2 Quarters Down

2 Quarters: Successfully survived. Here are the memorables from the last few months:

Top of my unforgettable moments may have to be the unexpected class pets I acquired and quickly tried to un-acquire. Mouse stats: 1 died, 1 trapped, 2 escaped.

Incident #1: Around Halloween time, I was working with a group of 2 of the second graders. One of the littles says, "That trash can is moving." Okay, right. "No really, it's moving....it's a RAT!" Attempting to be the adult in the situation, I evacuate the room and form my action plan: seek help. Kids, stay here and watch the trash can. But if it jumps out, don't touch it. I manage to have the janitor sent on his way, while we watch the rattling mini trash can. Before the janitor arrives, the mouse creeps up the side of the trash can, appears on the edge, and leaps down across the room and under a bookshelf. The maintenance man politely tells me there's nothing that can be done and to just to deal. I left the door open with the hopes that it would run out on it's own and luckily I think it did just that.

Incident #2: Professional development day to kicks off the new year.

Mouse #1. Working at my desk, I see a little creature creeping by my feet. As soon as I jump, he disappears. Janitor comes down but he's no where to be found. Back to work and on guard, I see him creep out again so the janitor is re-summoned. Janitor takes a broom to the little guy, injuring him beyond repair. Warrior wounds that was left uncleaned for 2 days.

I spy red stains in the corner. Yuck.

Back to work until Mouse #2 appears. I strategically move the trap over to the wall to make sure he's captured. The mouse luckily scurries in and I am pretty confident he was trapped and cover up the trap with a trash can. Phew, crisis averted.

Back to work. Mouse #3 appears - or is it still Mouse #2 that wasn't actually caught like I thought? Trash can in hand ready to trap it, he narrowly escapes out the door of my room. I check back on Mouse #2 and turns out he's tragically stuck in a sticky trap, squeaking his last squeeks of desperation.

Back to work to the sounds of squeaking beneath the trash can.

*I've had criers in the speech room. Little Edward got frustrated making his Halloween treat bag and when I offered help, he wasn't havin' it. Tears start flowing and the sobs grow louder. The other kinder kids are sent back to class and Edward is havin' a rough go. I have him sit in the corner until he's ready to go back to class.

10 minutes later...

My next group shows up. Edward is still sobbing. I start working with the new group and about 10 minutes later the sobs finally start to subside. He finally is convinced to come over and get help with his treat bag and we had a follow up conversation on how to handle you frustration.

*The kids have new speech folders to send home extra practice. A few that were nicely decorated...

*I attempted a Guesstimation jar around Halloween time. The kids had about 3 weeks to look at the jar and submit a guess as to how many candy corn pieces were in the jar. Two days before the answer was revealed, I came in to find the candy corn jar 3/4 empty. Candy Corn Culprit was on the loose.

*I've gotten a few nice gifts and notes of encouragement.

A bearded dragon sculpture

*Prizes must be earned, not deserved. My New Year's Resolution was to stop getting worked over by the kids. Half the stress of my job came from refilling my prize box when the kids earned 5 attendance stamps in their Speech Passports - rewarding substandard behavior with the right to prizes. New plan: Good behavior earns a shine ticket. A shine ticket earns you a chance to win a raffle for prizes. Lots of shine tickets earn better chances of winning prizes.

Shine tickets drawn are posted on the bulletin board

*I've professionally developed by rearranging my speech room. A little less cramped and a little more organized.

Before

After

Kid Quotables

"Miss Ellis, it would be cool if you were married. You're going to be a good wife and a good mom." - 8th grader

"I'm sorry for taking your marker, but your shirt is on backwards." - Kindergartner exchange

*When another teacher asked one of my students if he could spend more time with one person in the whole school, his answer was Miss Ellis. Feel-good moment.

*Talking about social pragmatics, my fourth-grader lets me know his excuse, "You know I have autism, right?"

