End of the year

It is that time of year again. The time that every morning smells like field day, and the teachers are more restless than the teachers. I have learned a lot being a Special Educator at Spring Creek. These are a few of the things: -How to communicate and collaborate effectively with teachers and parents. -How to love students no matter how they treat you. -How to forgive and forget. -That I can do difficult things. -How to file a completely compliant sped folder. -How to make a folder into a compliant one. -How to manage behavior even when I am exhausted. -How to put the students first. These are just a few things. I have learned so much this first year of teaching and the best part is I want to continue teaching!! The students also made loads of progress this year. I was very impressed as I was looking through their progress monitoring to see the growth we have had! These students learned all about math and some made progress from not being able to subtract numbers, to subtracting 3 digit numbers with regrouping!! We've also had students understand fractions for the first time, as well as division and multiplication. This is huge because these are the foundation of all math. I have loved seeing their progress! Spring Creek has more minor changes next year and I am excited to see where they go. I am happy for the students who go here and proud to call myself an educator here because we have some of the greatest educators for these students. I'll miss you Spring Creek!! Love, Mrs. Farnes

Behavior Management

This might seem a little contradictory from my last post but looking back at August I have learned a lot! The other day 2 students who seem to never be affected by my behavior management were finally affected. I found their weakness--free time. It's a long story so to sum it up they were on the lowest level on my level system and weren't making up their time. On top of that I had many teachers complaining to me that they were taking 5 minute bathroom breaks every time there were coming from their gen. ed. class to mine and then again back to their gen. ed. class. I talked with my facilitator about what we should do and we made an escort plan. I kept tweaking it to make sure they were doing what they needed to. I have been impressed that the more I understand the students and tweak my management plan the students behave better.

Success in the classroom

I am a first year teacher and an intern. This means I REALLY don't know what I'm doing and I'm REALLY am "doe-eyed" at all the things teachers are expected to do. Well, even though I am teaching by the skin of my teeth I have had some successful moments. I teach a resource class in an Elementary school. I love my job. I like hearing the "ooooh" when the student's brain connects what I am teaching. I love seeing my students read the same passage faster and faster, to work on fluency. I love teaching. Yes, I do have bad days but even in those days there are some big rays of light. I experienced this these past two days. I have been in a very bad mood lately and find myself getting madder and madder when I answering the same questions over and over. I'm also strapped for time and this stresses me out. I only have a half an hour to an hour to work with these students and I waste so much time with discipline, letting students go to the bathroom during the lesson, and keeping students from bullying each other. I have to remember though, I was hired to teach students, not subjects. Back to the rays of light...
I started teaching multi-digit addition using the partial product method. (It is so much easier to do difficult addition!) I was not excited to teach this because the day before I had a lot of problems teaching this to the students. During the lesson, one of my students who requires a lot of attention to keep his behavior favorable needed my attention again and again and again. It was different though. He was asking questions about the procedure, not tattling on someone or talking to another student. He was learning. I worked with him and my other students were okay with it. They were understanding it, but not enough to be bored. At the end of the lesson all of the students had successfully added using partial product. They are learning. And they will be able to connect this concept when we use partial product for multi-digit addition.

Another moment this week was when I was working one on one with one of my smaller students who is considered "self-contained". This means they are taught more than 3 hours of the school day in a special ed setting. When I work with this student they are usually very lethargic and its almost like pulling teeth to teach them. This day was different. They started talking to me in Spanish and I can understand some so I was talking back to them in English. Needless to say, we had a very successful learning time because I understood them and they understood me.
I have been very blessed these past couple days to be able to see these great learning leaps even though I've been in a bad mood. I love my job. It is very difficult, but SO worth it. I can't wait for end of the year testing!!!