I remember again why I'm a teacher

Yesterday was the last day before break. I survived the first semester! While I was walking through the office yesterday morning, I saw one of my students with his mom and stopped to talk to them. I had been wanting to call her anyway to tell her of her son's great improvement this semester. At the beginning of the year, I couldn't get him to score a 6 on the DRA (a reading test...a 6 is kindergarten reading level). When I tested him this week, he had moved up to a 10, which is 1st grade...a big improvement. When I told her that she jumped up and down, threw her arms around me, and started crying. Then she said that was the best Christmas present anyone could ever give her. I had tears in my eyes at how happy she was. It's moments like these when I know why I am a teacher. Some days I want to tear my hair out in frustration, but then I remember moments like this and know that it will pay off. I think if I didn't get frustrated, it would mean that I don't care enough about my students.

In other news, I have the most annoying neighbors. The past 2 weeks we have not had a decent night's sleep because they have a very noisy bed and feel the need to have sex at all hours of the night, several times a night. I swear they're like rabbits. I've banged on the ceiling several times to no avail. This morning I went up there and banged on the door. I didn't think he would actually answer the door, but he did. When I told him he needed to be quiet, he told me he'd try his best but couldn't make any promises. I made a suggestion of going somewhere else in the house and he told me I couldn't tell him not to have sex. I never said that...I said to find another time and place. Then he said "This is my home, you can't tell me that." I told him that he has people that live below him and he needs to be more considerate. Seriously people, when you live in an apartment and people live below you, have some decency. If he keeps it up, I'm filing a noise complaint. When I'm woken up at 12:30, 3:30, 4:30, and 7:30 in the morning, I am not happy.

I guess it's time for another update

See I told you guys I'm not good at updating blogs. I'm really good at reading other people's blog though! One blog I read religiously is by someone I don't even know. Kali introduced me to it at the beginning of the year and I really enjoy it. It was started to chronicle a family who has a little boy who is deaf and has bilateral cochlear implants. When I started reading, he had just had his surgery at 8 months old and is now within normal limits for speech and language, which is so awesome. Anyway, the woman who writes it (the little boy's mom) is in the hospital right now having an emergency c-section to deliver her little girl, which is baby #4 (technically baby #5, as one was stillborn). She's only 32 weeks, so keep this family in your prayers. She hasn't had a whole lot of luck with pregnancies. All of her kids were born premature.

Anyhoo, you probably don't care much about some random person that I don't even know.

I've been keeping pretty busy. Work is still great. I went to a workshop on Visual Phonics at the beginning of November and it was sooo awesome. I've been using it pretty intensely with my student who signs and he is doing so well. He has been sounding out words and voicing while reading. It's so amazing. He has a cochlear implant, but up until this year, has not used it. Today, he told me that he could hear the furnace running in my room and it was pretty quiet.

I went home for Thanksgiving, which was nice since I haven't been home to St. Louis since August. I came in on Wednesday afternoon and in the evening my mom, Sam, and I met my aunt at Hessler's. We had a great time hanging out. Thursday morning I went to my dad's for a Thanksgiving breakfast. I finally got to see the awesome job my dad did on the kitchen renovations. For dinner I went with my mom to her friend's house. After about a bottle and a third of wine and a delicious dinner, I conked out at 9:00. I was sent to the guest room while everyone else had fun laughing at my mom sleeping on the couch. Mom's friend woke me up and as we were getting ready to go, a fire broke out in the oven, filling the house with smoke. I hi-tailed it out of there and waited in the car for them to get it under control with my mom.

Friday morning was time for shopping. Good times. I got some Christmas presents, along with some presents for myself.

The rest of the weekend was fun too, but I'm getting tired of typing. Maybe I'll make another post in a few days...we'll see.

Sick

I knew I couldn't escape getting sick for long. There's been way too much going around school for me not to catch something. We've even had H1N1 (aka Swine Flu). I woke up Wednesday morning with the beginnings of a sore throat and by Thursday I was pretty sure I had a sinus infection. Luckily my health insurance began promptly on Thursday. I had training on Thursday so I didn't have any kids to deal with so I made it through the day. Friday came however and I didn't make it. I had some meetings that came up last minute Thursday afternoon so I went in, but as soon as those were over I told my principal at Longview I was going home. So I got some work together for one of my kids and headed home for the comfort of my bed. I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon after I called the doctor which was nice.

