Reality 101: CEC's blog for new teachers

Allisence: Queen of Crazy Field Trips

I am the Queen of Crazy Field Trips. Every time I hand the school secretary a field trip permission form, she laughs and asks where we’re going this time. The joke is that we’re headed for Disneyland come May; she’s already volunteered to chaperone.

Let me assure you we are not headed for Disneyland—ever. Even still, I don’t plan on relinquishing my title any time soon.

This all started when I brought my fifth grader to the 99-cent store across the street from school. He had money goals, so it made sense. Then we headed (as an entire class) to PetSmart, as we had been studying animal vocabulary and PetSmart is a billion times cheaper than the Phoenix Zoo. In fact, all my crazy field trips are free.

Richard: Economic Reform—Room 605 Style

I base my classroom management on a token economy system that involves points and rewards. A token economy is the most-recommended form of classroom management strategy in practice today. I say that because when I research other options, I can’t find any!

I recently went to a consortium in which we were presented with a system that uses points and levels and rewards. The system seemed nice but had significant downfalls in my opinion, which is what I want to explore this post: How do you effectively blend PBIS and a token economy to maximize positive student behavior?

I have been taught and advised that in a token economy, what a student earns is to never be taken away. The prevailing idea is that they do not yet understand consequences and that by mimicking the real world, I run the risk of losing the child to defiance for the remainder of the year.

Theresa: Classroom Management Woes

“Teacher…teacher…TEACHER!!!”

“I will call on students that raise their hands, and my name is not ‘Teacher.’”

“But why can’t I call you that? You ARE a teacher!”

Classroom management is something I really believe is one of my strengths. Yet this year, I feel like I’m having difficulty getting all of my students on board. I’m frequently getting outbursts like the ones above. I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing differently this year, but I think that it’s simply that the dynamics my students bring to the classroom are a lot different than what I’m used to.

This year presents a really unique challenge for me: My students will be as quiet as possible when I give them an in-class assignment to work on. It is sometimes so silent that I can hear a pin drop. (And yes, I know this is not a usual occurrence in special education resource rooms!)

Jessica: From Hopeless to Hopeful

That feeling of being overwhelmed is a recurring theme with my fellow bloggers, and I am compelled to throw my hat in the ring.

Here’s the deal: No matter what I do, I wish I could do more.

I work with my students, both individuals and small groups, all day long in varying push-in and pull-out sessions of 30 to 80 minutes. I hope I’m helping them, yet I always have that feeling in the pit of my stomach when the words “OK! I’ll see you tomorrow!” escape my lips. It’s that feeling that tells me, Gosh, I wish I had more time with them.

Richard: Where Did I Put My Map?

A special educator (read: paperwork specialist) enters the field with the foreknowledge that they will have a significantly higher amount of paperwork than the typical teacher.

I knew going into my position that I would have to complete IEPs, FBAs, BIPs, and goal progress reports every grading period. I spent my summer organizing my lessons and days to accommodate my duties because I knew I would not have a planning period, being in a self-contained setting. I started the year off with a wonderfully ignorant belief in my ability to complete paperwork within the school day without any complications, all while providing exemplary instruction. Boy, was I wrong!

Three weeks into the school year, our district decided to require that each case manager keep a four-inch binder of progress monitoring data for each student. We would be responsible for keeping student work samples and all the relevant paperwork up to date, such as IEPs and BIPS, both in the notebook and in the student’s file. We were charged with “regularly monitoring and assessing student progress” toward IEP goals and recording that information every few weeks on a form—forms we needed to create on our own, given only the vaguest examples possible.

Allisence: Siloed

First of all, I’m not so proud to share that I have not started running, nor have I made much progress in finding any balance in my life. But I did walk outside and buy myself a new pair of earrings. Baby steps, I tell you, baby steps.

Anyway, did you know that 1873, a man named Henry Hatch of McHenry County, Ill., invented the very first silo? He built it out of wood and stored grains inside of it. He was probably a very forward-thinking man.

I saw my very first silo when I moved to Michigan for college. After being told farmers kept grain inside of them to feed their animals, I could not figure out how they filled those things up. I mean, if you put the grains in through a little window, all the grain already in there would just spill out! Little did I know that silos require some fancy engineering . . . on the inside.

My grad program is built on the idea of co-teaching. In the past year and a half it’s been drilled into my head that silos are bad news and that no teacher should operate in silo fashion. Everyone knows this, but when you’ve been trained to operate as a co-planner, co-teacher, and co-assessor, being the sole teacher-of-record in a self-contained class where I have no team whatsoever is quite hard.