the bad, the ugly, and the good

Quick! Go view my Chevy commercial before they take it down! Trust me, it's worth your while.

Special Ed acronyms are out of control. Here's an example of a real life email* I got this morning:

Subject: PLS W/B!!!

The OT and PT and I are all confused about the new kid's IEP. Unfortunately, one of the kinders grabbed it and stuck it into the typewriter, and, to make a long story short, now we don't know which letters are supposed to go where. First, placement: Is this a child with SLD, ASD, TBI, MR, CP, D, D/B, DCD, DAS, or merely DD? What does the D&E say? The BIP? What's this kid's DON? DI? DS? We could always call the DDD or DDC. Important: Have they been given the label of DNR?

Since you're the SET on the ISP team, you need to tell the SEIF that the GET, OT, PT, SLP and entire ECT are worried about the implications of NCLB, IDEA, FAPE, the IASA and the ADA, and how they pertain to this KID. We don't want any trouble from the OCR or OSEP (let alone the CCSD SSSD!).

TY,

DJ
RR IA

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*not really.

It's one thing to be unprepared but to have slept well.

It's one thing to have slept poorly in order to be fully prepared.

But it's quite another thing to have slept poorly AND be unprepared.

It's like, if you're tired but you're fully covered, it doesn't really matter that you're tired. But if you're NOT covered, and you're tired ANYWAY, then that's ALL KINDS OF BAD, because then you can't even cope with getting your $&!+ together in order to even fix the damage.

Make sense? Good. Thank goodness for bedtime.

At lunch time, this second grade kid saw my polo shirt and, looking at me incredulously, asked the all-too-familiar question, "Why are you wearing a pink shirt?"

Here it comes, I thought. Still, wanting to do my part to debunk the rather absurd gender/color stereotype, I offered my stock response: "Because I like pink and besides--I look good in this shirt."

To which he grinned and one-upped me: "I like hot pink."

Made my day.

(And no, I'm not referring to televangelism.)

I totally destroyed the screen of my laptop last week, by tripping over the Ethernet cable and hurling it to the ground (with great force, much more so than if it had merely fallen). This cracked the magical LCD crystals in my iBook screen remarkably badly, to the point that there is a gorgeous full-spectrum color show on the screen whenever the power is on, but no semblance of recognizable anything otherwise.

But! The rest of the computer is perfectly intact! The keyboard, the wireless network, data, hard drive, processor, everything. So alls one's got to do is plug in some cheap-ass external monitor (today I found one on lasvegas.craigslist.org for $10!) and you're all set!

And so I am...for now.

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Meanwhile, back in SPEDville, and for those of you just joining us, "SPED" is SET lingo (Special Education Teacher) for "special education," my school district, in its infinite wisdom, has opted to try and force everyone to use the same software to write IEPs, the legal documents that define the parameters and eligibility of special education for all our students with special needs. This is ostensibly in order to ensure continuity and increase online collaboration. And it makes pretty good sense--except when you factor in that the program is not Mac compatible. So that means that where we Mac-users previously were entitled to work on these arduous documents during our leisure at home if we so desired, we now have not this option. Which sucks the proverbial horsey dong, if I may say so myself (sorry G & G, I wasn't sure how else to put it).

So even though my Mac is up and running, no amount of Mac-up-and-running-ness is sufficient to pull off another option than staying late and doing all my IEPs at school. Which I might not ordinarily object to, other than it's probably best to leave the area I work in on the "shortly after sundown" side, rather than the "whenever you're finished" side, which, according to my unnecessarily paranoid inner monologue, is tantamount to certain death.

And that's how it is from my vantage point, at least tonight. Peace.