It’s the end of the school year, and I’ll bet many teachers, and kids, are feeling a little ‘burnt out’. But real professional burn out is no joke.

When I was in grad school for my special education credential, they warned us all, “the burn out rate for special education teachers is 5 years”. In just 5 years, most special education teachers move to other careers or leave the profession. In some states, they have less than a 10% after 1 year!!  At the time, as a grad student and instructional aide, I was thinking to myself, ‘No way, that’s so short, I’ll make it to retirement, I can do better than those people‘.

Man, was I naive. But not for the reasons you may think. I am still employed as a SpEd teacher. I am not planning on leaving anytime soon, and I am confident (or at least hoping) I will make it to 5 years.   But I can see where these stats come from! Burn out, or attrition in the fancy technical term, has been a problem for special education teachers ever since special education moved to the mainstream, and for many reasons.

First, you have life getting in the way. Most teachers coming out of school (not all, I am generalizing here) are around the age that they begin starting families, or already have them.   I know that J and I have discussed me staying home for a year or two when we have children, and I’m sure other teachers have had familial obligations take them away from the job.

Another reason I have personally seen is lack of training.  Many special educators do not realize the extent of their duties (diapering a 16 year old, dealing with severe aggressive behaviors, etc) before they come on the job. Most teacher training programs have the students complete limited observations or ‘student teaching’, but each special education room is SO different. An ED classroom is miles apart from an Autism classroom. An academic special day class is completely different than a functional one. And what they do in a nonpublic school is considered crazy from a public school perspective.  The truth is that you are never truly prepared for a new job in special education.

Parent and Social support is often another reason teachers may leave. Parent support  can range (as in any classroom) from helicopter parent to absentee parent, however when the child has special needs, the communication need rises and conflicts almost inevitably arise. Parents need to be present for meetings, behavior support at home and at school, sign medical forms, deal with special diets, etc. If parents and teachers are not on the same page, it can be some of the most stressful days of your career. In general, the public tends to undermine teachers. “Oh you get summer off, you’re soooo lucky” “You get off at 3, your job must be so easy!”  Personally, I don’t know any teacher who has had a whole summer off, or leaves the school at 3. The lack of support and people undermining what teachers do can be really annoying and  degrading.
(Having a school board vote on whether I get a raise or not after spending 0 days in my classroom, UNFAIR, but that’s a conversation for another day).

But speaking of Pay Scales- Program supervisors, program directors, behavior analysts, speech therapists, etc., all often make more than special education teachers. So why wouldn’t I think about advancing my career (and my payday) but getting another certificate or degree and moving up and out of the classroom? When there are other career options in your field, it is natural for teachers to look to other jobs.

Dealing with other staff members is another way special educators can have added stress in their lives.  There is no college course in how to manage your aides/paraprofessionals, yet that is so much of your job. In some schools, you are their supervisor, trainer, evaluator, or scheduler. Although you have this role, when you get too many adults in the room, there will inevitably be issues (especially as a young teacher with older paraprofessionals).  As a Special Educator, you are also responsible for coordinating with OT’s, PT’s, Speech Therapists, Administrators, Principals, and General Education teachers! Getting reports back, student’s scheduled, IEP’s scheduled, and paperwork from everyone on a child’s team can be time consuming and frankly ridiculous.

One of the biggest issues I have heard of in other states is teacher evaluations. I have been fortunate enough to work in CA where my performance is not judged by student test scores and men in suits at the capitol.  However often teachers in other states’ jobs are on the line based on state test scores that do not take into account student disabilities or IEP goal progress. Talk about stressful!

Burn out does not only affect the teacher; when a teacher is burnt out, the students can tell. It is stressful for the students to have a teacher who is on their ‘last hair’. They can tell you don’t want to be there and they in turn, do not want to be there. It puts everyone in a foul mood.

