and still teaching. this has been a hectic, stressful school year so far, and i haven’t had much time for reflection, let alone reflection and writing. but i am planning to write at least an entry over christmas break, so keep your eyes peeled!
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the mayhem continues. my para didnt show today. and the teaching fellows were off doing their friday teaching fellow thing. which meant, i couldnt get J to the bathroom, because i couldnt close the door and just stay with him til he got it he had to (mercifully he didnt pee himself, and his teacher from last year whisked him off at lunch). T left the room and ran out no fewer than 3 times, and she is smart enough to do it only when i have my hands full with S, who needs to be in a different setting and/or have a dedicated aide. her games in the bathroom continued (which i got to have a delightful conversation with her mother about). T and J stormed the gate and ran out onto the sidewalk, J was nearly to the corner before i was able to snatch him up. worst 5 minutes of my life since the chairlift incident back at ski school. except, those were kids who could follow directions and listen to me and what happened was absolutely neither my fault nor theirs… anyway. i was running like a lunatic screaming his name, while trying to carry T. and they don’t get it that they almost got flattened by a truck. ahhh!
i was saying that professor walker was wrong about me switchinge (he thought i was fine where i was), but i think i see now he was right. i dont know how to make a game out of learning A, the number 2 or anything of their other goals. and unless its fun, they arent going to do it. they’re gonna eat crayons and glue, throw things, hit each other, tackle each other, hit me, play games with me in the bathroom (dear god, if my own kids pull this shit with me, no pun intended, i’m going to be unpleased)…
i was able to walk in the first week and make it happen with older kids. i totally knew what to do, even if it wasnt smooth all the time (especially in math, god help me with math). granted, i think i had generally well behaved kids, and i had only 6 and a para. but i was so happy at how it went, so proud of myself, and i finally felt like a teacher, i even managed a routine. now i feel like a monkey chaser. i almost cried today trying to get S’s show back on without getting hit, kicked, bitten or having my hair pulled. forget that every one else was going nutso without my attention.
i want to cry right now. still. and i sat on the couch for an hour when i got home, vegging out with project runway reruns, then i slept for like 70 minutes. and then i showered and vegged some more. next year is going to be aweful. i know what i need to do, and i hopefully can make it happen, but regaining authority with this particular group of children, i think is going to be near impossible.
the one upside was i invented a new song, it goes like this: “this is J’s chair, J sits here (repeat until child sits). this is J’s chair, J’s sitting here. good job J, he’s sitting in his chair.” This marginally worked. i’m hoping if i keep reinforcing it, sooner or later we’ll just be at this is J’s chair, good job J. sigh. now i have to go pretend to be a sane adult. at least my company for this evening hopefully wont pull my hair or bite me.
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i did not feel like a teacher today. i felt lost and helpless. and i had two 1st year teaching fellows to witness it. i was adamant to the dctf people that i NOT have teaching fellows in my room this summer. i dont know what i’m doing still, i dont feel capable to oversee, supervise and direct other adults. i am, however, stuck with them. great.
i really had no idea what to do today. i am SO glad that one of my cohort mates who had a pre-k autism class came out and gave me some ideas and advice about schedule and structure. thank god. i still felt like it was unmanagble and we had more adults than kids. sweet. i really felt like i failure. to the point that i desperately questioned whether i should have switched to early childhood. i had such success last week with the 8 and 10 year olds. granted, i had an aide, and that makes a huge difference. but i have some of the reading techniques down and a handle on creating materials and modifying the curriculum. and i got structure down for that age group with longer attention spans. and now here i am trying to get kids to tell me a B is a B when all they want to do is eat paste and hit each other and have very short attention spans.
so much work to do to make enough activities for tomorrow and so stressed from the day that i cut my 200 dollar painting class tonight. i’m gonna go to the make-up on saturday morning, i hope. i really like it, its just hard to wing 7pm in old town.
i’ve had such a rough day, i might go to bed now. sad. but true. maybe i should find dinner first. i really want a chocolate cupcake with the marshmellow filling inside… teaching= eating like crap.
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i am extremely anxious about going back to work tomorrow. every one i’ve talked to about the incident, one of my fellow fellows, a good friend and my roommate, agreed that i was right in the way i handled the situation. but that doesnt really change that i have lunch duty with the trio for the next 8 weeks or so. i’ve already more or less given up on eating in the teacher’s lounge with them. i’ve even taken to eating my leftovers cold so as to avoid it entirely. but now i know where there’s a microwave on the first floor.
i know the teachers who i’m friendly with, the ones i work with, will still be friendly. and the ones who have told their classes to stop talking to me, the classes those three aides work with, will continue to dislike me. so, whatever. but i still fear that i escalated a hostile working environment to another level. thinking about emailing my prof about what i should do. but i dont think there’s really anything i can do to make it better. just keep doing what i do, putting my head down, ignoring the crap and trying to do the best i can and trying to treat the kids as well as they deserve to be treated. i know i failed in many ways to actively cultivate allies, but in some ways my “i am rock, i am an island” approach has kept me sane.
