Dear Friends and Readers-


            I am so sorry I have not posted here in a long time. I have been very busy with my class which due to the fact is 90% non-verbal, is not much in the way of interesting stories. I have been dealing with parents who take the word idiot to new levels and a school site which thinks we have the plague.

            I am going to be stopping this blog at the moment as I am blogging on something else on another site. During all this fun with school, I have become ill. What started off as sore throat that wouldn't go away has now turned into facing a total thyroidectomy in 13 days time. Due the number of nodules found in my thyroid, the doctors and myself have decided to remove it. I will not know if any of the nodules are malignant or non-malignant until the surgery. There were simply too many to biopsy.  I am not afraid of the possibility of having cancer. I am more afraid that my vocal chords will be damaged during the surgery rendering me unable to talk without being hoarse or having no projection left. In other words, this surgery is potentially a career ender. I thank all of you who have been loyal readers and fan of the zaniness of Room 1. I hope to return to writing about it soon. Right now if you want to read about my journey of becoming thyroidless and all that goes along with it, please check out http://360.yahoo.com/my_profile-IZHIbR8rdKO_XT7JDxEgOqSA;_ylt=AnI0t_s93HOly0h2HL6IUQa0AOJ3

That's my new blog called "Cut Throat: The Journey of a Woman Facing a Total Thyroidectomy and the Aftermath of the Life Altering Surgery

I'm documenting things I've been dealing with and feelings about having my life turned upside down. I will be posting pictures of me pre and post surgery to document that as well.

If you can't access the new blog, drop me an email at zoeygirl65@yahoo.com.

Much Love, Happiness and Good Health to All in 2008-

Tonya (aka. Miss. B.)

                Hi everyone! Yes, I know I haven't blogged for a bit. The first week of school plus the previous weeks leading up to it have been exhausting. My new classroom was a giant disaster area. It took me and my aide (who volunteered her time) to help me clean out all the junk.  We took out three dumpsters full of crap they never tossed out. The room now is clean, organized and beautiful. I've turned it into an apple orchard for the fall theme. My students are so much work. I've been falling asleep on the couch every night at around 7:30 pm. Here's the update on the class: 4 girls, 3 boys, 4 non-verbal, 2 semi-verbal, and 1 verbal. One of my students just learned how to walk for goodness sake!  Due to the nature of this class, I will probably only blog a couple of times a week.

              Ok...now for the story.....


             Just when I thought I'd have nothing to write about, I was given a gem on Friday. There is a student at my new school in the general education Kindergarten class named Axel. Now apparently Axel is always in trouble during lunch and whatnot. My students were outside playing during lunch recess when Axel did something that caught the yard duty's attention and she called his name. One of my students was standing next to her and decided to help her out by calling Axel's name too. Unfortunately, as it were, it was one of my students so the name did not come out quite correctly. There my student was wandering around yelling, "Asshole....Asshole" instead of Axel. The yard duty informed me of this and thank goodness she had a sense of humor. As for me, of course I laughed my head off because I'm completely inappropriate about things like this. I mean how am I supposed to get mad at a child with a speech impediment? You just have to find the humor in it all.

                     I had to take a break from even thinking about my class and this blog for a bit. I was rudely reminded of what I'm going back to when school starts with the "Welcome Back Letter". Ugh. I am scheduled up to my eyeballs with stuff. I am hoping to get to my new classroom sometime next week because there are 40 boxes of stuff waiting to be unloaded. 
                     I have to admit reading the letter sent me into a bit of a panic. I'm really at a loss as to how to reach my students. I have always been used to verbal feedback and now there is none of that. I will continue to think about things I can do to help them along. As long as everyone leaves me alone for about two months, then I think we will be able to have a routine in place. If I've got parents wanting to visit and nonsense like that, then my class is not going to work. I'm hoping my new boss proves to have a backbone about this. I just feel really apprehensive about the whole thing which I have never felt even my first year teaching.  I really think I'm at the wrong grade level. However, this is where I landed so I need to make the best of things.  I am hoping that my apprehension is not warranted once I get going.