With all of these things pitted against you, what are some tips to keep yourself stress free and happy in your job?
Here are some of my personal suggestions:

• Take a ‘you day’. If possible with your budget and sick days, take a random Wednesday, get yourself pampered, run errands, lay by the pool. Do you for 7 hours! Although we get weekends off, they are often full of family, planned events, sports, and commitments. Take a day and do everything you need or nothing at all.
• Focus on why you are in this job! Take a minute to write out why you chose this job and why it makes you happy. Teachers need to have a deep love for what they do (because it obviously isn’t for the money!).
• Vent! Have a glass of wine or beer and vent to a friend outside of school for an hour. Venting for me is a huge stress reliever. Just getting everything I am feeling out in the open and off my chest. But make sure you are not causing any gossip or problems by doing this!
• Exercise and eat right- but have the ice cream too. The oldest trick in the book. Treat your body right and you will have one less thing to worry about! Plus exercise gives you endorphins, and endorphins make you happy!
• Voice your concerns. If you have serious issues that are making you contemplate why you are here at all, then you are not being properly supported. Let your supervisor or admin know your concerns, they might be able to help in ways you hadn’t considered.
• Develop realistic expectations- special educators are trained to find problems and help fix them. But you can’t fix everything! Realize this and let certain things go.
• Fake it til you make it. At any job you’ll ever have, they say ‘leave your home life at home’ or ‘leave your emotions at the door’ and it’s incredibly important. Often if you just smile through the day, you’ll come home feeling a lot better than if you kept that grumpy face on!

Now all this being said, if it really isn’t the job for you, QUIT! You are not doing yourself or your students any favors by being in a job you hate. It’s more important to be happy! But if it could possibly be just the ‘end of school year blues’ try to de-stress and smile. It’s almost summer!

(Note: I love my job and my kids and hope to make it to retirement!)

Sources:

http://www.friendshipcircle.org/blog/2012/02/01/the-top-10-challenges-of-special-education-teachers/

http://www.bu.edu/today/2013/what-will-it-take-to-keep-special-ed-teachers/

http://www.ericdigests.org/1998-2/coping.htm

If you are anywhere near the special education world, you have probably heard of “Social Stories”.  While championed by Carol Grey of the Grey Center, Social story is a generic term for any type of story or passage that “accurately describes a situation, skill, or concept according to defining criteria, with a content, format, and voice that is descriptive, meaningful, and physically, socially, and emotionally safe for the person for whom the Story is developed” (Grey Center, 2014). They can be simple, or complex. They can be written at any grade level and are always written in a positive and helpful light. And they WORK!

I was skeptical at first, but especially for children with Autism and other memory processing disorders, the repetition and personalization of the story really ‘hits home’.  And social stories are really simple to write!  A simple story can be as easy as:

“My name is John Smith, I am a fun and happy 1st grader at American Elementary School.
When I am at school, I use safe hands and feet.
My friends like it when I am safe at school.”

For these simple social stories, follow a similar process- Begin with a self statement, this makes it easier for the child to know the story is about them and helps them to relate better to the story.  Use positive and factual statements.
Next, state the problem behavior you would like to address. Try to always use ‘positive language’. It is better to say to DO something than NOT to do it. If you think about it, a lot of the time these children repeat what they hear, wouldn’t it be better to hear “I use safe hands and feet” (Safe hands/feet) than “No hitting or kicking” (Hitting/kicking).  End with a positive statement that re-affirms the target behavior by implying the positive consequences for using it, for example: “If I have safe hands and feet, I can earn a token!” or ” I can earn a sticker if I use good language in class”.  You can basically write one for any target behavior that you wish to change as long as you are positive!

Another way to do a social story is a little more complex, but better for older children or children without significant disabilities. It is similar to the “Everybody Poops” type of books and are common in children’s sections of bookstores. The types of books are designed with the target behavior embedded into a storybook/fairy-tale setting. When written by SLP’s or teachers will use a main character similar to the target student or client. They can be long or short, written in whatever grade level is appropriate, and include as many target behaviors as needed. It is always better to focus on one target behavior per story (or per chapter).

I am currently writing a social story for one of my students titled “Izzy the Great and the Missing Planner” about a middle school student ‘detective’. She loses her planner and must find it before the big test tomorrow. It focuses on organization and social skills within the classroom. I am planning on writing another one titled “Izzy the Great’s Big Weekend Adventure” that focuses on hygiene and eating healthy.  The target student is similar to the main character, and it was written in this storybook format because the target student has been known to perseverate on her bad behaviors. This way she is able to see examples of appropriate and inappropriate behaviors without specifying that it is her behavior that we are attempting to modify.

