the bad, the ugly, and the good

I have had five good teaching days in a row now. That means, whatever discipline problems may have come about, I remain in control and am responding to them well, or at least like an adult instead of a ten year old. (The bad days occur when I have to become authoritarian in order to get anything done, which sucks for all of us. The management system, though tweaked quite a bit upfront, seems to have settled in and efficiently controls all of the issues that have arisen thus far (knock on wood!). Now with this system in place, I need to actually, well, teach stuff. That's the hard part...

So I'm taking this "Intro to SPED (Special Education)" course at UNLV every Wednesday. It's kind of like group therapy, because every one of the other fifteen students in the class are fellow first year SPED teachers as well. It's a very discussion-based class, and it is nice and somewhat humbling to hear how no matter how busy or difficult things are for me, I can be thankful that I don't have some of those jobs, my goodness. Some schools give out caseloads of 35 or 40 students, but then place them in all different classes of all different subjects and times, which makes scheduling pull-out (they work in your room) or push-in (you work in their room) time inappropriate at best, and an Unholy Nightmare from the Bowels of Hell at worst. These are real-life special education scenarios happening here and everywhere else in America--and yet, you keep trying, because you've got to do it for the kids.

Because you sure as hell ain't doing it for the <$15/hour...