         As I mentioned in the last blog this entry would be about another student's parents. I'm going from the super anal retentive parents to the parents that should have never had children. To be very honest, I have mixed feelings about those in the population I teach reproducing. If they have the skills and a really good support system then I think it is ok.  However, I do believe in a limit in the number of children especially if you are passing on some seriously bad genetics. I had a student who had parents that both were special needs my second and third year teaching. Never have I met more loving parents than these two. They had a great extended support system and they were the first ones to volunteer to help me if I needed it. They both held down jobs and were trying very hard to make it in this world. Now I'm all for that.  However, I am completely against those that do not have the skill nor a good support system having any children at all. Why? Let me introduce you to my student. Apparently her parents are both extremely special needs adults. My student is the FIFTH child. Each child is more retarded than the next. My student is five years old functioning at a nine month old level. The parents do not have good skills nor do they have a good support system. Apparently they used to be clients of our Regional Center here which would have provided them extra help but now they are not. They decided to give up that help because they are angry at the Regional Center. They blame them for having the children taken away which we know is not true. Child Protective Services makes that call. I can only imagine why the children were taken away. I have already heard the horror stories about my student's older sisters from the other teachers and aides I worked with this summer who have had them in their classes. My own student would come to school every day completely filthy in dirty clothes and starving.  My student's hair was never combed and she just had a very sickly pallor to her with dark circles under the eyes.  I felt really bad for her. We brought in a comb and cleaned her up everyday. I always had extra food for her because her parents never sent a snack. I have a feeling if things don't change I'm going to have to write a CPS report for neglect some time during the year. I'm all for family reunification if the parenting skills are in place. However, if they aren't, then there is no reason to subject the children to more of the same abuse as before.

Next Entry: See No Evil, Hear No Evil...Adventures in Lack of Auditory Processing

           First, to everyone that has written me recently, I apologize from the bottom of my heart for not getting back to you sooner. I do promise to tackle the emails this coming week.

          Today is the first day of no summer school. I slept in with some glee. It has been the hardest summer of my teaching career. I'm not so sure I am enjoying teaching anymore. My students are challenging but my parents are a hundred times worse. They will be the reason in the end why I leave Special Education. 

