TAOANT - Valentine's Day Edition

lessons learned:

1) this blog title does not abbreviate gracefully

2) new teachers rarely have time to have a life

3) new teachers rarely have time to blog

4) if a new teacher finds a little time for a life, they DEFINITELY don't have time to also blog

ok, so things in my classroom are insane.  i had my first IEP meeting this week (actually went well!  the parents AGREED with my goals for their child!  relief.), and the staffing in my room may FINALLY be settled, but i am now running two classrooms full time.  yes, one person has two physical classrooms (across the school from each other, by the way) that she is supposed to be in charge of all day, every day.  thank goodness i am a fast walker.  and ... two people?  still working on that part ...

but this post is not to pout and be grumpy.  it's february!  it's almost valentine's day!  and i have an excellent book to share with you.  one of my students wrote a how-to book entitled "how to get a girlfriend" and it is truly superb.  enjoy :)

How to get a girlfriend

You need a girl, a door, flowers, a red skateboard, and some red paper.

note: he told me that the girl was trapped in the box behind the door.

I do small whacks on the door.

I give the flowers to the girl.

I show her moves.

note: he explained to me that after he shows her his moves, he watches her.  this is what the picture depicts.

I give her some red paper (it's a card).

Me and her go to school.

We do subtraction.

how romantic is that???

The pit of despair

sorry I haven't posted in ages. I try to maintain a policy not to talk/write/blog/otherwise make contact when I have nothing good to say and, i fear, there has been very little good of late. for those of you who don't have the film "princess bride" memorized in its entirety, the "pit of despair" is a torture chamber used by count rugen (aka the six-fingered man) to torture the charming westley for being cuter than him, essentially. the torture renders westley "mostly dead," but miracle max comes up with a magic pill thing that brings him back to life. I think it's fair to say that lately I have been feeling far more like westley than I'd care to.

my classroom has some incredibly challenging students with what I refer to as "explosive behaviors.". if you have seen me/my hands and arms lately, I think you'd agree explosive is an appropriate adjective. I have dealt with problem behaviors before. no sweat (well, only a little sweat, maybe). my classroom has aides that are more than willing to help, but have no training for working with our kind of students. my coworkers fall into the same category (I feel very lucky to have so many great people willing to help me out, btw). I have trained people before. no sweat. I am a brand new teacher who has a lot a lot a lot to learn in order to be a competent, successful teacher. I'm a fast learner. no sweat.

it is this tragic combination that has been getting me down. it feels nearly impossible to run a classroom while simultaneously training people, learning new things myself, battling the challenges faced by any new teacher, handling a group of students hugely varied in academic ability, teaching a variety of lessons, conducting data collection and assessments, and restraining students when problem behaviors err on the side of dangerous. there has been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.

but, just as I was feeling "mostly dead," my principal pulled a miracle max and has presented me not with a magic pill, but with the promise of more help in the classroom. and a hint of a light has appeared at the end of the dark tunnel.

i can see clearly now, the rain is gone

alright, so last week the weather was horrible.  rain for the first, second, and third day of school.  so much rain we couldn't play outside at all.  so much rain i kind of forgot how warm the sun is.  so much rain that there was mass flooding: one hallway in my school, the basement of my house, and several roads (both little neighborhood roads and major highways).  so much rain, in fact, that school was canceled on friday.  now, the flooding was bad.  it caused a lot of people a lot of grief.  however, i was thankful for the day off.  it allowed me a chance to get away for the weekend to a sunny beach with good friends old and new, and take some time to breathe.  it was so good.

but i just knew today would be horrible.  first monday of school for the kids and me, weird weekends for my kids, oasis weekend for me, lots of room for bad news.  and it started off exactly as bad as i expected.  by that i mean i was 20 minutes late to school because there was a truck blocking the road because its engine was on fire.  but, after that, it was good.  great, even.  behavior problems were minor.  the kids and i are getting used to the routine a bit.  we had gym class and they love love loved it.  we were able to play outside on the playground and bask in the sunshine.  and on mondays dismissal is early.

i'm not ashamed to say that last week was rough.  really, really rough.  but today was a glimmer of hope.  some proof that not all days will be like any of the ones we had last week.  which, with so many days left in the year, is reassuring.

here's hoping that hopeful glimmer continues tomorrow.

one down

oof.  wow.  yikes.  sigh.  as some might say, "holy underwear, batman." first day done, and it was a doozy.

a teacher once told me that the definition of a successful first day is when you send home the same number of kids that arrived.  so, today was a success.  basically.  though one kid ended up on the wrong bus.  long story.

the good things: i got a good sense of each of my students.  i have begun to develop relationships with each of them, and they all seem comfortable with me.  we completed a couple of art projects (ie: coloring).  we read some books.  we all ate food at one point or another.  we made it to gym class for at least 5 minutes.  nobody got lost in the school.  no band-aids were required.