Social stories are a simple and effective way to modify student behaviors with the student doing most of the work. They can be read by a teacher to the student but are often more effective when the student reads them themselves on a multiple time-daily basis. They are effective for all children, with or without disabilities. However the older the child gets, the more likely they are to ‘catch-on’ to what you are trying to do 😉

I don’t know why but the idea of “fixing kids” almost annoys me as much as the idea that kids achieve things “despite their disability”. No parent wants their child to fail in certain areas, however the idea that they want their child ‘fixed’ is almost as obnoxious as hearing that they want them to be more ‘normal’.

Recently, I dealt with a parent whose entire part in the IEP was asking how we were going to ‘fix’ their child’s reading comprehension abilities. “I understand they scored low in working memory and processing, but what are we doing to fix this?”  This child has a diagnosed neurological condition, and has behaviors in the classroom. They have an amazing level of fluency and expression while reading, but comprehension is, as the parents stated ‘something they had been dealing with since 1st grade’. Now I’m no neurologist, but I’m relatively certain that we cannot change a child’s neurology. Perhaps (and hear me out here) if we have not seen grade level progress for 8 years, it is because they are not capable of grade level progress. It is always a delicate balance attempting get parents to the point of realistic expectations for their child. We work daily on skills like inferencing, comprehension, fluency, expression, and hundreds of other aspects of learning. Progress is made quickly for some students, and slowly for others. We are not ignoring that your child has comprehension difficulties. On the contrary, we address it every day.

However, there is an aspect of the new Neurodiversity movement that states that we should not be focusing so much on what they struggle in, but what they are good at. Too many educators and parents feel that if their child is struggling at something, they should work on it everyday until they ‘get it’. Not only is this an unrealistic expectation of the child, I know that if I was forced to do something I knew I was bad at and probably hated every day for hours on end, I would act out too.  These children need to be taught how to deal with the hand that they were dealt. They need to be given the proper tools and assistance in order to be successful even with the difficulties they face. Instead of reading a page and closing the book and expecting a child with no working memory to remember what was on the page, perhaps we teach them skills like how to refer back to the text and pick words that help them answer your questions effectively and independently.

I understand that you are worried about your kid. I can’t imagine what you are going through. We are worried too. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t want to keep your child in Special Education forever, I want them to succeed. If I could fix their comprehension abilities at the drop of a hat, I would. But these things often don’t need to be fixed, they need to be accepted.

“Fair isn’t everyone getting the same thing, it is everyone getting what they need in order to be successful.”

---

Nothing disgusts me more than kids who make fun of kids in the SDC classroom. But there is something out there even worse than that, and thats parents who use SDC as a hypothetical punishment for their kids.

There is nothing wrong with being in an SDC or RSP class. No parent wants to admit that their child might need extra help or may have special needs. I have plenty of parents here at my Middle School who even refuse testing for the possibility that they might find something wrong.  Personally, I feel that not only are SDC and RSP classes useful, but they are the best option for kids who need extra help.

During the second semester of grad school, my 2 main instructors were gung-ho Inclusion Nuts (I use the Nut term lightheartedly of course). They believed that every child, regardless of their abilities, could be in a general education classroom. While a beautiful thought, in today’s world, this is not plausible. Problems that stem from lack of training of GE teachers on disabilities, differentiation, and behavior management as well as lack of aide support and one on one attention those kids need is killing the Inclusion debate. And for good reasons. I wouldn’t want my child, who might be 4-5 reading levels behind his or her classmates or has a behavior problem to be stuck in a room with 33 other children and one teacher. That teacher has 33 other kids with their own issues, my child would learn very little, if anything in a GE classroom besides social skills, which while important for life, will not help them learn how to read.   In the SDC and RSP room students and parents have access to highly trained teachers who know exactly how to teach a child with a specific processing disorder, or how to provide sensory options to a child with ADHD. To be honest, most general education is not ready for most special needs students.

