My original productivity towards posts have rapidly declined with the start of the new school year. I figured while I'm waiting on my chocolate chip cookies to bake, I'll write about why I've been so busy! Chris and I both started at new schools. So far we really like living on the Big Island and are pretty happy with our schools.
Chris is at the high school and teaches a class that is kind of an ED fully-self contained class. He's got 20 kids from 9th to 12th grade. There are boys and girls (!). The students only attend school from 9-12. Some of the students are in transition between the general education setting and this setting so the other hours of the school day are for Chris and his co-teacher, Lori, to help the kids who are out. He's got some interesting students. One student just came in from Germany (Pulling a reverse MacDonald path!) and is really chill, but apparently freaks out. He had another student who he thought was an adult when he first met him. Good kid, but prone to dramatic aggressive explosions. He has another student nicknamed "Boobs," for her proclivity for showing off her best assets. There's been several fights, but all outside the classroom. A few arrests, but it's mostly trespassing (if they come back on campus after the end of their school day...trespassing) I've gotten to meet a fair share of them and they are really chill kids. So far, nothing too dramatic besides your average male posturing. We'll see how the year goes.
I'm at an elementary school where I'm a student services coordinator, or SSC. When I first started I was asked for my job description. I asked around and no one seemed to be able to come up with one. Originally SSCs came about to monitor compliance in the schools, particularly to special education laws. Over time the positions have evolved differently depending on the school. The job I've created for myself is to manage the entire comprehensive student support system or CSSS. Basically making sure the students are receiving the appropriate levels of support from the most informal supports (e.g. differentiation) to the most intensive (e.g. special education). So far the job has kept me so busy I come in an hour early and leave when I have to (5:30pm), I forget to eat my lunches, have a million and one meetings, and am drowning in paperwork. So of course I really like it. The learning curve feels like it's 90 degrees sometimes, but I learn something new every day! I suppose it should be reassuring that apparently many of the cases I've being presented are "wow, we're pretty sure we've never seen this kind of a case on the Big Island before" kinds of cases - at least I'm getting hit with the crazy stuff now. Also, the level of paperwork that I'm working under right now is NOT normal for a school of my size (For those of you who might know what I'm talking about: I have 12 101s I'm working on and 8 are preschool - plus I have 2 Part C transitions! My school has around 550 kids in K-5). Let's pray for more normal cases!
The other day I woke up in the middle of the night and the first conscious word I thought of was "files." Ugh. Reminds me of when Chris said that Valentine's Day I was talking about PPTs (paraprofessionals) in my sleep. I'm starting to mandate a "no-work at home" policy, so we'll see how that goes!
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