Today Was a Good Day

Today was great. It was the perfect way to end the week. I had to finish an assessment so that I could write the report over the weekend and hand it in on Monday. The kid that I've been testing was reluctant to come with me because he hated being pulled out of class. Today I had to be done with the testing, and I was feeling the pressure of the deadline. Of course when I sat down to prepare for testing I get call over the intercom to report to the office.

I get there and I'm told to see as distraught student in one of the classrooms. When I got there, the teacher told me that the student told her that she had a fight at home and she needed to talk to someone. I sat down with the student, and I was able to get her to open up to me and tell me what was going on. There were a lot of issues happening at home. Today, she had a fight with her sister which escalated into the police being called. Apparently, this student's family are no strangers to family services. After I got the necessary information I tracked down some resources and made sure she was able to get back to class.

I was finally able to start testing,. I had been trying to complete academic achievement testing and I only had a couple of subtests left. My student had a math test first, and then we finally met. Of course, by this time he had art class coming up, so we only met for a few minutes and then I had to dismiss him. Then I was off to meet with my supervisor. The meeting went well, and I received a good evaluation. It was nice to get some real feedback about what I can do to be better.

At the end of the day I was able to finish testing (whew), score it, and figure out how it will fit into my report. And the clincher, I was able to reconnect with a student that was mad at me because I failed to uphold my end of an agreement. He had been mad at me for weeks because I forgot to let him play basketball as a reward for good behavior. After using a teacher as a liasion, I approached him and asked if he wanted to play, he thought about it and said yes. I'm glad he finally agreed, because I was starting to wonder how long he was going to hold that grudge.

BBC

School Security Update

So my school really stepped up its security. It went from a school with an open front door that led directly to the indergarten with no one present to check on a visitor's nature of business, to a school with all locked doors, security cameras, a buzzer, and key passes for all personnel. I'm glad that finally happened, that was way overdue.

BBC

Election Day

Another election, and no mention of No Child Left Behind. What else am I supposed to rant about? The war? Anyway, I ran across this article in the NY Times. It's an interesting story about people on the spectrum.

BBC

Hell Hath No Fury

Hell hath no fury like an 11 year old scorned. I made the mistake of not following through with a reward system. An 11 year old that I'm working with didn't get his weekly award and was pissed at me the next time I saw him. It wasn't my fault, because his teacher told me that the program wasn't working. "Not working" equals "scrapped" to me, so I figured that the program had been dropped. Lo and behold, the kid was doing well and earning his checks. I was the one who didn't follow through, so now I look like an ass. I'm hoping that this will just blow over, but when I talked to someone who knows him well, she said that he doesn't let anything go, he holds grudges for a while. Great.

BBC