Marching On...

Still looking for a person to take the place of my partner teacher from last year. Hopefully, that will be resolved soon. In the meantime, we are continuing with temporary solutions. I now have a student who is for all purposes, self contained. He just was not successful in any way shape or form without some intensive supervision and intervention. We have a few plans in mind for this student as well. Hoping that is taken care of quickly.

So, the ipads so far are going well. I have found a way to get the kids to practice those spelling words without complaint. I have them open a drawing program such as Doodlebuddy or Glow Draw. They then have to write their spelling word on the screen using 4-5 different colors. In reality, they have just done the practice writing that they used to do on paper to turn in. They have correctly practiced the word but the only difference is they thought it was just a game. I'm also finding that the offering of time on the ipad as a reward seems to work better than just about anything to get the cooperation I need to get assignments done. My kiddos are producing more and doing more than would be willing to try or do before. We've got a lot of experimenting to do with them yet to find even more that they can do on them. I am excited to continue with this experiment and see where it leads.

Life in this classroom is always crazy, me I'm more than a little crazy. But with all that, it is an incredibly rewarding job (not the pay, but intrinsically). As a teacher, you will always be overworked, underpaid and under appreciated. It is what you do in your classroom despite all of that, that will tell what kind of person you really are. Sometimes it's just the few and far between warm fuzzies that keep you going. There's nothing like seeing a kiddo who explodes and fights at the least provocation, become a kiddo who despite being attacked by another student refuses to fight, after four years of hard work on his part and mine. It's the little things that make it worth while. What makes it worth while for you? It's not for the faint of heart.

Wow

Sometimes it feels like everything is not going your way. We have not found a replacement for my partner teacher. She is pretty irreplaceable, but we didn't find anyone who could even try. So, where does that leave us? In a pretty familiar position. A huge caseload, alone. Now don't get me wrong, my administrator at my building and the special education director are trying valiantly to help me. They have hired a sub for last week and hopefully this week. It is temporary. We're hoping to be able to get the superintendent to approve a long term sub position until we can find someone. On top of a huge caseload, I have a few very difficult students. I am not sure at this point what will happen with these students. They are probably not going anywhere else. I am going to have to find solutions for each of them with extremely limited personnel resources. What I wouldn't give to have my partner back. I miss her dearly. Thankfully, we've got some things going our way. We just rolled out a set of iPad 2's for the students to use. So far we're not using these to maximum potential. I'm still treading water. I predict that they will be indispensable to us. We've got our netbooks working with the students. I am still able to use Friday's for prep and home visits and monitoring for goals. Thank goodness I have people in my corner who have fought to help me keep that. I would be enjoying life in a padded room otherwise. So we're continuing to try to think outside the box and come up with some creative solutions to our problems. Isn't that what all teachers do anyway? Well, I'm off. Catch ya soon.

Getting Ready for Another Year....

I find myself getting into full swing quicker than I had wanted to. I had a great year last year with a co teacher. This year, she has gone to another district due to family reasons. She was awesome and I can't imagine doing this without her again. Yet, that is what I'm facing. I've got the whole caseload again. There were some candidates for the position but none that we seriously considered hiring. It's hard to find a good special education teacher. We didn't. So the position is still open and for now, I am on my own with the aide again. We'll survive. I have been going out to school this week getting ready for school to start again. Teachers report on Monday. Kids come on Wednesday. Resource classes will start on the following Monday. I'm going to be crazy busy, but I guess I really wouldn't know what to do with myself otherwise. We've got a lot to do so best to get to it. I'm going to miss my partner. I stay in touch with her and she's doing well. She'll do well where ever she is. They are lucky to have her. I'll have to post more often here. I get busy and forget. Well, catch ya later! Hoping that all of my colleagues out there have a great year.

Mixed Emotions...