       Let me update you all about what has taken place in four short weeks. I have been hounded by the parents of one particular child to the point where I told my new principal (coordinator) and vice coordinator that I am done auditioning for these parents. I seriously hope they don't put this kid in because right now I am so done with these idiots.  The story goes like this. The second week of school, not even six days into trying to figure out my students, their behaviors, skills and lack thereof, I had a student's parents come out to observe the class. Give me a damn break here. Of course, the father is a Gen Ed prinicipal at some elementary school here in town. I practically had to give him my resume on the spot the first time.  And of course, his presence and his wife's presence completely threw all my students off task (as if they were on task in the first place) and his child acted up something awful. He observed them playing, eating, doing music and other activities. He says to me, "I want to come back to see some academics". HUH? I was completely offended to start off with after that comment. (Mind you now, my class is Pre-K too)  I just said, "Ok...you do realize this is summer school. This is not like the regular school year". I left it at that. I was so pissed off that I went home and pulled up the California State Standards for all subjects and could count at least twenty standards for Kindergarten and Pre-School that were hit just in the time this idiot father was standing there disrupting my class. I told my boss about this. I said to her, "If this guy thinks he's going to see kids all sitting down working on task for twenty minutes reading and writing, he's delusional to the point where he needs psychiatric help".  My class is in total is functioning somewhere on the 1 year old level. We have the attention span of a gnat. We can't hold a pencil, turn pages in a book,  or bulid with blocks because we'd rather put them in our mouth. We aren't toliet trained. We have no expressive language. We barely have receptive language. It's going to take me months of just training them to be able to function in a school setting. ACADEMICS? You have got to be out of your mind. It's all about daily living skills to start with first.  Then once we have that down we can start academics. This isn't to say that I won't be doing standards or academics all day long. It just won't look like what he thinks they should and that is because he is a Gen Ed person and not a Special Ed person. See...this is why we in Special Ed don't have that much respect for Gen Ed. sometimes. You are clueless as to what real teaching is. We don't have scripted programs or even curriculum designed a majority of the time with my population as the norm. And remember, every single child is functioning differently from the next. There is no uniformity. There is nothing you can norm your lesson plans on each day. You have to be completely creative and hope your method works. If it doesn't you have to find a way to get through to them. There are no student study teams to brain storm on how to solve the problem. You are it. It's all up to you and good luck. People who major in Gen Ed in Ca only have to take an introduction into Special Ed class for their credential. That class only introdcues you the categories of disabilities. It doesn't even begin to talk about how to teach them.
       The next week, my class is merged with another one and I pick up five new students. I now have nine kids functioning somewhere bewteen one and three years of age. I had hoped that this father would have forgotten about his need to see something non-existant. I am told by my boss that I need to call and talk to another set of parents about their child. The mom was unsure about the class and I said I would call to help out. I had read up about the child's diagnosis so I was able to ask informed questions. This parent seemed to be really grateful I took the time to learn about her child and was happy after that. I invited her to come to school the next day to see the kids. Meanwhile, I driving out to my college class I teach and I get this phone call on my private cell phone. It is the father who can't let go of the academics thing. He had my number when I called them to let them know their child was not feeling well at school. Crap! I answer the phone and he's still banging on about this nonsense. He informs me that he's coming the next day to observe again. Great so now I have two sets of parents coming out.  I am completely furious about this and fire off an email to my boss to let her know this parent is now driving me insane. 
      I come home after class still pissed off as all get out about this parent. I decide to shut him up by writing up a lesson plan alined to state standards since that is all Gen Ed people understand. I'm so mad about this person that I do something I never do, I cracked open a beer and drank while I was writing the lesson plan. Basically, the lesson plan ended up being five pages long and hit thirty-five CA State Standards for Kindergarten in it.  I had my ammunition. Needless to say, the lesson went not as well as I would have liked given the fact that all my students were distracted by the parents and their other children they brought with them. During snack time, the father again starting bringing stuff up to me. He said, " The other class we observed had four aides, you only have two". I said, "Yes, that is because I'm sure in the other class they had students that needed a one-on-one aide. All districts usually only provide two if you're lucky. You're a prinicipal, you should know that". His wife popped up, "Yes, they did have a blind child in the room". I said, " That's why they had the extra aide". The father then said, " Well, we did see the classes in May at the end of the year and I realize this is summer school". I said, "This class is very low functioning (which you could see by the look on his face he didn't like me saying) and I am starting from square one here. They don't have many skills. It's going to take all year to get them to the point where you'd like them to be now". He then said, "Well is your class going to be more structured"? I almost snapped with nastiness at that point. I said, " I'm on a campus here that is not my own in a classroom that is not mine. What I can do here is very limited. The regular school year is going to be different. A class like this can't survive without structure. We will be using visual schedules and things like that to help the students". God, I was pissed by then. If he asked me anything else, I would have just refered him to my boss because I was done. I'll be dammed if I am going to be put through this because he can't handle the fact his child has limited skills. Dude, if your child had more skills, she'd be in a higher functioning class. Given the fact she has no expressive speech, isn't toilet trained, cant hold a pencil, feed herself correctly, dress and undress herself, can't pedal a trike and is a runner,  I'd say you'd better give up the fantasy right now that Harvard is an option. I'm not trying to be mean. I'm being realistic. Wouldn't you want your child to have some of the basic living skills first? I mean it would make daily living easier to start with. There would be no diaper changing, no drooling, better behaviors and a happier child. To me as a parent, that would be a godsend. After that, we could start working on academics.
        That day was long and awful. My aides felt the same way. I went home and did something I've never done even as a child, I took a nap. It wasn't just a snooze on the couch. It was a full blown get-in-bed-and-hard-sleep-nap for 2.5 hours. I was just dead tired from staying up until 1 am to type up the lesson plan for this father plus deal with my class in general that day. I emailed my boss again and told her everything that transpired. I also made the request that no observations take place during the first two months of school. I would need that time to train my students and get them used to a new school.  I had done everything I could to accommodate this parent including taking personal phone calls way after school hours, lesson plans and a second observation. That went beyond what was required and she agreed with me. (That shocked me)  I am hoping she can help this father deal with his denial or we are all in for a long year.
      Anyway...I've happy to be done teaching my morning class. I am enjoying however my evening class at college. I have five students this summer and they are starting to develop a sense of humor using their second language. I'm actually very glad I do have this a secondary teaching gig because it helps me not burn out over special education. 

Next Post: The Child Whose Parents Also Have Special Needs

      The title of my blog is a response I gave to my boss today after she asked me how my day went. You see, today I was given FIVE...that's right...five more students. And of those five, four are non-verbal. So..in a class of nine, I only have two that talk and those two will be going back to their home districts in the fall. It's not amusing anymore considering now I have three runners and all three are going to be with me in the fall. My newest student is going to be the biggest challenge of all for me. She is fairly big, non-verbal and mean. I'm not sure if she knows she's being mean though. I had a block chucked at my head today by her. She tried to bite me. I informed her if she tried that again, she would lose her teeth.  Yes, I know that isn't the correct thing to say but she didn't attempt it again. She scratches, pinches, hits and pushes. Anyone is a target. She doesn't sign or make any attempt to point to things she needs. She doesn't try to communicate by gesturing, making noises or grunting. I'm going to have to give it a few more days to figure out what to do with her.      
     My stories this year may be few and far between due to the fact I will have a complete non-verbal class in the fall and a majority of them don't even qualify for speech due to their cognitive ability. I know I'm needed here because of the behaviors and such. However, I'm already miserable not having children that can (or want to) communicate. I miss the exchanges. I miss students having skills.

