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.