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live, as they happen…
no, not quite. monday and tuesday the aide was there. yesterday and today she was not. no one has said a word. i have not asked. i do not care to know.
we’re in the throes of nclb testing. they’ve made it as painless as possible for the kids, though it was not as well thought out as it could been. for example, the woman reading to my kids has two kids with two different forms of the test. bad planning. and while it’s good that big d has some one else to test with, it is definitely hurting my other student’s performance because he feels like he has to cover up that he cant read it himself, whereas with me, that’s they way we always operate.
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so, i think i finally became a teacher this week. i managed to pull off four days of instruction with kids i’ve never met with not a whole lot more than sidewalk chalk, portable whiteboards, and sight word list. that’s what they say, you should be able to walk into a room and just teach. and i got them to trust me without letting them walk all over me. i even enforced my expectations. high five to ms. zuckerman.
and now for the bad/ood news… dcps in all their wisdom after first misplacing my students decided to send me back to my home school with the students that will be mine next year. though, from what i hear, it was less that i asked for it much earlier this week than the woman who ended up with that class couldn’t hack it. if they don’t have an aide, well then this news is just plain bad. anyway, i think this is terrible idea for the students i had this week. too many transitions… plus they will loss their ability to trust if people always leave them, especially ones who will have gained their trust. i also think its bad for me, in a way. i was looking forward to getting a jump start on my new assignment in early childhood. but now, i realize i was in the middle of a transition here. in the middle of learning that i can teach. in the middle of actually teaching something beyond my range and succeeding. but i’m gonna take it in stride. i moved all my stuff back to school. and it was nice to see my security guard, who i adore. and it was nice to walk into the cafeteria and have kids call my name. i got to say hi to big d, though i had to wake him up. poor thing. it felt good to be back at my school.
here’s my list of what i learned at summer school, week one:
1) i can sufficiently set up my classroom in three hours. i can pull it down in less than 1.
2) i can work with 8-10 year olds just fine.
3) all children respond well to kindness (ok this i knew, but my story proves it again). take m.m. for example. he came to me on tuesday labeled a trouble maker and a handful. he was reluctant to come in, but i welcomed him to my room and got down on his level (although he’s 10, he’s the size of a five year old) and talked to him. and then i took him around and introduced him to the other kids in the class. at the end of the day he hugged me goodbye and i gave him a big warm hug in return and told him genuinely that i was glad he was in my class. no problems from him for the rest of the week. seriously, not a one. when i was asked to send down the names of my two best students for the week, his was the only one i sent. and he earned it. of course, when i told the gen ed summer school principal who it was, she responded, in front of him, oh no, uhuh, not him, sliding down the banister and running around the halls. no way. and so i had to say, well, he doesnt do that with me. genuine rapport with a child goes a long way. so does having expectations and enforcing them. he’s a good kid, quick too. i’ll miss him.
3) i can have a routine and follow it. i can have expectations and hold the kids to them.
4) i can pull 4 hours of instruction out of my butt and cobble it together from thin air.
5) not all sped aides suck. a big up to ms. p for rocking out and being awesome.
6) i love kids and i love teaching (ok, that was a reminder)
7) i can and will advocate for any child left in my care. and i will genuinely care about that child and their best interests as an individual.
8) i can look out for myself in a broken system.
all was not lost, but i am sad to be leaving a good group of kids with whom i was starting to build relationships with. and a really awesome educational assistant. who deserves to be paid way more than what aides make.
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no, no end of year posts… still, i know. some are written, some are still fermenting. but i am so peeved at dcps at this moment that even though i have an ass ton of work to do, some for summer school, some for grad school and some for this thing called my life, that i am going to rant instead.
so first, i am told by central office and my school’s summer site coordinator that i am teaching general first grade. scary, but sweet. then i realize at midnight the day before gen ed training that i have two conflicting letters, one for gen ed, one for esy, the even more bastard, red headed step child in the dcps family. sure. so i go to the gen ed training, just in case. no one can give me an answer. finally at 6 pm that day, down town confirms that i am teaching esy at ludlow-taylor, which is down the street from my school. ok, fine. the j.o. wilson esy kids are slated to be there. ok, sure. show up for training the next day (and let me just say that the gen ed people had dcps reps checking people in, and oh, catered lunch and breakfast, and a motherfing harpist. we had chaos and no food.). show up friday to set my room up, the sped summer coordinator is out, so the principal helps us divy up the kids. i am all set to have the early childhood kids, which consists of two of kids from my home school, both of whom would certianly recognize me and one of whom i will have next year. perfect. scared to death since i havent taught this population and have never in my life changed a diaper.