      I suppose with all my hair, I do tend to look like a sheepdog some times. However, today I found myself actually having to act like one too. I have a student in my class named Kay. Kay is almost five but functioning on a one year old level. (I'm being generous) She has a serious addiction to playground balls. I mean check-yourself-into-Betty-Ford-12 Step addiction. If she sees one anywhere, she just takes off after it. She doesn't even look where she is going. It's quite scary. She's the kind of kid that would run right out into traffic in front of a car after a ball and not even bother to look before she went into the street. She likes to throw the ball and run after it. Then she'll hurl her body on it to stop it. She cannot catch the ball with two hands. 
      I had bought a small playground ball so Kay could play with it at recess on the grass. She doesn't like to play with other kids. If she isn't kept busy, she runs.  Kay played for about 25 minutes running and chasing the ball. We came in from recess and I put the ball high up so she could not get it out.  I didn't give the ball another thought. 
     After snack we outside again to play and another class came out. They were older and hearing impaired. One of the students had a ball which they were using to play basketball with the other students in the class. Kay was on the play structure when she saw the ball. She scurried down and was going to run after the ball. I stopped her and turned her around. I told her to go back to the play structure and that the ball wasn't ours. She wasn't having any of that. She tired to run around me. I got down in a goalkeepers position ready to block the shot or rather Kay from leaving the play area. This must have gone on for fifiteen minutes. Finally Kay came up to me and stomped her right foot on the ground at me to tell me she was pissed off with me. That only made me laugh which in turn made her even more angry with me. It's not that I don't want her to play with balls. I need her to learn that it's not ok to just run up and take a ball away from someone else. That is exactly what she would have done and she wouldn't have given it back. Finally after shooting her away like a hockey puck for 20 minutes, Kay gave up. It became amusing after awhile but I am really fearful of what could happen at recess at our regular school. This is going to be a serious issue. Unfortunately right now Kay does not have the cognitive ability to talk this out with me. I'm not sure that the answer is going to be to this. Hopefully we will find a happy medium during the school year.

                   I see the Iraqi children with special needs have been moved into a better place. I am still furious as this idiot- Hamid al-Zeidi, the Labor Ministry's inspector general- is trying to say that the conditions weren't that bad and that we Americans were using the pictures for propaganda. Hey Hamid-what say we strip you stark naked, make you starve and lay in your own feces since the conditions were not that bad. Why it's just like staying at the Waldorf-Astoria. Stupid basta**d!  I swear I must stop before my blood pressure shoots too high and I give myself a stroke. 
                 Statements like Hamid's make me wonder why our American soliders are dying for the Iraqis.

                      This news article was on the BBC News website today. There are no words to describe the horror and shame. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6769077.stm

                      I do believe there is a special place in Hell for the workers and owners of the orphange.

                    Normally I do not double post but I swear the universe is testing me today. I just got back from teaching my college class. I had to add another student tonight because the class is open enrollment. The student that added my class is none other than the brother of the student that was sexually harrassing me. What in the world have I done to offend the universe? I say that tongue-in-cheek but come on. There does seem to be some collusion going on here. If this is God's way of testing me, he has a weird sense of humor. The new student said to me, "Oh, you know my brother". All I could say was, "Yes, I do" and left it at that. I drove home feeling icky all over again.

                    Welcome to the adventures of the new Room 1. Shockingly even enough I am in a Room 1 for summer school at a different campus. What is it about that number?
                  I met half of my class today. The other half either slept in or took the summer off. However, what I did get is plenty enough. Whoa! Nobody has any fine motor skills. I have one that has no speech at all. I have two that have very little speech and two others who talk my head off. I have no Spanish speakers and I found myself speaking Spanglish all day long because I'm so used to speaking in two languages. 
                 On top of everything else, I have a runner. Those of you that have taught know what I'm talking about. This child makes a dash for it whenever she can. Dear me. She's cute but hell on wheels. She tested me all day long. She was about to make a mad dash for it in the cafeteria during breakfast this morning when I finally went into teacher mode. Out came the look and the tone of voice I think all students dred. I was not about to go running through the cafeteria after this kid. I said quite simply, " You run away and there will be no food for breakfast. It's your choice Sammy". She stopped and stared at me. I did not wavier. She stood there thinking about what she was going to do. After five minutes of this showdown, she sat down unaided. I thanked her for making a good choice and sighed to myself. I had won this battle. There is hope of breaking that behavior. My aide, who I knew from my very first year of teaching (she worked in the class next door) said, "Man...you are going to get me into shape this summer. When I saw you take off after our student, I couldn't believe how fast you were". I had to laugh. It's not all that hard to out run a five year old special needs child if you really need to.  I have a feeling my student is going to whip me into shape though. I can forget ever wearing sandals or any cute footwear again.

