Week 7

     This week I feel really great about student teaching. I am getting ready to film with my focus student so I have spent this week making sure I have all my materials that I need. My cooperating teacher does a great job of helping me when I need it. She has also had a busy number of weeks since she was asked to take over all IEPs for the classroom next to ours. I changed my focus learner for my EDtpa so I am making sure that all of the activities that I have planned are going to be good for my focus learner. I have also been full in charge of the classroom for the last two weeks. I feel like the past couple of weeks has been going by so fast and it is hard to believe that I only have 9 more days left in the classroom.The teacher assistants are still doing such a great job with helping the kids as well as helping me out when I need it. 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 and having a lot of substitute staff in the 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. This past week it was brought to my attention that the intensive teacher in the classroom next door will no longer be coming back for the rest of the year and that it could be a possible job opportunity for me. It was nice to have administration and other staff members approach me about this opportunity. A situation that I encountered was dealing with behaviors again this week. We have had the same behavior issues with the same student for the past few weeks and we are still trying to find a way to help him. We are still working closely with the BCBA for some tips that may help in the classroom as well  as some techniques we can implement. She comes used to come in our classroom one day a week but is now covering a maternity leave for another BCBA and we not only see her for half a day once a week which is hard for us when we could use some additional support. 

      I am continuing to learn a lot from my cooperating teacher especially right now since we are preparing a lot of IEPs for some meetings we have coming up this week and next week. 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 create scheduling times for parents online for parent teacher conferences. The school has a new way for parents to sign up for conferences and so we spend some time after work setting up time slots and emailing this to all parents. 

      I hope to learn more about how to write IEPs since I will have the opportunity to attend and IEP meeting as well as be able to run some of the second IEP meeting before I leave. 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 promote requesting for students. There are a lot of students  who have a hard time knowing how to request and instead it turns into a behavior. We are working on students showing us what they may need or want instead of getting upset. The standard this aligns with is: 

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