God Will Put Flesh on Your Bones
So I got hired as an early childhood special education teacher this summer. It’s what I’ve been working for since I started grad school in 2008, it’s what I did my student teaching in, it’s what I’ve been wanting since I was in grade school—it was perfect. The setup of my school is amazing: I team teach with a regular early childhood teacher in the classroom, I have a mentor teacher to help me with special ed. stuff, the rest of the staff is very supportive. I went in feeling pretty good about it all. I had 1 ½ weeks of training and various beginning-of-the-year stuff to do before the kids came. I quickly realized how much I didn’t know about being a teacher in the public school system. There is a lot of paperwork—data collection and reporting, records keeping, detailed lesson planning in line with state standards, etc., etc. Then the kids came J About ¼ of them have little or no English, and I have virtually no Spanish. I have 2 kids I have to do assessments on and write up ...