The end of the year is in sight and we are all feeling overwhelmed and stressed. There just is not enough time to get it all done!! So let me tell you how I have spent my last 3 weeks counting down to the end of the year with 3 more weeks to go…

I have spent it doing NONE OF THE ANDS!!!

What does that mean??

I have spent my last 3 weekends enjoying family time. Just family time. NOT family time AND:

• prepping for next week in my classroom, and
• answering parent emails, and
• surfing TPT for new classroom ideas, and
• searching Pinterest for new classroom ideas, and
• scrolling through Instagram, and
• cutting, laminating, cutting again, and
• writing IEPs, and
• thinking about what needs to be done in my classroom (mostly), and
• writing lists of ideas for next school year to prep over summer, and
• STRESSING ABOUT MY CLASSROOM

What I am coming to realize is that there is always work that needs to be done for my classroom and my kiddos, but that I have my own my own family and my own biological children who are growing like weeds and they need me too, in the present, not juggling their wants and needs with those of my classroom. So is my stress level better during the school week? Maybe, maybe not!! Do I feel more rested Monday morning, perhaps a little? But I am really enjoying my weekends with my family and if I had any doubts about this choice that I am making, it was clearly illustrated how I am making the correct one with effort and time put into “appreciating” me during Teacher Appreciation Week!  Is saying a simple ‘Thank You’ really that hard?!…and no giving me a block of Big-Box-Store Kleenex that was needed back in January and a bottle of hand-sanitizer (becoming an annual tradition from my parents…a biproduct of having the same kids multiple years in a row) do not say thank you! They say you don’t need a day off, even if you sick, so don’t get sick!!

So fellow teachers, embrace the power of NONE of the ANDS and take back your weekends! I know I will be enjoying the sunshine, a little wine, good food and good laughs…with my family!

In my frustrated state of mind, I have decided to reach for a sport analogy in attempts to describe it.

Being part of an IEP team is a little like being part of a track team I think. After all, track is full of individuals competing, but their overall performance adds up to a team total, for the win or loss. This applies to an IEP team, made of up of different specialists with different talents (aka, the different individual track athletes) but if everyone does their best, the total equals up to a win for the student (and by connection the team)!

BUT if even ONE single team member blows off their event (aka, responsibility), their practices (i.e. treatment times) and ultimately the big meet (aka, the IEP meeting) we’re all left taking the loss and accepting the punishment!!!

So I have one specialist on my team who doesn’t seem to understand the concept of compliance, and fulfilling treatment minutes, and thinks, apparently, that IEP meetings are OPTIONAL??!! And this person blew off a big one this week, walking us right into the parents lawyering up! WHY??!! I am doing my best by this student as is every other specialist on the team, but ONE. So, to get back to my analogy, we’re now all running punishment laps while this one specialist is who knows where, probably sipping hot coffee and enjoying a sit down lunch!!!

Now, a lesser person would throw this person under the train….I am just waiting for that temptation to subside.

So I have spent my weekend fretting and worrying over the upcoming meeting, knowing that it is NOT my fault, and knowing exactly who to blame, but that doesn’t make me feel better. We are all under a microscope now and suffering the punishment.

Thank goodness for good wine and a supportive family!!

….and other thoughts!

So I did not realize exactly how long it had been since I posted a new blog until yesterday. I knew that time was passing and that I was neglecting this creative outlet in my life, but didn’t realize it had been that long.

I have been working in special education for more than 20 years but this is the by far the most difficult year yet. I feel like I am stuck on a hamster wheel. Everyday is SOOOOO like the other, and not in a good way. I have never had such a physically aggressive class, and for the first time ever, I have suspended students for their combative behaviors !!! It is NOT a good feeling!! BUT I AM NOT A PUNCHING BAG!!

And I don’t want my blog to be all about whining, complaining and horror stories about needing body armor. The funny, positive, or WTF moments have been so few this year! So instead of blogging and sharing my trials and tribulations as a special ed teacher, I have been running in my hamster wheel doing the same things every day….but it needs to stop!! I need to get back to embracing the things I love, and one of those things is blogging about my WTF moments with parents, para’s, specialists, fellow teachers and my students alike.

So I am back, and my (mostly) daily blogs may not be funny or very insightful every time but they are serving a therapeutic purpose because it’s not just a hashtag, the struggle to be a special ed teacher is REAL and daily.

Today was not a wine day….it was most definitely a whiskey day. Some days are not washed away by the sweet taste of fermented grapes and desperately need something stronger…because we all know that whiskey is made from teachers tears!!

Yes, I am finally ending my radio silence….more on that in a later post.

Today I am inspired to once again share my successes and hardships after surviving yet another rainy-recess day!! This must be the 44th day with inside recess since winter break, but I am seriously not counting.

