Been A While

Wow, it's been a while. Things have been crazy to say the least. We bought a house, I got in a car accident, we bought a new car...plus school. Let's see, school.... My little darling is on meds now and is a totally different kid. It's literally a night and day difference. He started them on Monday and I was expecting to have to wait a bit to see the effects, but it was immediate. He can sit still, he participates, he is an amazing kid now. I have been making sure to tell him how proud I am of him and letting him know that he is doing a great job in class. I will have a sub for about an hour tomorrow and I'm making him one of the helpers because he has been so fantastic this week. He is super excited, he made sure this afternoon that he knew all of his duties and how to perform them. It was really cute. If he can keep this up, he will be a student of the month soon. I'm hoping mom sees the difference at home and keeps up with the doctor appointments and meds.

My other little darling that had a really horrible home life has been moved to foster care, so she is no longer in my class. I hope and pray that she is in a good situation now. I pray that she will find stability and consistency, she desperately needs it.

With those 2 situations being different, my classroom looks completely different. I feel much more productive now that I'm not constantly having to deal with behaviors.

I had my final observation this week. I'm professionally competent in every area (whew!). At the beginning of the year we had to complete a rubric about ourselves and our abilities. The principal fills out the same rubric about us and we discuss the similarities and differences. There were some areas that I need to work on, but I already knew that. I will be writing my district goals about them. He said there were a couple areas that I might have underrated myself. That was an awesome thing to hear. We also talked about how my personality can overpower sometimes and make people feel uncomfortable or not like me. I told him I've heard that before, unfortunately I tend to have my dad's personality, which is fine for a man in a managerial position, but not so fine for a woman in my position. So that's another thing I will continue to work on. Luckily he is very understanding and really is there to help make me a better teacher and staff member!

I have been taking a class about how to work with gifted students that has been really fun. I have learned a lot about how to identify students who may be gifted so that I can let the teacher know to test them. For example, I have a relatively new student who has astounded me the last couple of days. I think she is definitely gifted nonverbally. I gave the kids a squiggle picture last week and they had to complete the picture hoewver they saw it. She saw the word "dusty" in the squiggle. I will post a picture later. Then today, the kids were doing math centers and one of the centers was pentominoes. (For those of you who don't know what they are, they are confusing and much like a puzzle.) Basically there were 2 shapes and the kids had to use the 12 pentominoes to fill in the shape. They had 10 minutes at each center and she finished both pictures in about 4 minutes and told me that they were too easy. I will have you know that I spent about 20 minutes trying to figure them out. Needless to say, I have already passed her name onto the teacher to have her tested.



Pentominoes