The Crazy Life of a Special Educator
Monday, January 19th, 2009Last week when we came back from our 2 week vacation, the bomb was dropped that we were going to have to catheterize an 8th grade boy. It took a little over a week but we finally felt that we had this figured out. Plans were in the works that should be comfortable for everyone.
This past Wednesday, I’m off campus all day for a training, Thursday morning I have the most emotional triennial IEP meeting I have ever had (all of us were in tears ~ some happy, some sad), and then I walk into my classroom ½ way through 1st period. I get into routine with the students and start to check my email and there it is…New interim placement student for you. As I read further into the email, I’m starting to get worried. Like I said, my staff has just caught their breath from our last mountain climb and now we need to get ready for a new student (and let me tell you it’s not just any new student). To top things off, he’s supposed to start Tuesday, we are off campus on Friday, I am short one paraprofessional on Friday, Monday is MLK, Jr. observance day and it’s almost time for the students to go to PE which is when I leave for my District position. So, everything must get put into HIGH gear. I have my paraprofessional get the IEP from the District office so that we can see his levels, so that we can get ready today.
In the email it also gives me a little information that will be so very important… There are many behaviors including elopement from the classroom as well as the campus. He has a Behavior Intervention Plan as part of his IEP but it does not specify the emergency procedures. We’ll need to talk about this. A 1:1 aide will come to assist. He will also need an aide on the bus. As we read through the IEP, we notice that he came from a non-public setting where he had an 8 ½ hour 1:1 aide. This sent up a big red flag for me. My district only assigns 1:1 aides for no more than 6 hours and this student was in a non-public setting with 8 ½ hours of aide time. How is my classroom going to be LRE?
The best part of all of this is how great my team is, we were 75% ready for him to come by the time I got to school on Friday morning. I did a few other things that got us to 90% ready and then the email came… HOLD on new student. We all took a huge deep breath and relaxed a little. This hold did not mean that he isn’t coming to my class, just that he isn’t coming on Tuesday. His CASA (court appointed special advocate) had spoken to my school psychologist and did not think that he should be on a public school campus. She agreed to come look at my classroom this Thursday, which would mean that his first day would not be before Friday if at all.
I’m willing to give this a try but we went through this last year with a student whose behaviors didn’t belong on a public school campus and it took so much out of us. It took us weeks to regain our footing that I’d hate to go through this again if we can avoid it. The CASA has been with him much longer than any of us, I think we need to hear her out and hopefully she’ll know if this could be an appropriate placement for him.
A few students walked up to the door and looked at me, I waved at them. 
They waved back. Their faces showed their confusion. 
I continued to wave. At this point about 3 students were at the door, one said “Let’s go around”, which meant that they could go to the other teacher’s door as our classrooms are connected in the middle and they could get through. They started to walk around but continued to look to see if I would open the door. I again waived at them and smiled.
He smiled and laughed, I continued to smile and waive.
The earlier group told them that I wasn’t opening the door. I continued to smile and wave at the students as they looked at me. A different student suggested, “let’s go get Oscar, he’s got a key”, Oscar is our custodian.
I still am not sure why I decided to do this but it gave me great insight into their problem solving abilities.