We're already nearing the end of the year, at breakneck pace I might add. This brings with it a sense of relief and one of dread. I have a group of boys I've been working with since they were in third grade. They are now 6th graders who will be transitioning to the junior high. I find myself torn. One of them is a very close to my heart case even though all of them are especially close to my heart. He's a kiddo who has come so far. He is a kiddo who has emotional difficulties. He started out not even wanting to come to classes. The year before I started with him they had to pry him off doors and literally carry him to classes kicking and screaming. It took me about 30 minutes to figure out what worked for him. He loved my guinea pig. So he got to feed her whenever he came to class and didn't throw a fit and got his job done. Now four years later, he still has days where he melts down, but they are not nearly as frequent and time consuming as they once were. I've put a lot of time into this little guy. Now I have to turn him loose and send him to the lion's den. I know I can't follow him forever. We have a plan in place that will soon be implemented and he'll start going over there a little at a time this year to get acclimated and used to the idea. He's got a "safe" person there in the counselor that I've had coming to visit him for a couple of years with this time in mind. I've told myself over and over that he'll be fine. I have given him the tools he needs to do what he needs to be successful. I just have seen so many of my other students go over to the other school and self destruct. I have an idea as to why but I am not going to go there right now. I will be a professional and continue to do my best for him and his peers before they go to the other school. That's all I can do at this point. It breaks my heart to think of a year next year without my boys. Of course there are still loads of other kiddos who need me here and I will be lost in their needs and cases soon, but I just can't help but feel like a mother hen with my boys. Crazy huh? They can make me tear my hair out in frustration, but I'm going to miss them terribly.

Time Flies

Well, the first nine weeks is officially over. We've had a whirlwind of a quarter. My caseload is more manageable at the elementary school as we have an awesome co teacher in there. She's amazing. She's such a big help with everything that I wonder how I survived without her. Our approach thus far has been a team teaching model. We both work with all of the kids, there is no clear division of responsibilities. We both do what needs to be done either cooperatively or divide and conquer. It's worked very well. She also gets along very well with the teaching assistant that we have in our room as well. Three women working cooperatively in a contained space, who would have thought? We've already seen some phenomenal progress in a few of our kids. We've had two sixth graders finally hit over 100 words per minute at grade level passages. Wooohooo! We've begun the process of starting electronic portfolios for our students. That has been a challenge. Just finding the time to get a plan together has proven very difficult. It doesn't help that my other hat as the service provider for our alternative high school has increased demands on my time as well. There were 3 students there last year. I am up to 8 or 9 right now. It's been difficult, but I don't worry about time I have to spend away from my school to be there because I know that my little guys are taken care of until I get back. I really don't know what I would do without my co teacher, from here on out referred to as partner in crime. She's the best. Well, that's about it for now. Just wanted to check in. I'll get back to the blog here before another quarter has passed. I'll keep you posted on the electronic portfolio experiment.

Things Are Looking Up

I have a partner teacher in my special education classroom this year. She's a wonderful lady who's willing to work hard and doesn't mind getting dirty either. I think we will work very well together. We have a couple of things in the works that we are excited about. We are currently awaiting the delivery of 12 Netbooks for use in our classroom. We are planning on having students use these on a daily basis for various functions, including an electronic portfolio and a glog. I am a tech mentor at our school as well and I am constantly hearing from some of our teachers "My kids can't do that." I am determined to show them if my littlest kiddos can do it, so can theirs. We'll have to keep you in the loop and let you know how it goes. We are also using audiobooks a lot more in class this year. There is a lot of research showing that kids who use audiobooks, but track with the reader do better on their fluency. We've gone over the process and what's expected when they are using them. So far, it seems pretty successful. The kids like it. We'll have to keep the data to see how they do on the fluency. I am willing to try whatever it takes to help my kiddos learn better and become more successful in their regular classroom. We'll keep you posted on what's working and how we decide to change things up. If you are not flexible, you are destined to fail in a special education classroom.

At ISTE 2010 in Denver

Well, technology has a place in the regular education classroom that you hear about all the time. But what about in the SPED class???? I have to say, I am blessed to work in a district where my kiddos are not forgotten when it comes to technology. I have sufficient computers. I have a Promethean Board, a document camera, and other tools that are priceless to myself and the children I teach everyday. This is in part because we have an awesome IT department person who goes out of his way to work with you and help with those harebrained schemes that you come up with. I am one of our school technology mentors. This year as a part of that commitment we have been allowed to travel to Denver, Colorado for the ISTE 2010 Conference. It's a technology conference and it's huge. You can check out the organization at www.iste.org. I have seen and learned so much in the last two days. I have one more day here and then it's back home to AZ. I have learned some about how others have done things with kids in classes such as electronic portfolios (for SPED kids), making text accessible to struggling readers (this was an awesome class, I'll have to post some specifics on these later), using ipods and apps as well as podcasts. It has been an incredible experience. I am so grateful to have been able to come. I will be going through my notes and getting organized and posting more of what I have learned here in the next couple of weeks. It's been amazing. So many ideas! If you have a chance join ISTE and go to the conference. Next year is Philadelphia.