Today I did more sleeping while Chris went to his grandma's for lunch. Being sick had its merits though because then I wasn't so depressed about not being able to afford to go to the American Royal BBQ Competition. For those of you not from KC, the American Royal BBQ is also known as the World Series of BBQ, where people come from around the country to compete for who has the best BBQ. I heard that this year there were about 500 booths. That's a lot of BBQ. Next year, we are totally going.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll feel much better because I have to get my homework done that's due by midnight. I also have fallen way behind on my children's lit homework. There aren't due dates but since I have to finish by the end of the semester instead of the end of the year, I need to stay on top of things.

One thing I'm looking forward to at school is that I'm going to start working on listening and speaking skills with my student who signs. His parents want him to be more a part of the hearing world, so if I can at least give him some survival phrases to say, I'll be more than happy. I'm all for him keeping sign, but if he has a spoken component it will really help him with reading and writing. Right now, he needs a lot of assistance with writing because if he doesn't know how to spell something, either I or his interpreter has to spell it for him. If he knows the sounds of the words and the sounds of the letters, he can be a little more independent. Hopefully it goes well!

ugh

Stress. I'm not a fan, but all too familiar with it. For the most part, my job is still going great. One hitch that I can't really talk about on here, but my kids are awesome even though I have to bribe one of them to come with me. The past couple weeks have been filled with meetings and training, which has cut down on instructional time, but that will calm down soon. Just a little worried about the quickly approaching end of the quarter, which means report cards, IEP progress reports, and parent conferences. Considering it took a little bit to get to know my kids and what works with them, I've only been really getting into the nitty gritty for the past 3 weeks or so it seems. Last week was a bit of a wash since I had so many meetings and had to push in instead of pull out so I didn't get as much done with one of my kids as I would have liked. But it was important that he was in class for what we were doing, so it was okay.

It's getting easier to plan for the week, and I don't feel like I'm constantly racking my brain to think of what to do with the kids. I feel like I have a pretty good schedule of rotating activities to work on goals along with plenty of resources if I need a fresh idea.

I'm feeling a lot more confident lately professionally and in my signing. I still have trouble with the signing but I can at least act my way through a small conversation if the interpreter is not there. And even in my stressful state, I've kept my tears at bay except for once today, when I was in the privacy of my office without anyone around. That was one of my fears when I started on my own. In past jobs, if I had to talk to a supervisor about something or if there was any conflict, no matter how hard I tried, I would cry. I'm getting much better at controlling that now.

I did have some fun this past weekend though. Saturday morning Chris's mom and grandma came over for breakfast and we made pancakes and sausage on the wonderful griddle that Chris' mom gave us for a housewarming gift. After they left, Chris and I went down to the City Market to walk around and check out the produce. One of the farmers there sells golden watermelon and it's sooo good. So we got one of those and a regular watermelon. We got some corn and some apples too. I'm going to make caramel apples with some of my kids on Friday so I thought I'd just pick them up while I was there. In the evening, Chris, Emily (one of the HI Specialist that I've become friends with) and I went to Oktoberfest in downtown Lee's Summit. It was so much fun to hang out and walk around the festival. Sunday was mostly a lazy day, doing some grocery shopping and getting homework out of the way. Tomorrow morning will be a little more lax because my morning student will be on a field trip so that's one less school to go to and an extra hour of planning for the week, which is always welcome, especially since I won't get my usual Wednesday plan time since I have to make up time that I'll miss on Thursday due to training.

Getting into the swing of things...