*Brought me a little stuffed animal. Thanks! "I gave you something, now you have to give me something." Ohh, that's not how this works buddy. So my gift to him were some worksheets to take home for extra practice. Consider yourself gifted.

*Around Thanksgiving time, the first graders were thankful for their dads being out of jail.

I'm continuing to learn and continued to be challenged. Each week gets a little easier and a little more under control. I'm slowly sorting through the mess of what I came into and slowly trying to change it for the better and make it my own It's been a memorable start and looking forward to springing into spring!

Thanks for reading!

Whatever I can teach

I've neglected the Blog recently. Not because I don't have the material to share, but life has kept moving and left no time to document a freeze frame. So this post will be a collection of all the stories and interactions from the past few weeks.....

*Everything isn't always rainbows and butterflies in the speech room. Sometimes things are"lame." One day last week, everything was lame, according to one of my 3rd graders. These passports are so lame. Speech is so lame. So I ask...is everything lame? You're not lame. Oh, okay thanks.

*I got roped into buying popcorn from a boyscout. Popcorn prices range from $10 up to $80 -

expensive kernels they're selling...they should take a lesson from the girl scouts and sell cookies for a few bucks a box. Not having the strength to say no to a boyscout, I purchased a nice bag of kernals. Expecting it to be the best popcorn I've ever had.

*Get to do 1-on-1 therapy with a kid who was expelled for bringing a knife to school. He's expelled until January, but he still is allowed to come for speech. Just me and him for a whole half hour. Have to admit I'm a little intimidated....you want to play a game? Okay, sure we can do whatever you want.

*We keep it real in the speech room by getting fist pounds. One day I forgot to put out the fist, and my 3rd grade boys told me "you forgot to do this" as he stuck out his fist. He was right - what was I thinking? Pound it, explode it.

*I wore some skinny-jean style black pants to school last week. One of my girls love, love, loved them (she told me literally about 10 times) and she also noticed my new haircut. I'm going to dress like you when I grow up. We all have something to teach and something to learn. I'm learning that even if all I can teach is to rock a good pair of skinny jeans, maybe I made a difference for her.

*One of the kinder-kiddos is working on his /th/ sound. We're working on making sentences with his /th/ words. Target word: thousand. Sentence he came up with: "My grandma has a thousand food stamps." And he followed it up with "It's true...she really does."

*I refused to give out candy this week. I've been feeling guilty about rotting their teeth.....and also been told one of the kids has been trying to sell it to other kids in his class. But the kindergarteners said, "But I'm not fat anymore." So I ask the logical question - did you used to be fat? No, I never been fat. And the other kindergartener chimes in, "I'm not fat either. I drink skinny milk with my mom." And to that, I laughed out loud and said I'm sorry guys. Not today.

Alright, posted up for now.

Julianne

Another week in the books

Another week in the life. Lesson of the week: if you give a kid candy, he's going to keep asking for candy every....single....time. Funding their sugar highs is getting pretty expensive, and the problem is - they're pretty addicted. And the withdrawal has been a little tough - a few temper tantrums that elicited some tears and refusal to leave the speech room until they got their fix. Nope, sorry gotta go. I'm the boss.

The kindergarten kiddos are some of the cutest and also most behaviorally challenging - but I'm (almost) always laughing on the inside. This week, I went to retrieve the littles from class and immediately one of them tells me he has something for me in his lunch box....a dime and a penny - 11 cents. Handing it over, "Here this is for you." Oh, thanks! "You can buy at least 2 things with it." Oh, but don't you want it? "No, I have a lot more at my house. I went looking for all the money in my house one day and found so much!"

In that same group, another little is one of my favorites and one of my most unintelligible. During a game of dominoes, he tries to pawn off his pieces to one of the others to get rid of his a little quicker, "I dis bein' tice." Translation: "I'm just being nice" and follows it up with a mischievous laugh knowing he's been caught. Even though you can't understand most of what comes out of his mouth, he's a smart little guy.

