Donors Choose

It has been a long couple of days.  Took a road trip over the weekend to Tucson to get re-certified in bowling for the Special Olympics.  My next weekend will be just as busy with the Special Olympics Conference. I will talk about that after the conference.  What I want to talk about is an amazing site where teachers can great great supplies through their classroom.   http://www.donorschoose.org/
For this site teachers can write about a project that they want to do in their classroom and people can donate to the project of their choice.  I wasn't sure about this at first but I went ahead and tried it.  I got my project donated and my supplies just came in.  The feeling you get when you get the supplies is amazing.  I spent the afternoon setting up my classroom with the products that I received.  Now that I received all the products I have to have the students write thank you notes to the donors and I have to post pictures on the website.  So the supplies I received were all from Lakeshore Learning. I love this store I posted pictures of all the items I received.  I can't wait to write my next project for Donors Choose. I recommend this site to all teachers out there that want to materials for great projects!

First Day of School

Today was officially my first day of school.  It was also my first day as a new special needs high school teacher.  I have a total of five students and out of the five four showed up.  That was OK, it gave me the time to work with the assistants on how to use the TEACCH model.  By the way I have amazing assistants.  They all help out and love the students.  It just makes my life easier.  Any way, the students did a pretty good job at following their schedule for the first time.  It will take some adjusting to make sure the schedules are perfect.  This usually takes about a week. I am also working on getting the Special Olympics set up at our school and I have coaches training this Saturday and next weekend.  I am excited, but it it going to be very exhausting.  I am also working on setting up a catering business with our students.  I will talk to you more about this when we are going to be setting this up in September.  I was stressing out the last couple of days at work, because my computer was down since Friday. Not having a computer is stressful especially when you have to set up an IEP.  Now that we are back in school I will have more interesting things to write about in my blog and pictures of my classroom will be coming soon.

Presentation Day

I was very nervous at the beginning of the day.  I had my presentation on the TEACCH model today.  What made me nervous was that I had to condense a 5 day workshop into one day.  I started in the morning and ended in the afternoon. In the beginning we had technology issues, but we made it though it without any issues. They seemed overwhelmed at first when they noticed how much information i had in the binder I gave them.  At the end of the presentation I took them back to my room where I had it set up as a TEACCH classroom.  They all seemed interested, because everyone was asking questions and looking through all of my things in the different areas.  I even had someone come up to me and say they enjoyed the presentation and that I did a great job. That really made feel that I have accomplished something great.  I also decided that I would to become a certified TEACCH trainer.  Not sure how I would go about doing that, but I will do my research and find out.

Preparing for Thursday

I thought today was going to be an easy day before going back to work tomorrow.  I decided to go into work to finish up a presentation on the TEACCH Model on Thursday.  My plan was to go in at 10 and leave at 2.  That did not happen. I arrived at 10 and left at 6.  Putting together this presentation was a lot of work.  I thought it would be easy to get the materials set up and placed in a binder.  Well I was wrong.  I can't just do things in a simple manner; no I have to go all out.  I spent hours coping and whole punching.  My mom was so helpful and came to my class to help me set up the binders.  This was great, because it gave me some time to work on other things in my classroom.  I have my first meeting tomorrow at a different school, so I hope that it goes well.  This is going to be a short post, but as the school year begins I will have more to talk about and I will have pictures to share.

A little about myself

So I go back to work in a couple of days and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to start a blog.  Where do I even begin? Well after looking and reading everyone else's awesome blogs I thought I should start one.  I have not seen too many that focus on high school special education.  

Well let me start by giving you a little information about my past and what led me to where I am today.  It all started after high school.  I had no idea what I wanted to do so I just basic classes in college and found a job working in an after school program with children with special needs.  After the first day of working in the after school program I realized that I want to be a special education teacher.  I loved how much energy the children had and how happy they were despite their disability.  I decided that I want to help make a difference in their life.  I worked in the after school program for about 5 years learning about the different types of disabilities.  In 2006 I graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in special education. I was accepted into a special class during my student teaching that let me take a graduate class.  This class was amazing.  There were only 6 of us and we collaborated on a paper on co-teaching.  Because of this paper we got to travel around to New York and San Diego to speak at conferences.  Well this experience made me think about going to graduate school and I decided to just continue with it.  I graduated in 2008 with my masters in special education and an emphasis in consultation and collaboration from Arizona State University.

After graduating in 2006 I was offered a job at a public school teaching 3rd and 4th grade students with autism.  I taught for 7 years in the same school.  During the 7 years the district I worked for sent me to North Carolina to get trained in the TEACCH Model (Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication Handicapped Children). The training was amazing and loved it.  I loved using this model in the classroom.  I would one day love to be a trainer for this model and train others on how great it is.

After 7 years I felt that I needed a change. I came across a private school that I have always wanted to work at but there was never an opportunity or an opening.  Well, it must of been meant to be because they had an opening for a high school teacher.  I applied and got the job! I am so excited to get started.  As of right now I have 5 students with different disabilities.  I have never worked with high school before, but I am excited for this opportunity.  I can't wait to teach them, but I want to give them different opportunities that they have never gotten to do before.  I have so many ideas and can't wait to share them with everyone on this blog as I put them in place.

I am excited about my new adventure not only at work, but with this blog!