AIMS Week Has Arrived

Well, it's that time of year again. Time for me to be bored out of my skull while my kids test for 4 days. I'm hoping they are as ready as they seem to be. They are excited to get candy and gum during the test, let's just hope they don't get it everywhere and ruin their test books. Friday we had another student of the month assembly.

My little man who FINALLY started meds was the kiddo for my class. His mom came with her boyfriend and when his name was called mom was a total wreck. She sobbed for a good 5 minutes and thanked everyone for caring about her son enough to try to help him. We all just reminded her that he couldn't have done it without her. She took a bunch of pictures of him with myself and the other people that were on the team to get him help. He is doing SO well now. He has stopped saying that he's dumb and no one loves him. He cares about his learning and tries hard to get things done to the best of his abilities. He is still low in reading simply because he has to play catch up, but he has learned more in the last month than he had all year. He jumped from a 32% on a district test to a 72%. I think that speaks volumes. He is so proud of himself. I made sure to write him a letter telling him how proud I am of him and he just kept thanking me. He got TONS of hugs on Friday. When I asked him if he was surprised, his response was "I knew I could do it Mrs. Barnes". I wanted to cry, he never would have said that before. It's so amazing to know that this little guy actually has a future now, where before I would have said the opposite.

ADDED APRIL 18 Well, my little guy has been selected for another reward. This Friday, he will be taken to lunch with the Superintendent of my district. Every month she takes 2 kids from a few schools out for pizza and calls them SUPER kids. SUPER stands for "students' unique performance earns reward". My principal asked for nominees who have worked hard and changed behaviors drastically. I, along with multiple other people, nominated him last week. This morning at the beginning of the day I announced the news to the class. Before I said his name, I explained that it was for kids who worked hard to change their behavior and out of the corner of my eye I could see him smiling and pointing to himself. It was so cute. He was very excited and everyone in my class congratulated him by giving him a cheer (we do cheers constantly to tell each other good job). My ltitle guy's favorite cheer is what we call the gold cheer, "if good work were gold, you'd be a millionaire!" Needless to say, this little guy has certainly learned how well he can perform and how much people care about him (remember he used to say that no one liked him and he was stupid). It's truly the reason I got in to teaching and it's certainly a success story for so many people at the school (even those people who thought it could never happen)!