Special Ed Blog Hop

I came across a Special Ed Blog Hop and had to jump aboard. I'm so excited about the potential to learn from fellow special educators. Sometimes I feel like a lone island in sped, so this is so exciting to collaborate with other!

Planning for the New Year

   Summer break is screeching close to its end (for me, at least) but it feels like summer is just now starting. We're moved into our house and working on settling in, I just made it up to the Lake for the first time and will be back one more time before school starts. I only have two real weeks at home before school starts. So much to do!

    This year I am looking forward to a fresh start. I fell into my comfortable routine in Okinawa and last school year I was just trying to keep my head above water. This summer I've been reading several books to help me provide more meaningful activities for my students. My readings have helped me develop some goals for the next school year. And with that, I present my goals for the 14/15 SY:

#1. Find time in my schedule for planning and actually stick to it! Planning and lunch rarely happen for the sped teachers I know as minutes and schedules are are always changing.

#2.  Within that planning, schedule common planning time with grade level teachers (life was much easier and instruction more meaningful when this occurred). 

#3. Redefine my philosophy of teaching and reflect on a weekly basis how that is evident in my classroom. You can thank my current read, Teaching with Intention by Debbie Miller for this one! It's a book that definitely found me when I needed it.

#4. Now that I have muddled my way into the Indiana IEP program (ugh) work with former coworkers (who are IEP ninjas) to write the absolute best, most personalized IEPs for my new students. I HATE generic IEPs.

#5. Become more comfortable with the MacBook Pro generously provided by my school district.  I honestly haven't devoted the time necessary to learning the million things I can do with this device and I hope to learn at least three hundred of them this school year. There are many generous and helpful people in the district so I know I can learn from my peers as well as ever helpful YouTube and Google. 

What are some of your goals for the upcoming year?

Much needed break

My life has been on turbo speed for the past eighteen months. Husband and I just arrived at my grandma's summer cottage in southern Wisconsin with the little ones last night and I already feel better (we haven't even been here 12 hours).  I <3 Powers Lake!

Scholar Dollars

This past school year I created a classroom economy for the whole group, the first time in my young career. The students I worked with had a variety of personalities and ability levels and had difficulties adapting to a consistent routine. The beginning of the year was rough. I was desperate for something to motivate the students, nurture responsibility AND have the students practice independence. I toyed with a few ideas and created my version of a classroom economy. I wanted some cute name that went with my last name but decided "Scholar Dollars" was the best, as I wanted these kids to become scholars. 
The fantastic paraprofessional I inherited when I came into the position was so excited about the new economy and was a major help. We decided on "dollar" amounts that coincide with jobs: 
coming to class prepared, doing work, etc. Students earned bonuses for meeting their weekly Accelerated Reader and Accelerated Math goals (school wide goals that were individualized for our students), mastering weekly goals (I'll post on that some time in the future), displaying citizenship traits, etc. We printed each dollar amount on a different color of paper, which helped us all stay organized. There were also fines in our economy, such as not coming to class prepared, choosing not to work and disrupting the learning of others. The more severe the offense, the higher the fine. 
We had a class store where students could spend their dollars. Our para knitted hats and made jewelry that sold like hotcakes. Our store also included food items (I am not a fan of junk food at school but settled on Pirate's Booty and some sort of organic fruit rope from Costco and my beloved Trader Joe's lollipops) as well as fun novelty toys from Oriental Trading Company . We also had root beer float, taco and pizza parties and dance parties. Those were my favorite because students had to work together to count up money, keep a record of who contributed what, and when, and had to work together. It brought the different groups within the resource room together and that thrilled me to pieces.
The students took to this economy like fish to water. They loved it! It really helped them build stamina with becoming a scholar. The change in our classroom environment was pretty fantastic and we started being able to do work. It's challenging to work with multi age groups in the same room at the same time and this made that task easier. We used the program with grades 1-5 and the kids worked with each other. I'd be excited to see what we could do to build upon the program if I was at that school this year.

