Week Three Ends with Happy Hour.

And somehow I predict that week four will end in a similar fashion.

I'm sorry. I don't want to be that snobby girl from Montgomery County who thinks that this county has got nothing going right for it. That's not true. I think this county has its strengths, but truth be told, its weaknesses outshine those. And yes, I have county pride because I had a wonderful time growing up in Montgomery County and I feel fortunate to be a product of their schools.

Now moving on. So last week was our last week in the gen ed setting (and what a sad ending it was!). We were just getting to know our kids and they were getting to know us and now we had to be shipped off to a completely new setting to start all over. I had taught a day of math in heels and I thought my legs were going to fall off. Everything hurt. Including my right wrist because I was erasing and writing on the board so much (the chalkboard at school was tiny). The next day I taught, it was flats for sure.

For the most part, the lessons went well and I am slowly learning to get the students to do the talking, which I think I'm not used to because as a student, my teachers did the majority of the talking, which I didn't mind. I'm also learning to ask probing questions to gauge for understanding. I think it's going well (especially since we only have 15 days in a summer school setting to prepare us for the fall). And I am exhausted by the end of every day. Teachers, I salute you.

Today, we went to our special education setting. We met our cooperating teacher (CT) last week in which she told us she was going to quit soon because this was not the job for her. She has been teaching for over 20 years.

It was completely different. There were three aides in the classroom - two for a orthopedic student who can barely move his hands and can move his eyes. One aide completely disregarded him, played with her phone and went into the hallway for several minutes to talk on her phone. The other aide took care of physical things for the student, such as adjusting his seat and wiping any spit that had gathered on the student's mouth. The last aide in the classroom, who is pregnant, played with her cell phone at the teacher's desk for sometime before she took a nap. Within an hour or two, she went home because she was not feeling well.

Really? Really, PG County?

At one point, our CT wanted to talk to me about one of the students, so she grabbed my face and brought my ear close to her mouth, literally touching her mouth to my ear. She was also eating a muffin. I was horrified.

...

The students have been working on simple addition and some subtraction. Today we discovered that one of them can do complex addition and some borrowing or carrying out of digits. We wonder what teachers have been doing with him in all his 7 years of school. (Clearly, we're not miracle workers.) The plan is just to plan lessons that will move them along in the next two weeks as best as we can. And to definitely make them work a lot harder than they have been. Seven more days of school (Tuesday through Thursday this week and Monday through Thursday next week) and then, it's on to hopefully getting placed in a job that we're definitely not ready for. But to be fair, we are as ready as five weeks can make us.

I'm getting really anxious with not knowing my school, subject or grade. I wish I could begin to prepare age appropriate materials. I wish I could begin to look at my students' IEPs. I really hope to be placed by the first week of August.

So what should we do? Right now, the students are learning first grade material. Should we go through each grade, one by one, or shoot straight to 7th grade and give them a calculator for the basics they're lacking?