Lizabean

A good start

"Flowers SOOC", Canon Digital Rebel XT, June 2007

If this week is any indication of what the rest of my summer is going to be like I am in for a real treat!  Since school got out we've had the most beautiful weather here in the Chicago land.  It's nearly made up for some of those miserable weeks in May...nearly.  I've enjoyed many a walk in the past few days and have most definetely stopped to smell the flowers...

"Morning squat", Canon Digital Rebel XT, June 2007

I've had some wonderful quality time with Suzanne and Amia.  In fact, we are having so much fun that Brent and I decided to move even closer to them.  Considering we currently live about a half a block away, I have to chuckle that our favorite apartment from a recent housing hunt happens to be directly across the street from them.  We sign the lease tomorrow.

"Sandy toddler feet", Canon Digital Rebel XT, June 2007

I also happened to recieve an exciting phone call today.  My supervisor from work called to let me know that she could honor my request for work next year.  Come this fall I will be working with both preschoolers and elementary school children.  Immediately after talking to her, I sprinted to my bookshelf and took down all my speech/language books and research articles on early childhood to review for the summer.  I'm a little rusty and was thrilled to discover just how excited I am to be making this professional move.  I'm also ecstatic about being a speech language pathologist!  This is a new feeling.  And a very good one, at that.

Life is good.  So good.  I feel very blessed.

A change of pace

Well, school is finally out for the summer and I have begun teaching summer school.  This weekend was an official high anxiety whirlwind of anticipation for what I initially expected to be a relaxing gig, but discovered early on most definetely would not be.  I have a caseload of 53 and climbing and am working with younger children (a positive change, but a change nonetheless!). 

It was an interesting feeling to get up this morning  and actually look forward to my work day.  It helps that summer school is only a four hour job and that I get to work with a variety of students (some nonverbal, some with autism, some with hearing impairments, some in Kindergarten--so cute!!).  I have been stressing out because it has been awhile since working with the younger ones and that takes a different type of lesson planning, but I have been reminded about why I love it! Oh the cuteness and excitement and overall willingness to work with me, it's wonderful!!  It's also only day two and I have had one cryer, one near-biter, and several pouters.  For some reason, it did not bother me one bit.  We'll see if that changes by the end of the summer, but for now I am enjoying my break from the drama of working in a middle school.

Greenery

Umm, yeah.  That whole little statement about refusing to do much work when I don't get paid... nope, not happening.   I stay a few hours late everyday.  And work weekends.

This is pretty much as stressful as grad school.

Yey!

Could someone please tell me where the grass is REALLY greener?

Lizabeanie returns...

with very little promise of regular writing, but I do hope to post a whee bit more frequently.

Work's stressful and leaves me with absolutely no desire to write.  But enough of that.

My co-worker and I were discussing the stresses of working in a school setting.  Both being perfectionistic (a rather common trait found among speech language therapists), we determined that a school setting is a rather horrific and forceful setting for dealing with one's imperfections.  There are so many expectations to fulfill- parents', teachers', administrators', my own, and especially my students'.   During undergrad and grad school, I made up for my intellectual flaws and worries by over doing it on the prep work.

After six years of spending the large chunk of my free time worrying and working long hours to overcompensate for being merely human, this beanie is burnt out.

That is why you do not find me doing much school work at home.  Only a few hours on the weekends and a couple of late school days.  It makes me feel lazy because unfortunately there is this expectation out there that a lot of professionals should do a certain amount of work without getting paid for it.  It has become the norm that teachers grade and do lesson plans at home; my reports will all be written when I'm "off the clock".  Can you believe that I actually feel guilty when I spend my planning periods surfing the internet for great therapy ideas/curriculum modifications?

And it is true that I get my summers off.  Only, to actually make an overall yearly salary that is slightly comparable to other professionals with the same level of education as my own, I will still be working in the summer... Which honestly I wouldn't mind if I was doing something that I loved.  When I'm with my students I like my job a lot.  Other factors prevent me from loving it:

There is a certain little law that has essentially left the sanity of all school professionals behind.

And a little bit of my life at work

Mondays and Fridays are my busiest "student" days and I kinda like it that way.  That way the beginning and end of the week fly by and the middle -which is always the most stressful by default- has time slots open for screenings, meetings, testing and paperwork. 

