The Life of an Exceptional Needs Educator

Domain: Personal Development

Life if flying faster and sometimes it feels as if I am grasping by a few strands. This week our normal schedule and routine has been established and started. But normal seems to be a non-existent term. Between IWU student teaching meetings, school faculty meetings, IEP case conferences and initial meetings, conferencing with general educators to bridge the gap, conferencing with my cooperating teacher, running normal errands, copying a million pages, dealing with the internet flashing on and off, dealing with broken printers, preparing for open house, being assigned to breakfast duty because the paraprofessionals have not started, PTO meetings after school, and commuting 45 minutes...time is of the essence and quickly passing.

We have approximately 12 groups a day that passes through our world. I have started taking over more of individual cases, with the recovery reading program, and the math lessons for 1/2 of the "red" group. Next week I have plans to take over one of the bigger reading groups and the bigger math group. Having started to plan, I have discovered that I have approximately 120 lesson plans to write for the next 2 weeks. With each lesson taking probably 1-2 hours to write 3-4 pages, 2 hours of commute time a day, 1 hour for eating dinner, 1/2 hour for journaling, 1/2 hour of conferencing time with my cooperating teacher, 4-5 hours planning out a unit, 1 hour a day making copies, writing daily reading recovery lessons, preparing centers for the next day and doing other misc. work...it just seems as if there are not enough hours in the day or week.

Don't get my wrong, I love working with my students, but we are gaining more each day. We are up to our maximum of 25 students. Each day we are constantly re-arranging the room or our lessons to accommodate more students. Students who we had originally thought would be able to stay in the classroom, are having difficulties, and will shortly be joining us for other subjects besides reading or math. More students, less time, less space, and of course trying to meet their individual goals. The textbook lessons in the past have seemed such a copout, but now they seem substance amidst our busy schedule. My creative side tries to flow, but is dampened by the amount of lessons and time involved to plan. With students’ grades 1-5, the levels vary substantially and leave not much room for whole group or large group instruction. In a perfect world, I would love to work one on one and meet all individual needs. Though sometimes that is just not possible.

Many of our students are at such low reading levels (and all age ranges), we have to work individually with them in our reading recovery program. My cooperating teacher has been extensively trained in this program. I am jumping in along side for the ride. I cannot however at this point do too much of the planning for those individual lessons because I do not know the program. My teacher has decided to try and teach me within the next couple of days, barring that we will get a few moments work alone, without interruptions from other teacher. I only can dream of the day things will go more smoothly. I am excited to work with my students. My teacher is super organized and very creative;I love working along side her. My students seem excited that I have started teaching. Through a moment of joy, there still is so much work to do. I once again return to lesson planning during this second week of student teaching.

After another busy day of school, home and running errands I did run in to a former student. The smile on his face and the success that his grandma bragged about makes everything all worth it. Each child really is so precious and I am excited for their futures.