This week I had a case conference with a mom who admitted to calling her oldest son "Taco" because she ate tacos all the time when she was pregnant. I see her younger son for speech, and today he reported "Taco's birthday is coming up." Ohhh, of course. Part of me wishes I could enroll Taco in speech for the selfish reason of saying I have a Taco on my caseload. Guess having Taco's little bro will have to suffice.

I have a 10th grader that I'm taking on as my new project. She's a stutterer and has really benefited from a delayed auditory feedback program...basically like listening to yourself with an echo in bad cell phone reception. There are little hearing-aid like devices that have the same function and you could keep in your ear all the time. Only catch....they're $5,000. I'm taking it on as my new project to try to get it funded - Grant Writing 101.

Another week down and a little more learned.

Happy weekend,

Julianne

True Life: I'm an SLP-CF

I've officially started my second blog. My first was to document my recent Europe trip, and at the end of it I reported I was off to find my next big adventure. Well, I've found it. And along the way, I've caved and started another blog. I've decided there are too many good stories to remember, so this is my attempt to help recall my first year in the life as a speech pathologist. Here we go, round 2. Back on the blog.

I started working at a charter school in the middle of August. If you had asked me back in January if I would be working in a school, I would have said no, absolutely not...7 months later here I am. I signed up knowing the caseload was a mess and the school was tough. And somehow I feel like I ended up right where I’m supposed to be.

I'm just starting Week 3 of therapy with the kiddos. Getting to know each and every kid on my 80-kid caseload has been and still is a bit of a challenge, but we're getting along quite nicely. I spent the first few days getting to know them, their interests, and what's cool at school. Sillybandz and Justin Bieber - so hot right now. I've got all ages - kindergarten to 10th grade - with enough personality to keep me entertained.

Here's a small glimpse into my world:

As my creative attempt at an attendance tracker, the kids have speech passports that I stamp when they come to speech. Project Part II is to put their pictures on the inside. In today's photo shoot, one of the kindergarten boys flipped up his hands in the shapes of L’s. Okay, that's cool, creative, like that. As he walks back to his chair, he says, “I put up my guns.” And that’s when I realized, froze him in his tracks and sent him back to the wall, “Uh-uh. I don’t think so.” Photo shoot round 2. So he took another picture sans guns but this time shot a squinted B.A. (bad-ass) look at the camera. That’ll do.

I have a 5^th grader who loves coming to speech. It’s 3:30 p.m. on a Friday – 30 minutes left 'til the weekend – and I see the eager beaver in the hallway and she blurts out, “I’m so excited for Monday!!” Because of speech? “Yes! I can’t wait!” Yessss....someone who loves speech even more than I do. So Monday rolled around and she got her speech fix and before she walks out the door, she gives me a big hug saying “I just want to squeeze you! We’re both so little!” Another speech room departure I got a hug from her saying, "I already feel like we're family." Ha.

Another of my special 4^th graders asked me if I’d seen Jackie Chan Superhuman. Nope, not recently. He proceeded to tell me he’s part-human/part-animal because he scratches his ear like a dog. All the way down the hallway he did just that - completely serious - and claimed to have supernatural scent capabilities. We're working on social pragmatics.

We've played a few good games - Uno, Phase 10, Catch Phrase, and 20 questions in between our speech work. Turns out 20 questions is tougher than I had thought. Playing 20 questions with some of my 1st graders, I gave the clues: It's bright, it comes out at night, and you see it in the sky. A few answers: Jesus and the ground. We might start working on categories.

That's a very small snapshot into the kiddos. The adventure is just beginning, and I'm excited for the challenge. My last blog was entitled "Appreciate the Moment" and that will be carried throughout my charter school experience. Enjoy the here and the now and try to make a difference in some lives along the way. So here's to the start of my next big adventure!

Julianne