During my daily prep, the approximate 16 minutes I get every afternoon, a time also referred to as “recess”, I had enough of chasing my students out my classroom door and RIGHT INTO the GIANT PUDDLE outside my classroom. I get it! They’re tired of being cooped up in the classroom and it is SO TEMPTING!! “YAY puddle jumping!” But seriously…..more times than I can count already this week (and it is only Tuesday) I have chased 1, 2, or all 3 of my frequent-flyers out the door of my classroom. Today I am wet, tired, also bored of inside recesses, and have a TON of work to get done!

SO, how did I solve the problem? I pulled a student desk in front of my door and sat down with my computer. No one could get by me and I had a perfect view of everyone. Now, how would I explain this to the fire marshal or admin if they had happened to come by? No idea. Luckily I didn’t have too.

Now I am home, dry, almost warm and sitting in front of my laptop finishing IEPs with, yep, a huge glass of wine!! Cheers 🙂

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 🙂

I believe I have uncovered the source (or at least one of them) to my ever growing frustration at school….Micro Managing!

I am being hit with this from 2 sides. First, I have new admin who openly acknowledges she has this issue but refuses to let up. She is so focused on the tiniest, minuscule details, that she can’t see the building imploding around her. I am having the hardest time staying polite as I point out the huge issues I need help with while she questions me about tiny things I don’t have the time or the will to explain. But I may go down that rant road another day. Today I need to vent, I mean focus on my paras.

I have paraprofessionals who can’t seem to think for themselves at all any more and need to ask me questions ALL DAY LONG!!!!!!! I am trying so very hard to stay calm with them, exercising the great amount patience I have for all my students, but let’s get serious! Yes, I have put into place new procedures and expectations for both my students and my paras and with this came a learning curve. BUT, we have spent the first month of school practicing them, reviewing them, making visuals to support them, and my students are doing a fabulous job! My paras, not so much. Do you really need to ask me on day 20 of the school year, when the schedule is posted on the front board, with icon pictures to support understanding, when we are going to lunch? This hasn’t changed in years and certainly hasn’t changed since yesterday, so why are you asking…..AGAIN TODAY!

Today, I am in the middle of attempting to work with one of my more focus-challenged students. He’s actually engaged, working hard to earn his bubble wrap time, when I have one para, yell from across the room, that the student she is working with is missing something from his IEP goal bin. OK?! Find another one or move one to something else. Do you really need my permission? That couldn’t have waited until the end of the day? Write me a sticky note. Every one of my student’s work bins has a stack of sticky notes for exactly this reason….for when you don’t want to forget to ask me or tell me something, so write it on a sticky note. DO NOT yell at me during work time, disturbing all the students and effectively ending a productive, educational experience because you can’t think for yourself.

I CAN’T STAND HAVING TO MICRO MANAGE MY PARA’S!!! It is mentally exhausting to be interrupted all day, every day to make the smallest of decisions, relay the same information, or just answer dumb questions. I am going on record, the person who said there are no dumb questions, was dumb and was never a supervisor or teacher! There are plenty of dumb questions!!

“The bell just rang, and the bus is here, should we go get our students?” (actual quote) My response (paraphrased), “No, let’s leave them on the bus today. I am sure the driver won’t mind!”

“Johnny needs to go to music class, and it’s my turn to take him, should we go?” WTF???!!!

“Johnny just had an accident on the floor, should I change him?”

{For the record, I have never actually had a student named John, or Johnny, so to protect the identity of my students, they will all now be named Johnny!}

Also part of my new para-imposed micro-management role includes policing when they come to work, leave and return from breaks, and telling them that when we are all lining up to go out to recess, is not a good time to return a phone call or line up to use the bathroom!! All of our students are finally standing in a (somewhat) straight line and quietly waiting at the door, so sure I will make them hold that position for 10 minutes while all my paras decide they need to use the bathroom. I haven’t even pee’d this month during the school day, why do they think the classroom is going to grind to a stop so they can!!!

I know it sounds petty and bitchy, but I can’t help it. I have a planned staff meeting every week where I go over individual students goals, how we are targeting their specific learning programs and behaviors, and I am always free to answer (smart) questions outside of instruction time. I need to be able to spend my mental energy analyzing data and figuring out why Johnny isn’t making progress, or how I can support another student’s desire to stay dressed and not get naked on the playground. I need to be sharp to answer parent emails, admin emails, program specialist emails. I need brain cells left to collaborate with specialists and parents. I expect my paras to generalize the information shared with them during staff meetings, and put on their big kid panties and think for themselves. I do not want to have to oversee every, single, minor detail of everyday. Johnny had an accident, change him. I do not care whether you put on his clean cars undies, or his clean super hero undies. They both serve the same purpose, MAKE THAT DECISION YOURSELF!!!

I do not like to be micro-managed. I do not like micro-managing. And if this keeps up, I am going to need a case of wine a night to stay sane!

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!!