no shoe

A record day in my second year of teaching special education, today I sent home my youngest student, my only Kindergartner, with only one shoe. Yes, you read that correctly. He came to school with two and I sent him home with one. Lucky for me the Mom seemed amused when we called to tell her that this occurred about 10 minutes before the end of the school day. I hope she can continue to laugh because I have no idea where the other shoe is. This is not my first lost shoe of the year. Another child had lost shoes during a fire drill earlier in the year. Those shoes however, where inside my classroom and had to be somewhere inside my classroom and where eventually located. This new missing shoe is possibly somewhere in the ivy covered hill on the other side of the fence from our playground.
While I was in the school office to make some copies to go home and I warned the office manager that I had lost a shoe and apologized in advance for any parent phone calls she needed to field in this vein. Another office staff member told me excitedly that the head custodian had found a shoe. "Really!" I exclaimed as I briefly felt relief from our Kindergarten APB on the shoe search. "Yes" she said, "He found it on the lower playground around 9:00 this morning" I said "Wait a minute I may be negligent on the shoe matter but I'm not that bad, he had his shoes until 2:30pm"
In my defense this kid loves to take his shoes off, and though I have been told differently when I commented about playground observation on another blog, it is damn near impossible to see every child every minute on the playground. The consensus is my shoe taker offer, walked out of his shoes in typical fashion and another group of 5 year olds found a shoe to play with, a shoe that may have or may not have gone over the fence. The other little ones that play with my special needs boy spend some time after recess digging in the playground sand and tracking shoe prints to try to locate the little guys shoes. They are the best.

in keeping up to standards

oh yes, I have no standards. This boring and lazy week is continuing. I have very little to say. I have to write a report and an IEP (Individualized Educational Program) tonight. Fun. I am with Angelique on continuing to celebrate my birthday week. This would be better if my idea of celebrating tonight looked more like a party and less like going to bed at 9pm. Maybe I will make it a party with a glass of wine, while I write the report. That always makes things interesting. Well at least it makes spell check interesting. I can't wait until I am living in the super flying cars future and I can have a waterproof laptop to use in the tub. Then I can combine all my favorites of a quiet evening at home, with the hell of having to bring work home.

my job

I don't often hear people saying the things that I say about my job.

examples:

"So I walked out onto the playground today and..."

Also I say many stupid things...(seriously more than usual)
ABC's the remix
ABCDEFG (Suzy, turn around and sit down) HIJKLMN (warning # 2 at #3 you have a time out) OPQ RST UVW XYZ. --did anyone notice the first typing of this where I missed the letters U and V. whew. Its tough mastering this academic content. Especially when you change the meter of the ABC's for someone as rhythmically challenged as I am.

We do this weird OCR clapping version where you clap after the G, N and then Q, T,X and Z to avoid the old elemenopee conundrum.

Closing the Gap (a serious post for a change)

My friend Vanessa just started a blog called Closing the Gap for Individuals with Disabilities that I see kind of as a post M.ed. collaboration tool. She puts it best when she says

My hope for this blog is to facilitate conversations with and between other special educators, caregivers, and anyone working with individuals with special needs. I believe in collaborating with others to provide my students with effective and appropriate services.


Anyway, Vanessa is supremely cool and I hope that her site can serve as a nice forum for people with special needs, their friends, families and service providers. (Wow! I am sounding all grown up here, more like a grad paper than my usual rambling blog fodder)

A colleague/professor of ours piloted an exercise program, called Jumping Jacks & Jills, for kids with ASD in Cincinnati. Vanessa has successfully expanded this program in her new neighborhood in NJ. I love the program and it is something I would like to see nationwide. I have already started talking to people I met at a school curriculum training last week about starting one near here in the spring. (I am not quite as quick as Vanessa at getting these things together, but really, I typed it out now so I am accountable for making it happen.)

Finally, Vanessa is so crazy motivated that she is also doing a Walk for Autism Research on September 30th, and raising money as a team for the Jumping Jacks & Jills. So, if you are just sitting there with all that money you meant to earmark for charitable donation burning a hole in your bank account go visit her Walk site to make a donation.

things that make me happy

• hot tea with honey that came from a bear shaped container (I have a cold)

• the fact that I can justify eating 6 cans of pringles in the next two weeks (or maybe a little longer) because I can use the empty cans to make rainsticks for my class.

• the video from this article.