Where to start..

The past three weeks have been a whirl-wind! My little family and I have lived at Maize South Middle School in my new room. We had to completely restructure the room to follow the TEACH Method, per the coop structured learning program (which I can’t imagine ever doing it any other way).  My mentor is the structured learning teacher at Maize South Elementary, right next door to my building. She has been a God-sent for me. She spent almost as much of her Christmas vacation at school as I did. She has helped me more then I could ever thank her for. I was luck that her and I were friends before I became a teacher. When I worked for the Autism specialist I was placed in her room as a Para sub for 5 weeks, she had a para go out to lunch and just not come back!

After redoing schedules I believe (today) for the 9th time I think everyone might  be back on track. Although I am sure that something somewhere will need to be restructured. Already seeing some major behaviors due to scheduling, which will of course need to be altered.

Tuesday was a teacher work day, and I once again spent the entire day working on getting our match-to-same schedules set up for my students. Since some use boardmaker photos, some use digital photos and one uses tobys everyone's schedule is different. Every schedule had to be coordinated so that they were not doing the same thing at the same time, but that everyone got 1:1, independent, plenty of sensory, a group time for my Literature group, News2You, centers and a number of other activities... I keep my kiddos super busy.

I got it okayed for my paras to come in on Tuesday for an hour to see the room/schedule changes. I have to give this group credit in that they went through 3 teachers and no one quite..with that said this means they have been able (forced) to run the room however they have seen fit. So a new younger teacher coming in and making changes did not settle very well with them. To  honest I was in tears as soon as they left Tuesday because of their disapproval and disrespect over the changes I had made. I started praying right there in my classroom for strength, and that the boys would do well the next day showing the paras that my system would work.

After leaving work Tuesday I went in for our 5 month check up. Of course my blood pressure was high!! So they had me lay on my left side and they came back in 10 minutes to recheck it... the entire time I was thinking I don’t have 10 extra minutes to lay here I want to get home to my kids!! Thankfully when they came back in it was better.

Wednesday was the first day with students. My paras were of course reluctant in the morning (all but one, she is very sweet) that the day was going to work and worried what the students would do (already preparing for the worst behaviors). When the boys came in I gave them time to look around and check out the room. One of them walked straight to  independent area (I showed him his name) he looked at his work strip started smiling and skipping. THIS SYSTEM WORKS!! Every other room implements it, I am not making this stuff up and I reminded my paras of this! The day went off BEAUTIFULLY for the students we had NO BEHAVIORS which is almost unheard of after a 2 week break in a structured learning classroom. Did I mention I prayed a lot!!

Today was not quite as beautiful, I took a kick to the outside of my stomach.. totally didn’t see it coming! However I now know that this certain activity triggers this student and have learned from today for future! I still have so much to learn, and I have much to learn when it comes to managing adults. I want our room to be a peaceful environment, but I also must have respect.. that is the challenge I am facing.

Although after day one and two they seem to be warming up to the changes I have made. One of them even text me to tell me thank you for being so organized and that for the first time all year she was not dreading coming to work the next day.. I thought that spoke volumes!!