Paying My Dues

Overall I had an easy class last year. This year it might be time to pay the piper.

This week was pretty hard. I have a kid in my class this year who is severely disabled. He is very sweet, but he has not yet mastered all of his letters (as in of the alphabet). He loses track of what I or anyone else is saying after about eight words. His reading and writing and math are at a late kindergarten or early first grade level. I had no idea how severe he was until the first day of school.

Starting next week, he'll be pulled for resource about four hours a day. I think this will help because he, alone, was taking so much of my time and energy.

Aside from that, I noticed on the health histories that about six of my kids qualify as ADD or ADHD and one qualifies as Bipolar. So, about a third of my class is going to be high maintenance.

Oh yeah, I also have a crazy parent who came to complain about me before the first day of school BECAUSE she has never heard of me--apparently I should be famous. This same parent failed to show up for Meet-the-Teacher. I guess she feels she should be able to learn about me on the news or something.

Okay, deep breaths... All that being said, I do have some really sweet kids and this group does seem to be responding to what I am doing to manage them. I do have to constantly manage them, but at least it is working, for now.

Anyway, looking at the bright side, this promises to be an interesting year for blogging. I have a feeling a lot of entertaining things are going to happen!