but my fears were quite in vain. i ended up with two 8 year olds and two 10 year olds, for whom i could only guess their disabilities. one was ld, at least. one may have been ed and mr. great. i winged it today like it was no one’s business. even though i made a point of telling the coordinator that none of the j.o. wilson kids made it, she did not have it resolved and blamed it on transportation. j.o. was no supposed to be an esy site, but it ended up getting kids from other schools and ours were set to be at ludlow. sure.
go up to j.o. to get some more stuff and possibly try to get ieps. and lo, my class plus two more ec kids showed up. and their normal teacher ended up taking them even though she is not working summer school. i tried calling the summer coordinator, but she didnt pickup. actually it sounded like she picked up and hung up. hopefully the other teacher gets through since we agreeded that i should be at j.o. with our kids, and particularly the kids i will have next year, especially since there is no staff for them, rather than down the street at ludlow, which is over staffed anyway. omg. why did i prep a whole day for the wee ones? i why bother? i dont even know what the 4th grade learning standards are, let alone what is appropriate for 4th graders in sped with unknown disabilities and levels. i want to scream.
and i am surprised why? i should know better. even though you cant make this shit up, i should know they will f-up in any and every possible way. my best friend described it as being on a reality tv show where they set you up to fail… “we told her she’s teaching early childhood. what she doesn’t know is she’s teaching 4th graders! let’s see what happens when we let them loose!” i’m not even certified to teach past the 3rd grade!
now that i’ve vented, perhaps i can get one assignment for class done and find my paintbrushes so i dont have to buy all new ones for this painting class i signed up for. gah. it’s 3 something and i need a beer.
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response:
to note, the child was retained PRIOR to having been made eligible for special education services. he cannot be retained now that he has been made eligible. i was saying that it seemed like a poor idea to skip him a grade because of his age, since his IEP places him in the general ed classroom 69% percent of the day. while the district has apparently been skipping children who had been retained prior to being made eligible and are thus several years older than their peers, i don’t think that’s a great idea, especially in the primary grades. even if he’s behind, what is the purpose of trying to accommodate and modify fourth grade materials when he hasn’t had third grade yet? we’re not talking about reading to gain information quite yet, he’s still in the learning to read phase. nor are we talking about a child whose needs are so severe that no matter what grade he’s in he can’t participate in the general curriculum. so to me, promoting him doesn’t make much sense. what IDEA has to say on the matter, etc, is another story. considering that many of the children here have been retained, it is not as if he’ll be the only one who is old for his grade. it’s only more obvious that he’s old for his grade (having been retained compounded by a birthday just on the other side of the cut-offs) because he’s also huge for his age. even if he was in third grade this year, he would be among the largest third graders…should we skip him because he’s tall? should we hold back my kindergartener because he’s the size of a three year old? no. another one of my LD second graders will be 9 in two weeks and is repeating second grade currently. he’s old for his grade, but it isn’t as obvious because he’s quite small for his age, he looks like he could be 7 going on 8 no problem. no one has ever suggested to me we skip him a grade because he doesn’t stand out as much.
I had a similar conundrum with my first grader. His birthday is December 28th, meaning that he was the youngest in his class. There are some children in his homeroom class that are nearly a full year older than him. He could well have been in kindergarten, but because he was made eligible for SPED, he could not repeat kindergarten, even though he’s young for his grade and he’s developmentally delayed. But that’s the way it works. I think he would have benefited from another year of kindergarten, particularly with the very very strong kindergarten teacher I work with.
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second thing that ruined my day… on the way to take my first grader to the bus, i was accosted by a parent of a child that i do not have in class. and the parent accused me of unduly yelling at her child. the child in question is a mouthy third grade girl who i continually have to talk to in the lunch line to tell her to be quiet. and she huffs at me, rolls her eyes and sucks her teeth and looks at me as if i’m impinging on her god given right to talk in the lunch line. serious attitude. and while i don’t support the quiet in the lunch line, i am forced to enforce it, so i try to. i ask quietly the first time, and usually the second, but last week that girl just rolled her eyes at me one too many times. and i told her to get in the back of the line. and she goes boo-hooing home to mom.
so, i calmly informed mom that her daughter likes to talk in the lunch line and that they are not allowed to talk in the lunch line or at lunch. and that when i ask her to be quiet she rolls her eyes at me and gives me attitude and continues to talk. i also calmly inform mom that she is not the only child to be called out and sent to the back of the line for talking and that i do not yell at the children and i try to be nice to them when i tell them to be quiet (which is generally speaking true, but since all they seem to hear is screaming, it’s often the only option that works…and i will cop to having been a tad sarcastic to her last week, but dear god, she could have gotten hollered at by one of the aides). and mom’s all like, well it’s my job to scold her not yours. and wants me to call her the next time her daughter is talking in the lunch line.
