Here in Chicago we’ve been experiencing an extremely warm spring. We just finished off eight record days of over 80 degrees. The exceptionally warm weather has really brought about quite a bit of turmoil in the neighborhood where I teach. The gangs have been becoming more active and my students look at me worriedly every time they hear a police siren outside.
The warm weather has also brought something out in one of my more difficult students, Juan (pseudonym used), who I dedicated a whole blog entry to in December. Recently Juan’s behavior has been slowly spiraling out of control, but what happened this past week was unexpected.
This past month has been a March Madness of IEPs at my school. We all try to hold IEP meetings during this month to review student progress and make schedule arrangements for next year. I found myself called to LEA several IEP meetings with students of various disabilities that were having or have had a history of behavior problems. Being the EBD teacher and Positive Behavior Support Coordinator, I have been given the role of behavior specialist. As I sat in on meetings I noticed a common theme; many teachers struggle with behaviors that appear complicated, but have a fairly simple resolution.
In my past two posts, I’ve written about the importance of teamwork and a common IEP team scenario wherein the parents and school district fail to reach agreement on how to address the needs of a child. In the grand spirit of Star Wars, I am going for a trilogy of teamwork-related posts.
This post focuses on when the general education teacher and specialist (you) fail to agree on accommodations and modifications. Unless you’re Darth Vader with the full backing of the Dark Side, you’re going to have to learn how to reach an accord with colleagues.
In 1795, John Newbery published a children’s book called Goody Two-Shoes that tells the story of a poor, but virtuous orphan girl named Margery Meanwell, who went through life with only one shoe. One day, she met a rich man who gave her a pair of shoes — two shoes. The fable teaches us that being virtuous pays off.
The modern-day term “goody two-shoes” was popularized by this story. Growing up, I was pretty much a goody two-shoes. I did everything I could to avoid troublemakers at all costs. While I knew that there were kids in my school who got suspended, even expelled, I was never friends with them. And with that, I’ve never had to deal with the idea of suspensions until now.
I feel like my life has been consumed by testing these last couple of weeks. There has been the countdown to testing, and now the actual five days of testing. As I have been thinking about what I want to write for this blog entry, the only thing I can think of is testing. I’ve shared in my past entries about how testing frustrates me, and how I wish there was a test that gave a true measurement of my students. But this blog entry is going to focus on how I prepare my students to actually take the test.
This weekend my mother graduated from Kaplan University with her Associates degree. As I was basking in proudness of my mother, my mind wandered to my students. While my students are only in middle school, I have started working with them on at least thinking about what they may want to do when they graduate from high school.
We started the year off with year-long goals and recently worked on long-term goals. They use a great Web resource, www.gacollege411.org to take interest and personality tests that are supposed to help guide them down the right path, as well as to research careers and the steps needed to reach their dreams.
I started with three and things were easy. Two weeks into the school year, I got another and things were still going well. Two months ago, I got another one for half a day, which was something I could handle. Two weeks ago, I got another and all of a sudden everything was thrown for a loop. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about students.
I’m certainly not complaining about the size of my class. I’m pretty sure I have the smallest class in my entire district and I dare say one of the smallest classes ever, but considering the students that are currently on my caseload, things are definitely not easy.
In my previous post, I stressed the importance of teamwork and emphasized how an individual’s needs cannot truly be met without a successful team. A commenter posted the following question: what happens when the team doesn’t agree? I don’t know about you, but if I had a single, definitive answer to this question, my life would be a whole lot easier. In this post and my next one, I will address what I consider the two most common obstacles to achieving team consensus and action:
The parents do not agree with the recommended services.
The general educator does not agree with the specialist’s recommendations regarding accommodations and modifications.
I have recently had the opportunity to be a cooperating teacher for six graduate students from DePaul University. They are currently in the same program that I was in, just three short years ago. It has been wonderful having an extra person in the classroom these last couple of weeks. My students have loved the extra attention from our “visitors,” and I have enjoyed seeing some of my more quiet students interacting with our visitors.
I have really wanted them to get their “feet wet” while working with my students. I have let them decide what they want the kids to call them, whether it’s by their first name or last name. What has been interesting is seeing how they all were unsure about how much of their personal lives to they share. When my students have asked them a question, the graduate students have looked at me for guidance, as if they are unsure how much they should share. I think that as long as you are comfortable with what you are sharing (and it is grade level appropriate), it is fine.
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