I am not saying that special needs kids should not be included. Definitely not. I try to get my kids into as many GE classes as their schedules can allow, while ALSO making sure that they will be successful in those classes. Whats the point in having your 12 year old in general education social studies if they don’t know how to read the book? If they are falling behind, getting poor grades, being disruptive to the rest of class. Isn’t that just as ostracizing socially as being in a resource room for that one period, learning at their own pace and getting good grades, gaining confidence with the materials?

Back to my original point. I had a parent say to the team during an IEP recently that she told her 12 year old that “If he did not do well in Social Studies, that he would have to go back to SDC”. . . . . . . Luckily for my job, it was after a 4 hour meeting so I was too exhausted to say anything too explosive.  By using the SDC as punishment, you are perpetuating to your child that there is something wrong with them. That they are different and that being in SDC is ‘bad’, a place where you go when you fail. And this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Resource and SDC rooms are places you go because you have a need that other teachers can’t fill. They are full of highly trained teachers and underpaid aides who go to hundreds of trainings to make sure you get the most up to date, high tech, research backed support possible. We work with you to find what works best, we work with your other teachers to make sure you are successful. We find your learning style, create resources for you, create accommodations, and modify curriculum just so your child can be a successful student. Parents are often more afraid of their child failing than their child is, and SDC/Resource is the most underutilized way to have your child keep up with the increasing demands of the school system.

The SDC is not a bad place. The children who are here are not bad children. You will not go to SDC if you fail. But if you want to be successful, maybe you should.

During my first year of teaching, I had 7 Annuals and one triennial IEP. Writing IEP’s includes updating progress on goals, progress in classrooms, compiling data, writing new goals for the years, writing reports from assessments, and considering testing options and accommodations for your students. It is time consuming and necessary process in special education. Initially, I had approached the goal writing as a general theme: What do I want this child to be able to accomplish in their life? And then narrow down the focus from there, however I did not realize until this year in my ‘high parent and advocate involvement setting’, that some of the goals I was writing were unrealistic and unachievable, and how big of a deal that really was.
Let’s get one thing clear, I was never setting anyone up to fail here. Maybe I being too optimistic.  Let’s give an example. If my high school student was unable to prepare any time of meal for themselves without prompting, my goal would read something like: “AZ will be able to prepare a 4-6 step snack or meal with 0-2 gestural prompts with 80% accuracy on 4/5 trials.” Basically I want AZ to be able to make a snack for himself. This will improve overall quality of life and greatly help the family or caregivers of the student. I promise my intentions were good ones!   I actually took issue with goals that clarified that “JK will learn 80 new vocabulary words about the science topic in class and use them in this or that way in writing and in conversation on 4/5 days” etc etc. Way too specific!?  What happens when they meet that goal? That doesn’t represent a broader view of what we are working on in my classroom! My class is way more than memorizing vocab words!

Working with lower income and many less involved parents last year, the IEP goals were generally unanimously approved and those goals became our overall focus for the years academic and functional work.  If the student did not meet the goal, but made progress, this was counted as a victory, and we either continued the goal or made new ones depending on where we wanted the student to focus their efforts.  Maybe they did not meet the goal, but we were going to keep working on it!

This year however, I am dealing with a new demographic of students and parents, often involving a ‘child right’s advocate’.  And many of these advocates, lawyers, and legally inclined parents base the success and failure of their students by the number of goals that he or she meets.

Until this year, I had not heard of goals not being met being used as a device in lawsuits against schools. Of course, not meeting all your goals can show a parent and administration that something is not going well in the classroom, but in general I had thought of meeting 8/12 goals as being a relatively successful year, especially when we are discussing students with special needs. Unfortunately, I was wrong.  A recent IEP had me re-writing almost every single one of my carefully written goals to add for specificity.  A mix of advocate pressure on unmet goals from the last year and recommendations from parent team to increase an already high amount of service due to the 5 unmet goals led the team to specify to me that these goals need to be specific and more importantly, achievable.

I really wanted this child to be able to ask his peers questions in class instead of asking an aide or sitting there bored. Its a good target, but it wasn’t very specific, how could he show us this consistently, how would he know what to do, how would we teach him this skill?
We wanted this child to be able to answer comprehension questions on grade level text verbally. What types of questions, how many questions, what grade level is appropriate?

