Life Skill Lessons

– Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, French critic, novelist (1808-1890)

I had to write up one of my para a few weeks ago. The good news is that she was already on an improvement cycle. So, when the HR department came out to talk to her about her improvement plan for this year, they gave her my letter (that I wrote in the 3rd person so that it was in my principals words and his signature). At the end of the meeting she left for the day for a doctor’s appointment, that I knew about before hand. That night I got a phone call from her that she’d be out for 2 weeks according to her doctor’s note. At the end of that 2 weeks she came with another note for 2 more weeks. That was up on Friday. I haven’t heard from her but I’m crossing my fingers that she has another note. It’s been easier for myself and my other two paras to be without her than to have her there. Sad isn’t it.

You catch more flies with honey, so let’s be sticky sweet and do what we can to make it a successful, productive, amazing year!

As of last Monday, I am now a ½ time teacher. I spend the morning in my classroom with my students (class discussion/calendar and Language Arts). I then have a prep period during which my partner teacher comes. She will spend the morning working with 2 home school students. I then move on to the District Office.

Since it’s only been a week, I can’t say that I’ve done much. I had a few meetings and send out a surveymonkey questionnaire. Unfortunately, I have only had 21 staff respond to the survey. I’m hoping more will respond soon as it really would be great information for me to know what they feel they need from our IEP program in the way of training.

The position still has not been defined. Which is good and bad. The good is that I get to design the position, the bad is that without definition people/departments can try to pull me in all different ways.

I really want to use this time to help teachers get better at IEP writing, no matter if it’s this program or a different one. I am meeting with the Coordinators this Monday to ask them some questions and propose my BIG 4. These BIG 4 are done differently all around the District and I want to get one consistent answer from the Coordinators so that when I go to each site they all get the same answer. What a novel idea, everyone with the same information.

– Edgar Watson Howe, novelist, editor (1853-1937)

– Clarence Buddinton Kelland, writer (1881-1964)

– Siddhartha Gautama, Indian spiritual teacher, founder of Buddhism (563-483 BCE)