I have a snowflake (the paper kind) competition going on for my students and they are really getting into it.  Last week we made snowflakes while doing other listening/language activities, and this week I decorated my door and put up an announcement to vote for the most "unique" snowflake.  I also made sure to define the word unique on the announcement as several of my students, when probed, have no idea what the word unique means.  Here's hoping this activity helped teach a new word. 

I have a meeting coming up this Wednesday which is scaring the crap out of me because it involves many gray areas in the field of speech language pathology and darn it, I'm new here!  Please send relaxing thoughts my way as you all know how stressed out I get about ...hmm,well, just about ANYTHING.

Where'd all the snow plows go?

I can't remember the last time it snowed like this.  Winters have been so mild the past few years.  I've only worked eight school days and I'm all praying for a snow day.  But the likelihood of any Chicago suburb school closing for 17 inches is pretty itsy bitsy.

Life's been crazy at school.  One moment I feel like I've got everything under control and then I go to meetings and BAM!, my clear headed thoughts are all turned to mush. 

And I think that I'm going to start to take a tally of how many times I see a student roll his or her eyes at me per day.  It's especially popular with the 7th grade population of the female variety.

Well, that is all for now.  Sleep is slowly creeping up on me. 

Clocking out

Sunday blues hit me hard today.  I over worked myself last week and the amount of things to be done on both my mental and written "to do" list has left me overwhelmed.  Of the paralyzed variety.  I recognized Friday evening, after spending the majority of the evening working on school stuff, that I need to develop some healthy working patterns here.  I need to allow myself to mentally clock out or else I will burn out come...hmmm...perhaps late December. 

I know so many people who work their tales off and I'm not sure I have it in me anymore.  Grad school kind of did me in.  I need my weekends and at least two hours in the evening, plus a full nights sleep without thinking about my students.  I can handle a couple weeks of insanity, but not months on end.  We'll see if I can find balance in the school work environment.  If not, I'm out of here.  I can't sacrifice my sanity.  Of course, we live in a world of sacrificing nearly everything for your job so perhaps I can't escape it.  But blah, that's another post. 

And so it begins..

The career and impending anxiety, that is.  I have now worked two whole days.  The first day left me feeling very excited.  Today, today was overwhelming. 

I am very lucky to have another speech therapist there in the building with me two days a week.  I would be very lost without her.  Unfortunately, she's new to the whole school setting too so we are kind of like two blind mice fumbling around, trying to perform all of our duties without knowing all of our responsibilities.

Luckily, it looks like my caseload will be relatively light so I may have time to study some 6th, 7th, and 8th grade curriculum and do a couple classroom observations before the season of annual IEPs comes lurking around the corner...

Well, off to do some lesson planning!

Happy Happenings

I finished my internship on Friday and have landed an interview tomorrow morning.  Wish me luck!

Update: I got the job!  Whoop, whoop!!

"What kind of paradise am I looking for?"

Fall is typically my favorite season.  I love the crispness the air, the smell of those falling leaves, the whispering of that cold breeze. 

The changes of the season have passed me by this year and have awoken me with a thud.   All of the sudden I feel cold and irritated by the shortness of our daylight hours.  A warmer coat may help a little.

---

Today was a normal day, thank goodness.  I had an excellent session with one of my students.  I felt like I was actually doing something meaningful.  And I wanted to hug him and twirl him around.  School's rough, man.  Oppressive.  I feel it.  I see some of these beautiful children struggling to gain positive attention.  And I just want to hug them.  Tell them, "You know what?  I respect your shining little spirits.  Forget that meany who always yells before fully investigating the situation.  She's not exactly showing you respect now, is she?" 

My little student always announces to his class, "See you later!" whenever I come to pick him up.  And his says it over and over and over and over until his teacher finally has a chance to acknowledge his comment.  When she says goodbye, he feels able to leave.  Many students do just fine in the current educational system.  But not all of them.  My little guy needs more one on one attention and no modification in the curriculum or use of a diversity of teaching methods is going to change that. 

And the current answer is medicate, medicate, medicate.  I'm definetely in the minority when it comes to staff members who actually sympathize with the parents who hesitate or simply refuse that option.  (And please note that I recognize the need in certain situations...a balance is key here).  A solution?  I'm not sure.  But I recognize that if I decide to stay in this system, I better figure out my vision of how to support the family unit because that's a part of the solution, I imagine.  I may be naive and young but it is from high ideals that change becomes possible.

Ah well, ramble, ramble, ramble.