Last year after the first week of school, I felt so drained. I had a student in major behavioral and emotional crisis. I had a student terrified to come to school. I had a parent who had already threatened to sue the school, and who by this time in the year, I already had fifty pages of email conversation with. I had three other parents who were not QUITE that high maintenance, but who still made my year very difficult. Last year was bar none the hardest year of my teaching career. This year after the first week... I feel awesome! My kids are sweet, there's a high degree of empathy in the group, all my parents see to be within that "appropriate" level of supportiveness... I've finished each day this year tired, but almost sad to send them home for the day! It's great to get a fresh start. Academically, it'll probably be a bit of a challenge... our first week benchmark assessments were... well, let's just say I'm not hopeful that I'll continue having the top end of year scores in the county... but I'll handle having a lower academic group in favor of a sweeter group with a better personality mix and no crazy parents.
I had my kids three days the first week, four days last week and four days this week and the next...(I could get used to this!). I have both in class and out of class support for a few of my kids, plus still working out schedules for speech, OT and basic skills...kind of revolving door scenario. I'm not foreseeing MAJOR problems, but I do seem to have one student who may need a behavior contact plus a new student whose records haven't arrived yet from her last school and I'm already seeing some potential 'red flags'. All of this is manageable...it's just going to take a bit of time to work it all out...all in all though, it seems they're a nice bunch!
My biggest "What the heck???" scenario was dealing with speech. Our feeder schools always give us some notes on some of the kids coming our way... the notes for one little girl was that she needed a speech eval in the fall, and that they had planned on doing it as soon as school starts. Our Local Screening chair told me to listen to her the first couple days, and if I hear anything, put in a referral. I did (there's no missing the artic issues), the LSC chair calls to set up the initial meeting... and nobody at the previous school had ever contacted them about the child's speech. Never even mentioned it. That could have been bad, but luckily the parents were very nice about the whole thing, immediately agreed to testing, they said they hear it too, and basically said that if there's a problem with her speech, they'd rather her get it sorted out as quickly as possible. Then there was the fun surprise of finding out I had four neighbors in my room... and I put all four of them in the same group! None of them are particularly chatty though, so it's nothing worth fixing now.
I am so happy to hear that! Having a child with emotional and behavioral issues can wear down on a teacher enough to make THEM not want to come to school. It sounds like you have handled it well. Having a tough year makes smooth ones that much more wonderful. Like eating ice cream after a year of cough syrup.