Sorry for the lack of posts! It's been pretty busy and I've been tired in the evenings. I'm loving my job and I got some great feedback from a parent the other night. 6th grade curriculum night was last week so I stayed knowing that one of my kid's parents would probably be there. Afterwards we chatted for an hour. She kept talking about how happy she is with what we are doing. It seems that no one has ever taken the time with him since they moved to Kansas when he was little, which is really sad. He's a great kid, but really far behind academically. So I have a huge task of getting him somewhat caught up. She told me that after the IEP meeting before school started she was so happy that she sat in the parking lot and cried for 20 minutes (This was the one that lasted 3 1/2 hours). That just makes it so worthwhile to me, knowing that not only am I making a difference with my kids, but also with their parents. Some things that I'm doing that seem like common sense, like modifying book orders so that they are at his level and not getting 6th grade book orders, were never done for him before. It's also great to see him get excited about books, even though it's a story that's being read to him instead of reading it himself. Gotta start somewhere. So I'll be getting really friendly with the Magic Tree House books. They're pretty good books and go back in history, so he's learning about things on top of it. I'm also enjoying watching the stories signed, since he uses ASL. I don't really understand a whole lot of sign, but I'm learning and it's interesting to watch because there's so much expression involved. However, I still have my reservations about signed approaches, especially now that I'm trying to teach a 6th grader to read and can't really use traditional approaches. So much of reading is hearing, and while he can hear with his implant, attempts to teach him how to use it to listen were aborted when he went to a signing school.

Anyway, enough about that. It's been nice having a long weekend. I've relaxed a bit, but I did have to go up to school yesterday to work on planning since I didn't have plan time last week. Luckily it didn't take me too long. Today I've been trying to work on homework for Children's Lit and Speech and Language Development. It's been really hard trying to fit that in. I'm exhausted at the end of the day and the last thing I want to do is homework. But if I don't finish these classes, I won't have a job after this semester since they hired me contingent on getting provisional authorization for my teaching certificate in January.

9 more days till Chris moves in! I can't wait!

That's about all for now. I'm out.

Well, I survived my first week! This week I mostly just observed my students and worked with them in the classrooms. I did pull one of my students on Friday, mostly because what the class was doing wasn't what he'll be doing. My kids and my coworkers are all great. This weekend I'll be planning for next week. My schedule is pretty packed. I was able to fit in a plan time 3 times a week for an hour, which is better than what I thought last week. I had to meet with my service coordinator yesterday about one of my students because I didn't have enough time in the week to fit all of his minutes in. But since his IEP didn't specify a hearing impaired teacher, we were able to get him in the learning center for the time that I can't be with him. Ah special education.

In other news, I got my new couch today! Isn't it pretty? It's nice not to have to sit on the floor...granted my TV is still on the floor so now I have to look down to watch it.

The Night Before School

So tomorrow school starts! Yikes! I'm hoping that schedules work out. Right now it looks like we might have to rearrange where one of us goes. It's complicated. Basically there aren't enough minutes in the week for me to cover all my kids and drive between schools.

This past weekend was great. Chris was in town this weekend and had 2 interviews today! Yesterday we went out to Nebraska Furniture Mart and I found a couch. It's going to be delivered on Saturday. In the meantime, I put the air mattress in the living room cause I'm tired of sitting on the floor to watch TV.

I'm so nervous and excited about tomorrow. I'll post tomorrow when I get home and after I get my couch you'll get some pictures!

The Week Before Back to School

Well, I survived new teacher training! Today all the teachers came back for the all-district meeting and then we had department meetings the rest of the day. The in-services we had today were really informative and gave me an idea of how they write goals and IEPs. Luckily, they're fairly similar to how we wrote them in my classes so that's good. Different districts have different ways of writing goals so I was glad it was similar to how I'd learned. Good thing we had that today because apparently my first IEP meeting is Friday! I won't be alone of course though since I'm not certified so my mentor will be with me. Plus, we're not sure if I will be servicing this particular student so we'll all have to attend.

I have a trunk full of stuff to take to my office at school but I haven't gotten back there this week since we've had meetings till 4 the past few days and I'm pretty much done then after sitting listening to gobs of information all day. I think Thursday I'll have a workday though to get things done.

I'm really excited for Saturday because Chris is coming in town for 2 interviews on Monday! I hope he gets something soon so he can get moved. I miss him terribly along with my kitties and furniture. It'll be nice when there's a couch to sit on instead of sitting or laying on the floor to watch TV. I'm coming back to St. Louis the weekend of Aug. 28th to take care of some things, which could end up being the weekend Chris moves too. We'll see. His mom and uncle are going to fly in to help him move when he does so that will be good. That way he can drive the moving truck and his mom can drive his car to KC. I'm going to bring the cats back with me when I come whether or not he moves that weekend. They have to be out of the apartment before he does the final walkthrough. I'll be glad to have them here when I get home from work to cuddle with. Granted I won't be glad to have the allergies back but I'll deal. I have for the past year anyway. Plus when my health insurance kicks in, I'll be able to get my Allegra-D again, which will help a lot.

