Baby Steps

I taught kindergarten today. Today is the first day of teaching for me since the MEA weekend (that's Minnesota Education Association) where teachers are supposed to have sharpened their skills. So we spend 3 days evaluating ourselves and a making plans on how to be a better teacher. I fretted. In addition we had a new student coming with particularly high needs. I got so stressed out I gave myself bad dreams for 2 days. So, today while I was singing and dancing with the kindergartners I realized just how much progress we have made in only 14 days of school (they go every other day). On the first day of school I had one who dropped to the floor of the bus and steadfastly pretended to be asleep. He not only refused to get off the bus he refused to even open his eyes or acknowledge anyone. This behavior persisted until 10:30. In the meantime, another student kept pulling the stuffing out of his pullups and eating it. Today, Mr. Sleepyhead walked off the bus and spent the first hour of the day in his mainstream classroom. True, he didn't participate much and spent some of that time rocking with his eyes closed but he maintained an upright position and no one had to "help" him move up and down the hall. Mr. Chewy is not longer wearing pull ups at all, he didn't pull the threads out of his sweater and eat them, and he took my hand and danced with me during circle time. All of my students can count to 5 by rote and with 1 to 1 correspondence, and they all recognize and write their own names. I know it doesn't seem like much but it's progress and it gives me joy to see it.

Pockets

Okay, I had no intention of blogging tonight because I have about eleventy other things I ought to be doing but I just have to share my deep thoughts (ha ha). I follow a blog titled "A Dress a Day." Yesterday's entry was about pockets and it got me thinking. They say you can tell a lot about a person by what they . . . have in their closet, throw away, drive . .. I propose you can tell a lot about a person by what they have in their pockets at the end of the day. Today, when I got home from work I had a pretty typical assortment of items in my pocket. There was my I-touch in one pocket and my cell phone in the other, 2 quarters, car keys, a ring of picture cues I use for non-verbal prompts, an Alleve tablet, and a stray wad of brown paper towel, the kind used in school towel dispensers. Now I don't walk around for long with that much stuff in my pockets but they tend to collect things all day long. We had conferences last night so I wore a pair of dress slacks that didn't have any pockets and was nearly crazy by the end of the day from picking stuff up and laying it down somewhere and then spending 10 minutes searching for it because I didn't have a pocket to put it in! Today I taught in the Kindergarten room. At various times during the day today one might have found in my pockets the following items: a "chewie" to keep David (not his name) from eating non-food things like string he pulled from his sweater, a dry erase marker for writing lessons, ball point pen for data collection (now where was that clipboard?), flash drive for ALL that info I just think I can't live without. What I didn't have today was the ever present keychain with keys to the 3 classrooms I have been working in this year so far. Those I left on the table in the basement when I relaxed by the fire with my hubby on Monday. This meant that all 3 of those classrooms had to stay back locked and every time we left them we got locked out and had to go get someone to let us in - What a pain! Ah well, tomorrow is another day.

A New School Year

One week before school started this year I was placed on the SLIP team at school (School Learning Improvement Plan). The team is charged with reviewing the learning goals made by the school community last year, reviewing progress toward those goals, and creating new goals to present to the staff at school so that they can make their plans for how they will meet those goals. I felt a little clueless but the school needed to have a special education representative on the team. ANYwhoo, in the process I discovered that the lead special ed teacher at our school, the person who had been the sped representative on the SLIP, had accepted another position in the district and would be leaving Madison. Two days later the principal at Madison called me and offered me her position. I stressed out for about 24 hours and then accepted the position. What if means for me is that I will be teaching Kindergarten Centerbase class on Monday, Wednesday, and every other Friday and will be the "Elementary Contact" teacher for the special ed team at Madison on the other days. I was pretty intimidated. It is a very long story, but the last time I had a job that put me in a position of authority it turned out poorly for me so I was REALLY nervous. On the other hand, I reasoned that this is a staff I have worked successfully with for the past 4 years and it would be a great opportunity to develop some new skills. It is also something that will look good on my resume. Since Anoka-Hennepin School District will be closing 7 elementary schools and 1 middle school at the end of this year there is a high likelihood that I will be looking for a job.

So far, I think I made a great choice. I'm really loving my job this year. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed teaching kindergarten. I have 4 students with significant needs but we have a lot of fun. They have made progress already! In the other position, I seem to be doing scheduling and paperwork all day and it is kind of fun. I'm still covering the caseload for the EBD teacher because we haven't filled that position yet but the up side of that is that these kids are familiar to me. Life is good.