Reality 101: CEC's blog for new teachers

Introducing Reality 101's New Look, New Voices!

This summer, we set out to relaunch Reality 101, CEC's blog for new special education teachers. First, we recruited four newly minted special educators -- all in their first, second, or third year in the field -- to share their teaching experiences with the CEC community. Then, we gave the blog a whole new look!

We encourage readers, both peer and veteran educators, to get to know these bloggers, offer them advice, and share their own stories through the blog. Let us know what you think!

Jennifer: Teachable Moments

I once had a second-grade student who would get in trouble for being on his “cell phone” constantly in class. He talked to everyone he knew—sometimes nicely, sometimes yelling and disrupting the lesson.

This problem would have been easy to solve if we could just take the cell phone away. But in this case, the cell phone was not a phone at all, but my student’s little clenched fist held up to his ear, and the people on the other line were nothing more than his vivid imagination and memory of past conversations.

His constant conversations were becoming a problem. No matter how many tokens he lost, he still wanted to talk on his “phone.” He didn’t care if he had to work during choice time, because again, he had his phone with him. I didn’t know what to do about his behavior. Five minutes after I would ask him to “hang up,” he’d go and dial another number and be on the phone again. I felt like I was losing my mind!

Kathy: The Difficult Student

I have a student who is difficult not to find repugnant. It makes me feel small to admit this, but it is a reality I face. “Bridget” does not take care of herself physically. She is obese. She dresses in elastic waistband pants that are always falling down. Her hair is often unclean and has no style. She wears t-shirts that are much too large for her and have unattractive images on them.

Most of the time Bridget sits with her mouth hanging open and a scowl on her face. She is slow to respond and unmotivated. She seems to be perfectly content to sit all day. The only thing that gets her the least bit excited is food. I have found her sneaking a drink of the concentrated lemon juice we use in our cleaning spray. She takes sugar packets out of the teachers’ coffee area to eat. She is constantly begging food off of the class.

I often find her just sitting in the room she is supposed to be cleaning. When asked what she is doing, she will give me her blank stare or tell me that she is finished. When I look around, it is obvious she has put little to no effort into the task. The most frustrating part is that she can do so much more.

Katie: When Will I Become "a Professional"?

As a new teacher still working on my master’s degree and the youngest person on staff at my center, I find it difficult to consider myself *trumpets* “a professional.” I’ve yet to build all the confidence I need to feel like I know what I’m talking about when communicating with families, co-workers, and students. At least I know I have the children in my classroom beat, though they still can throw me for a loop with some of their questions and comments.

I feel confident that I know the children in my classroom well enough to give an accurate description of them to others. However, I still second-guess myself, wondering “did I just sound ridiculous?” or “I’m pretty sure that didn’t make sense.” Because the children in my classroom use Autism Scholarship funds to attend our out-of-their-district preschool, I have to tell other schools’ professional teams where these children are in their development. It’s hard to believe you sound like an educated person when you still are learning about special education, the IEP process, and the key terms used to describe a child’s behavior or ability level. This week alone I got off the phone several times thinking “oh, they think I’m an idiot.”

Ellen: Why Are You Dressed Like A Hot Dog?

Around Halloween, my school holds a “Story Book Character Day,” which I found kind of offensive my first year. I was shocked that many kindergarten and first-grade students came to school in costume, especially when I found out all those Star Wars Storm Troopers were supposed to be book characters. There are many students at my school who do not participate in Halloween for religious or cultural reasons, so I thought this excuse to wear costumes to school that conveniently coincided with the holiday was a little insensitive.

That being said, I dressed up as Eric Carle’s The Grouchy Ladybug and my students absolutely loved it. I was also very pleased to find that almost all of the other kindergarten and first-grade kids did dress up as actual book characters, as I guess most families either felt that it didn’t glorify Halloween or maybe didn’t want their students to be excluded.

Katie: Full-Time Work + Full-Time School = One Crazy Life

Juggling full-time graduate school and full-time work makes for one heck of a chaotic life. My to-do list is difficult to keep up with as it grows and grows throughout the week. To make matters worse, it’s hard for me to maintain my concentration on the task at hand. When I’m at work I want to do school stuff, when I’m at school I want to do work stuff, and on weekends I would rather spend my time with family, friends, and my pillow (oh how I miss the pillow!).

It’s hard to stay on top of all the work I need to complete, whether it be planning home visits, writing 10-page papers, posting in a discussion, planning for a team meeting, maintaining data collection sheets, and so on. I’m managing—but not as well as I would like to be. Basically, I’m overwhelmed. (By the way, here’s a sample data collection sheet, which one reader requested a while back.)

It’s hard for me to ask for help or know what exactly I need to be helped with, so . . . I try to take on everything! This is not necessarily the best route, I know, but I’m not quite sure what else to do. (I’m coming to realize that my perfectionist, control freak, “I’ll do it all myself” personality isn’t helping in this situation, but that is so hard to change.)

Jennifer: Troubleshooting the Inclusion Dilemma

I have always been a huge advocate of inclusion. I think it does so much for our students when they  leave their self-contained classroom to go out and engage in a different-paced activity with a larger group of students than they are used to. It encourages communication and helps them increase interpersonal skills. And most importantly, it builds friendships that they may not have otherwise had.

My school is specific to students with physical and health impairments; however, we are connected to a general education school. When I first came here, I thought that this was the absolute perfect set-up for inclusion. I had all these huge plans for pen-pal programs to motivate my students to write, science projects that they could do in teams, maybe even a play or music performance that would bring our classes together (for some reason, every time I thought about how great it would be, my ideas played out in my head like a montage to the theme song for “The Wonder Years”).