to prep for.

Although this year it is the off-putting behaviors, whining and complaining from my para’s that is driving me drink. I can’t even wrap my brain around all their issues this year.

So today I am protesting! I am not prepping!! I am not adulting!!! I am spending the day goofing off. I may wake up regretting it in the morning, but I am will to risk my Monday morning hangover for binging on my mental health (and wine) today!

Cheers 🙂