*note--I'm personally not a fan of providing extrinsic rewards (it took me 8 school years to even do so). However you have to do what you have to do to make it through the year and make things meaningful for students. This worked for me this past school year.

Five For Friday (on a Saturday)

This is my first ever linky party. Thanks for playing along!

I'm in love with my Fitbit Flex. I'm now much more aware of how my perception of how much I move and the reality are too far apart. I love how it is making me more accountable. Now if I can get to the pool and the gym...

I am going through major homesickness for Okinawa. As you may be aware Okinawa just survived its first typhoon of the season. I'm so thankful my friends are safe. Neoguri looks like it was far more severe than any typhoon we experienced while on island. Okinawa grabs your heart and forever occupies a part of your soul. 

 My husband and I just bought our first house. We are super excited and super consumed with moving in. We have two young children who thankfully have had Vacation Bible School this week so we are taking FULL advantage of the three hours in the evening to unpack boxes and organize our new home. I wish I could snap my fingers and have everything in its new place. We could use about three more weeks of VBS.

I NEED to visit our family's summer cottage in Wisconsin ASAP. It's my happy place and I'm seriously considering just taking off next week with the kids.  I haven't been able to go nearly as often as I'd like since my son was born so I'm hoping to get up there at least twice this season.

I'm moving to a new school this year and I stopped by the classroom today.  The previous teacher had been there for 21 years and actually taught when I was a fifth grader at the same school. I spotted my third grade reading series in the room and actually knew several of the kids who had the books back when they were in third grade.  How crazy!   It appears that I'll move classrooms later in the school year after construction is completed on some new rooms within the school. I haven't even thought of my game plan for the new classroom. That can be tackled in the upcoming weeks. 

Executive (dys)functioning

     One thing I missed so much while in Okinawa was the luxury of attending professional developments. From what I have gathered, there were lots of PD opportunities prior to 2008. Then there were changes and PD went by the wayside. The LI teachers used to fly up to Tokyo and meet together and enjoy the Mainland lifestyle. Oh, how I wanted to go. I even thought I was going, but at the next-to-last-minute they scrapped the conference.

     My first special ed related PD back in the States was about the subject of Executive Functioning. This is how the brain knows to do common, every day things that we typically know to be routine. According to the National Center for Learning Disabilities,  executive function problems include but are not limited to:

• Making plans
• Keeping track of time and finish work on time
• The ability to successfully multi-task
• Meaningfully including past knowledge in discussions
• Evaluating ideas and reflecting on work
• Changing minds and making mid-course corrections while thinking, reading and writing
• Asking for help or seeking more information when needed
• Actively engaging in group activities
• Waiting to speak until called on and not blurting out

     I'm not sure about you, but I walked away from the conference feeling like I myself have some executive functioning problems. I also felt like this completely described some of my students. I had two big take-aways from the day. The first is that our kids with processing disorders need more Omega-3's in their diets as that can build up the myelin in their brains which is often thin and lacking when processing disorders are apparent. The other takeaway (for me) is that the frontal lobe does not begin to really form until ages 7-12. The frontal lobe is responsible for organization so we must be mindful of this when working with the elementary school age group. 

Moving

   My family and I are in the middle of moving into our new home, our first American house. I'm also in the middle of moving to a new school. I feel like my life is one ninja packed box after another (Seriously. I think ninjas did our pack out in Okinawa. They did an amazing job).

 Above is the corner of classroom supplies/Christmas decorations/yard sale and donation.

This corner has drastically dwindled in size over the past week. Most of it is packaging from furniture.


   I have strong pack rat tendencies (you never know when you may need something!) and actively started trying to purge things after we moved from our apartment to our house in Okinawa. Something about moving with a three month old and two year old, I guess. However as good of a job that I thought I started, now that everything is back in the States and in our new (huge) garage I am feeling slightly overwhelmed.

いっらしゃいませ

Irrashaimase!

Welcome to my little part of the world wide web. Irrashaimase is an expression you hear in Japan when you enter an establishment.  I'm a fairly random gal who loves life and having daily adventures. I hope to share some of my adventures, particularly those at school, with you here.