I’m taking a class this summer for my masters’. The instructor asked us to reflect on the idea that the wrong people are driving the car in the world of education, while the right people left out of the driver’s seat. This. Pushed. My. Damn. Buttons. Because I think there are a lot of people […]
Category Archives: Behavior Team
Tips for working with your team on special ed teachers, gen ed teachers, school counselors, school psychs, counselors, and administrators
Feeling the Burn(out)
I’ve been on my first totally (okay…mostly) work-free summer in a few years for the past month. No meetings, few e-mails, not even a ton of work for my own website and book. Teacher burnout, particularly among behavior teachers, is a real and exhausting part of the job. There are loads of statistics, studies, and […]
Amazon Has Gel Pens on Flash Sale!
If you’re an E2E long-timer, you know that I “reinforce” my colleagues with gel pens. By February, it’s getting to be slim pickings in the gel pen basket; nobody is reinforced by pale yellow or brown. Time to restock! If you’ve got Amazon prime, you can get 107 gel pens for $17.00-ish for the next […]
New Qualitative Data Form!
I stepped outside of my comfort zone this week and created a new, customized form to get some “big picture,” qualitative data on a student. I really like clean, unambiguous data, but even I know that qualitative (descriptive) data has its place. I’ve written before about the way the pendulum in education tends to swing […]
“The Birds and The Bees” of Behavior Eligibility for Administrators
Administrators have to oversee a lot of stuff. So, when some kid is wrecking havoc on the school, things tend to get pretty bad before anyone moves forward with getting the kid evaluated, mostly because the process is confusing and there’s nobody who really knows that to do in most buildings. I was writing a […]
Why is it an insult to call Barron Trump “autistic”?
So…Rosie O’Donnell made a comment about Barron Trump possibly being autistic. We’ve all heard about it. And if you haven’t (if you’ve just crawled out from beneath a rock somewhere), you can just google “Rosie O’Donnell Barron Trump comment” and you’ll be up to speed in about 10 seconds. It happened back in November, so […]
Behavior Interventions: Breaking it Down
As the new program has grown and changed this semester, I’ve found myself with little time for blogging and writing lessons. The day-to-day demands are substantial, and my fatigue (and burnout) have been the worst they’ve been since I was a first-year teacher. A major challenge Jenny and I have faced is follow-through in our […]
Little Boxes
If you watched the Showtime series, Weeds, you’re familiar with Malvina Reynolds’s song, Little Boxes. Data collection sheets, like the suburbs, are full of little boxes. However, unlike in the suburbs, it’s not acceptable for the little boxes to be all the same. Data collection is a highly personal–I daresay intimate–process. Everybody’s looking for a shortcut for amazing […]
Crying Into My Wine
Friday was supposed to be an amazing day. A day to kick back, catch up, and breathe a little. Murphy’s Law of Quiet Days told me not to get too comfortable, but I didn’t listen. It was the last day of parent/teacher conferences, and we were in the home stretch. We’d met with families, and the […]
A Glorious Day of Unicorns and Rainbows
First off, AMAZING NEWS! We got a third teacher added to the program. The secondary SPED coordinator for the district showed up last Wednesday, told us the news, and Kim showed up the next morning. Kim is a former probation officer, so I’m pretty sure she won’t run off like her hair is on fire. […]
