week 5

This week I am overwhelmed about my planning for the EDtpa. My cooperating teacher does a great job of answering questions and guiding me but its been a week of change. I changed my focus learner for my EDtpa so I am planning for that. I am also fully in charge of the classroom as of Monday so I am getting accustomed to taking over and making sure all staff are where they need to be. The teacher assistants are still doing such a great job with helping the kids as well as helping me out. It really makes a huge difference having a staff that helps and supports you. The biggest challenge this week was simply being short staffed in our classroom. We had some TA's out during the week and it was difficult having substitute TA's that had never worked with students in the intensive program. It was good to have some extra eyes and hands, but difficult to have to make sure the students were all where they were supposed to be as well as a substitute staff member. We have brought up our concerns with the administration about not being provided with a substitute staff since we are technically still understaffed with everyone there. This past week we had our first intensive meeting with administration as well as the BCBA to check in and see if we had any concerns or issues that we needed to address. We just went through and talked about each student and the behavior issues we are experiencing with them as well as the concern of short staff. Administration is trying to help us find new staff and are in the process of interviewing a new hire. They are also concerned that higher administration is going to give them a hard time because technically on paper it does not say we need more staff but based on needs we do.  A situation that I encountered was dealing with behaviors this week. One student in particular has been having an extremely hard time with transitions as well as giving up preferred items and we are trying to trial and error different ways to help him be successful. We are working closely with the BCBA for some tips that may help in the classroom as well  as some techniques we can implement. She comes in our classroom once a week to observe and help us as well as give us some feedback on what we are already implementing. 

      I am continuing to learn a lot from my cooperating teacher especially right now since we are doing a lot of testing as well as preparing for IEP meetings and re-evals. My cooperating teacher has been given the responsibility of handling two additional IEPs in the other special education classroom next door so she now has to test their students and come up with data for their classroom. I am doing my best at keeping our class in line and helping the TAs and much as possible to allow her to have time to test them. This week I learned how to fill out a FBA assessment as well as give my opinion in the FBA.

      I hope to learn more about how to write IEPs since I will have the opportunity to attend to IEP meetings. I am looking forward to seeing how IEP meetings run and seeing the role of the special education teacher in the meeting.  This coming week I will try and encourage more conversations between staff and peers and well as peer to peer interactions: 

SL.K.1.b Continue a conversation through multiple exchanges. 

Week 4

This week I am feeling more comfortable with the routines in the classroom. I am able to take over more and am helping the teacher with planning reading material and she is letting me pick which books would be good for the kids for the next few weeks. The staff in the classroom are amazing and know the routine so well as well as the students. I am very lucky to have such and amazing staff to work with. They make sure the students are always on task and follow through will all of the necessary plans for the students.The BIPs are being used a lot daily for the students. I am still taking over the Calendar group of the classroom as well as the morning and afternoon group with the students. This Monday coming up I will be fully taking over the classroom and I feel prepared and overwhelmed still as well. There were a few challenges this week that I went through. The biggest challenge this week was not having enough staff in the classroom that we need. It made it extremely hard to give the necessary attention to small details when we were down so many stand in the room. This is where I am learning how to deal with that as well as collaborate and speak with administration about how to handle the situation. It also gave me insight on how to ask other staff for assistance. We were having a hard time finding staff to relieve our paras and allowing the students to go outside for recess. In order to solve this we spoke to administration as well as the specials teachers to ask for help with our students outside. A situation that I encountered was working through the smart board calendar group with the students. A particular student has been having a hard time at the smart board and has been acting too silly while up there. I came up with the idea of making him a superhero book (since it is his motivator) that he can work for after her appropriately gets through his work on the smart board. 

      I am continuing to learn a lot from my cooperating teacher especially right now since we are doing a lot of testing as well as preparing for IEP meetings and re-evals. The most important thing that I have learned is that consistency is key with the students in the classroom. I have been working one on one with them on their IEP goals and felt like there was not much progress happening, but when we tallied the percentages up it was amazing to see how much progress has been made since the baseline week. 

      I hope to learn more about running the classroom and thinking quick on my feet when something is not working for the students. I am helping with a lot of the testing for the students IEP that I am attending in October. This is helping me learn a lot about assessment and how to administer them. We also began cooking with the students and this week we are making pancakes so it was a lot of fun to learn how to cook with them. This coming week I will try and introduce some new food so that the students will: 

1B.1a. Identify one’s likes and dislikes, needs and wants, strengths and challenges.