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.