                 I went and had lunch with my former aide Mrs. Patty today. She was filling me in the gossip and things around school. The most interesting thing is that the person who applied for my job (another teacher in the district) and got it was not allowed to come observe me working with the students. He wasn't allowed to attend the IEP meetings and he wasn't allowed to contact me about the students he would be getting. My psycho-ex boss said to him that "it wasn't a good idea". I can only glean a few things from that comment. I think she knew that when my prinicipal and the rest of teaching staff found out this person was taking my place, all hell would have broken out. The teacher in question has a reputation for not being nice to his students and being a lazy oaf. He is not well liked with the faculty on my campus. I'm hoping this is just gossip but it's not likely. I've met him actually. He needs to retire he's that old and he wants to be running around working with the little ones? Give me a break.  I also think that if he actually saw how much work it takes with the kids, he would have stayed working with the junior high students and then the district would have nobody to take my place. Never have I worked anywhere where such underhanded sneaky stuff has been pulled like this and you all know they've been doing this kind of thing long before I got there. I can see now God did me a huge favor by getting me the heck out of there. At the time all this went down it hurt me deeply but I'm glad to be away from the forces of evil. (i.e. The school psychologist/boss and vice superintendent) My only regret is that the kids are going to be the ones to suffer at the hands of the idiot adults who only care about advancing their own agenda no matter how wrong it is.
             Another thing that pissed me off royally today was the fact this teacher in question asked Mrs. Patty where I left my lesson plans. I laughed when she said that. I tossed the lesson planner when I moved. I actually never save them from year to year. Why would I? Each class is different from year to year. Why would I want to do the same stuff over and over again? However, even if I did save it, those lesson plans are MY intellectual property and I'll be dammed if I would leave them behind to help out his lazy behind. Oh no honey. You wanted my job. Now get off your butt and do it.  The summer school teacher who took my class asked me for the same thing. Again I laughed. You wanted to teach my class. Get off your lazy behind and do your own work. That nonsense harkens back to the day in class where you would do your homework and some slacker would come along and want to copy it. I hold nobody's hand. I don't expect anyone to hold mine. 
             On a more lighter note, Mrs. Patty and Mrs. Jackie and I have made plans to get together for happy hour at the end of the month. I'm sure there will be more gossip to hear then.

                      I thought we had this problem all cleared up with the college student that was sexually harrassing me. Unfortunately, Joe Romeo is back at it again. I received another email from him today asking me why I was so mad at him. Well duh! I finally had to be very specific and very legal in my reply. I told him on the advice of legal counsel that I would not reply to anymore attempts to contact me. I also told him that he crossed the line when he wrote to me he loved me. (Along with the fact he kept asking me to date him and would make comments about that constantly in class) Anymore attempts to contact me would result in me filing a sexual harrassment complaint with the college against him. I'm done being nice. Some people just need a 2x4 upside the head to get them to stop. Perhaps his wife should be the one to smack him first.

                    It is because of this incident that I decided not to apply for the open associate professorship that I had been talking about in previous blogs. This was my first semester teaching higher education and I end up being harrassed by my student. The whole thing just left a really bitter taste in my mouth about higher education in general especially when I was given the run-around at first by upper administration on this issue.  There are all kinds of rights for students but none when it came to the faculty on this issue. Are they all so old up there in the professorships and chairs that they thought no student would ever do the harrassing? Not all instructors are unattractive or old. :)

                   Anyway, it certainly made me realize how much I love my  Special Education students. They can have a crush on me all they want. However, once you get to be a big boy and college age, you better just keep that crush to yourself if you don't want to have a 2x4 upside the head :)  

    Ok....I know this is an awful picture. It's from my cell phone so forgive me. This is the Old Tom Project that so many of you helped us out with. As you can see there are the maps and some of the postcards around them. Of course, there is a trail of ants walking across the bulletin board too as I was doing a unit on insects as well. That's Mrs. Patty on the left. To this day, the students that had me for the Old Tom Project still know their states and countries. And everyone knows that Old Tom ate green chilies in New Mexico!

      Have you found your inner teradactyl yet?  This photo goes along with the "Inner Teradactyl" blog. This is Isaiah in full channeling his inner teradactyl mode on the floor of my classroom.