the bad things: i discovered i have two screamers.  one screamer is also a biter, scratcher, runner, and spitter.  intense.  the other one spent basically the entire first half hour screaming at the top of his lungs.  ouch.  some of my kids cannot really verbally communicate.  some of my kids cannot really use scissors, nor do they know how to properly hold a crayon.  some of my kids, meanwhile, can add, subtract, engage in pretend play, and tell stories (this should be listed in the "good things," really, but i leave it here in contrast.  it's the contrast that makes things tricky).

moral of the story: it's going to be a long year.  a learning experience.  exhausting and overwhelming but (hopefully) also rewarding.

bracing myself for day two.

surfer dudes

when i was little, i had a decided way with words.  i once told a doctor, when asked how i felt that day, that i felt "like a flower blooming."  i was four.  i also used to describe stomach aches various ways, depending on the severity.  most times this was communicated by referencing how stoked the surfer dudes in my belly were; bad stomach ache = active surfer dudes.

the surfer dudes are currently cruising on some pretty major waves.  everyone keeps saying "oh, don't worry about this job, you'll see!  you'll do great!" or "the first day/week/month/year will be tough, but then it will get so much easier."  any chance someone has a delorean i could borrow?  because i would very much like to visit my future self and see proof of this "certain future success."  i would like to ask my future self "how did you get through the first day/week/month/year?  it seems so daunting!  what did you do about [insert one of the many problems here]?"  i expect my future self would be very reassuring, and when future self says "you will be ok" i will believe her because, well, she would be referencing herself.  that would be so nice.

however, as i don't currently know doc brown, chances of time travel are slim right now.  and the first day of school is tomorrow.  yikes.  yikes, yikes, yikes.  i mean, i have done just about all that i can think of to prepare: i have activities for the first day lined up, my classroom is decorated, and i have things like my classrooom rules established (don't yet have a first day of school outfit set, but i will).  but i am sure there is more that i could be/should be doing.  i just don't know what.

so, future self: if you're reading this, chuckle away at your past self's anxiety.  i hope you think it's funny, and that you are now very happy and successful (and maybe won the lottery too or something.  a girl can dream, right?).  fingers crossed.

so, guess what?

i'm now employed.

yayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayayay!

words cannot express how great it feels to have a job, but i'm going to try to use them to do just that.  imagine being hit repeatedly in the stomach with a baseball bat while a swarm of angry bees, who have stealthily entered your skull, play ultimate frisbee.  additionally, president taft is perched on your shoulders.  throughout this, you have to be coherent, pleasant, knowledgeable, and charming while being constantly grilled with questions.  that's basically what job hunting felt like for me.  when i got a phone call from a principal that said (i paraphrase) "wanna come work for us, dude?" suddenly taft found better things to do, the bees buzzed off, and the baseball bat (apparently swung by nobody) realizes this and drops.  there might have also been rainbows.

quick funny story about how i got this job in the first place: en route to an interview i get a phone call.  it is my new boss (though i didn't know it at the time) asking if i would be at all interested in interviewing for this new semi-uncategorizable class.  he got my name from a posting my fourth-grade teacher's next door neighbor put up on a list.  i asked if he was free in two hours (when i'd be in town) and he said yes. during the interview we discovered i'm not technically qualified to teach this job.  however, he asked me to send him all of my school/work info so he could contact human resources just in case they would be able to make it work.  i did, he did, they did, and thus, i got hired.

so the job i have: i am going to be working in an ABA-formatted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_behavior_analysis#Efficacy_in_autism) classroom with 6 or 7 kindergarden and first grade students with severe autism (and two teaching assistants to help out, thank goodness).  it's a great school with an AMAZING principal (he'd have to be amazing to go out on a limb and hire a newbie who has never WORKED in an ABA-format classroom) in a fabulous location right in the middle of a highly acclaimed school district.  i am very excited.

real world, here i come.

on the hunt

job hunting is maybe my least favorite thing ever. it sucks to have to apply to a bazillion things, only to hear from a few. then, with education jobs in particular, you have to interview with the county/school district first fora screening interview, if they like you you get put in a database where a principal can find your name and they choose to interview you or not and then they tell human resources what they think. then you mayor may not get the job. lots is up in the air. not a good feeling.

tips: print about 20 more resumes than you think you'll need (in case they lost yours or want an extra to pass along to someone else), wear sensible shoes (in case they want to take youona grand tour of the school and/or join in a classroom for a while, and don't hesitate to call them after an interview to follow up if you haven't heard from them in a while (they wont think you are a pest, they will likely see your enthusiasm as a plus).

would be nice to say that, after a month or two of searching a job has been offered to me but nope (in fact, two interviews and two nos so far. womp womp.). so instead it's story time:

i had a screening interview recently with a county that seemed to be going pretty well. the woman interviewing me kept repeating my answers back to me with an excited expression and saying things like "you'd be surprised haw many people come in here and say exactly the wrong response to these questions!". this sounded promising. at the end of the interview she literally placed a gold star on my interview form, gave me a hug, and said it was a real pleasure talking with me. too bad her school isn't hiring. oh well; the hunt continues.