ok, sure. and that conversation would go something like this, “hi, mrs. h, it’s miss z. r keeps talking and she won’t listen to me when i nicely tell her that there is no talking in the lunch line. would you like to talk to her and explain that there is no talking in the lunch line and that applies to her princessly self?”
and this is where the problem of not having written rules and procedures for both staff and students comes in. there is neither a reward for doing the right thing in the lunch line nor a punishment for doing the wrong thing. there is only a bunch of adults, yours truly included, left to yell at them and act completely inconsistently. there needs to be a procedure for what you do when you have to tell a particular child more than 3 times to be quiet at lunch, if that’s a rule they want to enforce. i just don’t understand how you can run a school without a written set of rules that every one knows and understands and without appropriate rewards and consequences. it boggles my mind.
anyway, my main point was that despite everything today, i kept a level head talking to this parent, and i made my point that her child has an attitude problem. it’s not just that she keeps talking, it’s that she rolls her eyes and sucks her teeth and the whole nine yards…
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in discussing, casually, my big d and one of my new students (with the social worker, mostly), the librarian tells me that dyslexia is a special education gray area and that it can be quote-unquote corrected. To which I replied, no, dyslexia is a learning disability, under the law it falls under the ld category, and while you can work around it, it cannot be “corrected”. Instead of standing up to her onslaught of ignorance, i got up and went to lunch duty. but this is what i should have said: ” dear ms. sheard, i have auditory dyslexia. i have always had auditory dyslexia, i will always have auditory dyslexia. i am also getting a masters degree in special education, so in due respect to your years of teaching experience, please believe me when i say that dyslexia is a learning disability, and 80 percent of students classified as ld have some form of dyslexia. it is life-long and it cannot be “fixed.” learning disabilities of any form are not gray areas as far as IDEA is concerned. and many people who have dyslexia are quite smart and go on to do thing such as become brain surgeons, with the proper accommodations and modifications.”
she went off about how my second grader who repeated a year should be moved to third grade now that he’s in sped. and i said, that’s not fair, he hasn’t been exposed to that curriculum yet, you can have him lose a year of school because he’s in special education! “well he’s getting special ed services now.” to which i replied, “he is getting special ed support for the second grade, the grade that he is in and has been in all year. it would be inappropriate to put him in third grade since he has not been exposed to that curriculum yet. why would you set him up to fail even more?”
her ignorance made me mad, but what made me more angry was my own inability to stand up to her and say, “you are mistaken, and if you’d, like i’ll school you, i mean give you a tutorial, on what learning disabilities are, what special education is, and should be, and what IDEA says.” on the whole, lunch duty, the bane of my existence seemed like a better, less aggravating option given current mental state of being sick again (i was well for exactly a week!)
if i am the primary ld teacher next year, maybe i should have a little sped workshop for the gen ed teachers, because this is hardly the first bit of ignorance i’ve witnessed among the staff. i hope to god i’m not the ld teacher… because given the lack of support and training, i just can’t do it again. i was walking up the stairs from lunch thinking, well, i could differentiate math for three grades if i had any idea what math curriculum looks like for those three grades, and oh, what are good teaching strategies for kids with various processing problems/memory problems/ld. but no, no support. our curriculum course was a $1,200 joke. today, i want to quit and go apply to do a real teaching program. i think this program will not make me the best teacher i could be. i think it’s made me a bad teacher, because i’m on my own, no support, no training, no observation of a master teacher at work.
and now i am off to pull my 1st grader and my k student because i cant handle having 4 grades and no lesson plans, which is my fault (i gave up in the face of futility a month ago). but two, i can wing. maybe i need to reach out to my colleagues more, i know some are succeeding and finding resources. jess has this great book of worksheets…and if i give the office a few days, they will photocopy stuff. at this point, to say i have checked out would be an understatement. i keep trying to check back in, but being sick isn’t helping. our compressed grad school schedule isn’t helping (let’s have four written assignments in three weeks! one of which has to be an observation, one of which has to be a lesson plan designed around a book based on that observation. great.).
ps- my gw prof who i respect said he thought me having a pre-k or k self-contained class would be a good move, though he said he thought i was capable of doing this pull-out song and dance and/or doing the same job but in an inclusive model, which the district is moving towards (which would necessitate receiving lesson plans in advance so i could make modified materials for students to use in their classrooms and provide some in class support… that first part would never happen at most schools in the district!). i’ve considered quitting before… and if i wouldn’t have to repay the district for my discounted courses, i might say that i would quit this program if i don’t get that self-contained class. my passion for making sure kids with ld get an appropriate education isn’t enough to carry me through this colossal failure.
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