Okay, I think I've rambled enough now. Can you tell I'm bored?

First Day of Meetings

Today was my first meeting, which was my benefits meeting. When I got there I looked over in the car next to me and a friend from college was pulling up too! It turns out he's starting out as a choral director at one of the high schools. So it was nice chatting with him.

I've been really tired lately and having a lot of headaches. I think it's cause I haven't been taking my meds since I've been out and had no money to get more. I went ahead and ordered some so I guess I'll just have to put it on my credit card. I can't be tired like this all the time. I took a nap after my meeting and it helped for a little bit but now my headache is back.

Tomorrow I have my laptop meeting and I'll get my work laptop. Then I can sign up for insurance since Safari isn't supported by the website they use. No big deal.

That's all for now. I'm out.

Well, almost all of my stuff is moved in...granted that mostly consists of books and very little furniture. I haven't taken any pictures yet, but it's a bit messy and there's really not much different from the pictures I posted the weekend we signed the lease except for the boxes. And frankly, I've just been too lazy to take any. I tend to get really lazy when I'm lonely I guess.

I met one of my new neighbors today. I was in the office unpacking when I thought I heard someone at the door, but when I looked, there was no one there but I noticed that the door across the hall was open so I assumed that it was them I heard at their door. A few minutes later, I decided to run out to my car to grab some things I forgot and when I came back I saw there was an envelope taped to my door. There was a card from the neighbors across the hall welcoming me to the building and saying to let them know if I needed anything. So I thought I'd go over to thank them and introduce myself. Then when I went outside to do that, I looked down and saw a nice little welcome mat at the door. So I went over there and met my neighbor John, who lives there with his daughter. He was really nice and welcoming, letting me know that if there's ever a storm, he invites everyone down into the hallway of his garage if we need to seek shelter. So I thought that was nice. It's nice to feel welcomed by your neighbors instead of just moving in and never talking to anyone.

Then around 2:30 I got a call from the cable guy asking if I minded if he came early to set up my cable, which was awesome, since it's been kinda boring here without it. I need to figure out what friends actually still live in KC to hang out with. Patrick helped out with moving and was a huge help to my dad and me. Haven't seen Missy yet since she had a long work weekend, but hopefully we'll be able to get together this week when neither of us are working.

Well, that's all I can think of right now. I need to go to Best Buy at some point and get a new router since this one doesn't seem to want to work anymore. It's been kinda touchy for a while and half the time Chris's computer won't even pick it up so maybe it's time for a new one. We had the same one at my mom's and I just replaced it cause it wasn't working right with her iPod and apparently LinkSys doesn't support it anymore. It's not too big of a deal to hardwire to the modem right now, but once Chris gets here we'll need wireless.

We signed a lease!

Chris and I came up to KC last night so we could look for apartments. We looked a several places but none could compare to this one apartment complex called The Fairways. For all the amenities, we got a great deal with all the specials they were running. I'm so excited about it! This will be the first place that I really consider mine (or I guess 'ours' too!) since I've been living with my mom since I graduated from UMKC. Sure I had apartments before, but I had a roommate and they were just temporary for the school year. We're going to go back tomorrow morning on our way to breakfast so Chris's mom and grandma can see it and I'll take pictures, but for now if you want to see the complex you can go to http://www.aptsatthefairways.com. A big plus for us was that internet and cable are free for a year with them. Plus there's a beautiful pool, a carwash, and a 3-acre lake stocked with fish. I haven't fished in years but I would love to again even though I sometimes get impatient with it and I've never been able to properly bait my own hook...I've tried and the worm never stays on.

So next Saturday I'm loading up my dad's van and heading west again. I wish Chris could come but he has to work until noon so that might be a little too late of a start if we wait for him since the office closes at 5 on Saturdays. Since he still has a lease and a job until the end of September he's staying in St. Louis until he finds something in KC...keep your fingers crossed! So I won't have much furniture until he moves since I don't have any of my own furniture. I plan on saving up and getting a new living room and bedroom set. It won't be right away of course, but we have enough to go by now. We're heading back to St. Louis tomorrow after breakfast so we can get ready for my graduation/going away party on Sunday. I'm really excited to see everybody, especially since there are some people coming that I haven't seen in a while.

