Life Skill Lessons

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)

– Lena Horne, singer, actress

As I step into my newest position in education, this quote is everything. I know that this new position can be done but it’s how I manage my time and responsibilities to make it work. Wish me luck!

a marathon…..not a sprint to the finish, if you want it to stick.

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Functional Academic

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Life Skill Portfolio

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Birth date

Last year, I proposed a split contract to the Special education director and the Technology director. I am the trainer for the special education web based IEP program. I had found that there has been a need for more training, small group assistance and all around IEP writing needs. They both loved the idea but with the budget crunch there was no money.

It seems that the need is still there and the Tech department is pushing for the position this year. They changed my proposal in that I would be teaching ½ day (mornings) and my partner teacher would come in the afternoon to take over so that I could leave for my special assignment.

I really love the idea of the proposal but am concerned about the daily split. When I thought I would be teaching all day 2 days one week and 3 days the next, I was ok with this but now that I only see them for ½ the day each day, I’m concerned.

Even though I wasn’t supposed to, I spoke with my paraprofessionals about the special assignments. I felt that if they did not think it would work then I wouldn’t take the position. I wanted to make sure that I was still looking out for my student’s best interest. They both thought I should take the position but one thought I’d have issues with relinquishing control of the classroom. I take my student’s progress personally and she was afraid that since I would not longer be teaching 3 periods, it would be hard to not micro-manage the other teacher for those positions.

I think it will be a personal growing experience to share my classroom and that since I am aware that I want to control the situation, that I’ll be able to conscientiously be ok with releasing control to another teacher (who should be excellent).

I want to take the position but still am nervous about the change.