Grit In The Gap

This week has been ugly outside of the classroom. It’s all IEP stuff, so I can’t share, but all I have to ask is, how explicit does one have to be in a Behavior Support Plan? Do I really need to spell out that an adult cannot scream at a child? Yes, is the answer. Do I really need to spell out that every adult is responsible for executing this “plan”? Yes. Does it matter? No, because in the end, “only the case manager and teachers in direct contact with the child are responsible and qualified for executing the BSP.” So, I am the only one qualified not to yell at a child. 

Was in a two-hour meeting about the above. And right after, separately—different adult, different kid—I banned an adult from my room who was yelling at my kids and calling them names.

But other than that, my seventh graders are coming around and already seeing math growth—even more than the eighth graders—all while illustrating the misery of being a middle schooler. Seriously, this is the worst age, and it is only exacerbated by being in Special Ed. 

I am thankful for my assistant. I finally have a good one, and I finally feel team-ish (this has never happened). She led a whole group on fractions in a rather tenuous afternoon, in which switching stations just wasn’t a good idea, and we needed to ignore the time and keep doing what we were doing.