Well that's all for now! I need to remember to keep up with this thing a little better.

I Got A Job!

You're reading the blog of Lee's Summit School District's newest teacher! I finally heard back from them with an offer and accepted the position. So in 2 weeks, I'm moving to KC and I'll start on Aug. 6th with new teacher orientation. I'm really excited and nervous at the same time. But I did get excellent training through Fontbonne and I'm confident that I have the tools that I need to get started. I also have a good group of people that I can get in touch with if I need help or advice.
Today my grandma had a graduation/going away party for me at her house. My uncle was in town from Phoenix too so it gave us an excuse to all get together anyway. We had a nice time...no fights, which is always a good thing.
Thursday night Chris and I are heading to KC to look at apartments on Friday and Saturday. I have a couple appointments set up so I'm sure we'll find something that we like.
Sorry I've been bad about updating. Erin informed me that I need to make sure that I update more after I move, so I'll try.
Not much else to report now. I'm really tired so sorry if this seems a little random and incoherent.

Not much new to report right now but I thought I'd do a post anyway.  I'm still waiting to hear back from Lee's Summit.  I'm starting to wonder if the guy that I've been talking with went on vacation because he's usually pretty prompt to respond.  

I started a new class yesterday and so far it's pretty interesting.  Today we talked about labeling people.  This has been a big issue for me since I was diagnosed with AD/HD.  One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone says "She's ADD."  Umm...no, I'm Krystal.  I have AD/HD, but it does not completely define me.  It's a part of who I am, and I've learned to cope with it.  In fact, I think that if I did not have AD/HD, I would be a totally different person.  I'll never forget not long after I was diagnosed with AD/HD, I forgot to do something.  My mom said "Oh she's ADD.  That's why she did that."  Before having AD/HD, she would have had the opposite reaction.  Nothing about me changed...just the label, which changed my mom's expectations of me.  

Are labels always bad?  Not at all.  Some kids need those labels to get the services they need.  

Okay, enough of my soapbox.

The Waiting Game

I was informed a few weeks ago that I needed to start a blog on here, so here it is.  I'm warning you all though, I'm not so great at updating these things.  Haven't even checked Xanga in months, but I don't think anyone else does either.

Right now I'm taking classes to finish up my master's this summer.  I'm taking 7 hours and just finished a class at Meremac for teacher certification.  After the summer I have 16 hours left to go before I can be fully certified.  Which brings me to my waiting game...

Two weeks ago I got a call from the special services department at the Lee's Summit School District, wanting to know more about my certification status and to set up an interview.  I happened to be going to KC the next week anyway, so I went ahead and accepted the interview, thinking "Hey, they know I'm not certified, but still want to interview me, that could be a good sign."  The interview went really well, and he said that if I didn't qualify for temporary authorization, that I could possibly be hired on a substitute contract if they decided to offer me the position.  The next morning, he called me back saying that they were very impressed and would like to offer me the position...but of course it couldn't be that easy.  He had to call DESE, talk to my advisor at Fontbonne to find out my student teaching requirements, and talk to human resources to find out if things would actually work out.  After talking with DESE and human resources, he informed me that I have to have less than 12 hours left of certification coursework, and that a substitute could only work 90 days in a school year so he couldn't offer me a substitute contract.  Crap.  I have 16 hours left.  So he said to double check with my advisor and DESE to see what can be worked out and to make sure that was how many hours I had left.  Then I had an idea!  I emailed him and asked if it was possible to be on a substitute contract for the first semester, and then on a teacher contract the second semester since I would then be eligible for temporary authorization (or maybe even a full certificate).  He said that he'd be open to looking into that option.  Dr. Lenihan (my advisor) and I talked about a few student teaching options and things are starting to look up again towards being able to take the position.  Now I'm just waiting to hear back to see what he's found out about that.

I know if it's not meant to be it won't happen, but I really would like to be able to take the position.  Keep me in your thoughts and prayers that everything works out.