But the most important question that I had never really considered thoroughly was: Could we ACTUALLY SEE them doing this in one academic year? Sure, it would be amazing if Johnny could cook a meal with no prompting. We would all LOVE to see that. We all want to work on that! But could a nonverbal 16 year old with no cooking ability ACTUALLY do this in one short year?? The answer is, probably not.

We all want our students to achieve amazing things. We want them to do what their grade level peers can do. We want to write goals that represent what we will be doing all day in class. We want to help them improve their quality of life. But we need to write goals that represent what our children can achieve realistically so that we can show that progress significantly each year.

In my previous classroom experience, I have made christmas trees out of popsicle sticks, wrote about Santa, and gave gifts to students during the holiday season. Granted, many of my students did not know what we were doing besides that it was art and not math.  I have never had a family complain about our activities, but we were always conscientious about which families did not celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah and made them feel included with different activities.  This year however, makes me think a lot deeper about the beliefs of ourselves and our students.

According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, 76% of America is some form of Christian, including Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, and all other forms of Christianity.  But this same survey states that only 51% have attended church services. Judaism, Muslim, Hindi and Buddism make up about 6% of the American population, but again, the same study related that 19% of the Judaism group reported that “God does not exist”.  A whopping 19.6% of the entire population self reported as Agnostic, Atheist or No Affiliations (thats like 60 MILLION people!).

The question I found myself facing was, “How do I ignore something in my classroom, something that 90% of my students believe in and love, while making sure that that 10% is happy and included”.  This originally came about at Halloween time when I was asked by a parent for an alternate writing prompt other than “Write a Halloween Ghost story”.  I had heard that certain religious groups do not condone Halloween, but had never seen it in practice. I do not know the actual religion of this family, but lets suffice to say that Christmas falls into the ‘not celebrated’ category as well.  Luckily for me, the parents were the type to ask only for an alternate assignment, not to repeal the assignment altogether. They were kind and not too demanding about their child not be included in our Halloween activities, but I have seen other teachers have a much harder time.

I agree that forcing religious beliefs on any person is a no-no. Lets not get into the Pledge of Allegiance debate right now.

My question, stated before, and my thoughts on this boiled down to, are all of my students who celebrate Christmas, actually Christian? And the answer was a definite No. I’m sure many of you know people who celebrate by getting a tree, putting up lights, and spending barrels of money on things to say I love you to family and friends, who haven’t attended mass since they were baptized at 2 months old.  Growing up Catholic, I went to mass on Sunday’s, Easter, and Christmas. I was raised with the understanding of what Christmas was ‘originally’ about. But I would be stupid to think that everyone believes this. If every self-identified Agnostic, Atheist, Buddhist, etc etc stopped celebrating Christmas, I’m sure the economy would truly suffer.

As long as you, as the teacher, are celebrating ALL of the Holidays *teaching about Holidays around the world is a great common core lesson!*, not discriminating against any religions, not going against another child’s beliefs or forcing them to participate, theres not reason not to include some Holiday fun in your class.  You don’t have to be a Christian to celebrate love, giving, selflessness, and joy. Christmas, and even to some degree, Hanukkah, to the chagrin of the Churches and Synagogues, HAVE become commercialized holidays where the priorities become gifts and children cry when they don’t get I-Pads.  Sad? Maybe. But in December each year, beyond the shopping and Black Fridays and credit card bills, I see people volunteering for food drives, giving clothes and toys to the less fortunate, writing checks to non-profits, and giving more than they receive. And it makes me wonder if the world wouldn’t be a better place if we had more than one ‘holiday season’ each year.

I was listening to the radio this morning and heard a debate (on a country music station of all things) going on about a teacher who had recently been in trouble for “tweeting” about how one of her first grade students came in with a runny nose and how that had “ruined her whole day”.  A few months back, a bay area teacher was under fire for tweeting about how her summer school high school english students are “effing stupid” and “kill me”.  And today again in Yahoo News, there was a post about how a 20 year veteran teacher went on a racist rant on Twitter and gotten fired.

People get fired every day for the things that they post online. Whether it is forgetting that you are friends of your boss or that you follow the restaurant that you work at on twitter, it seems their are humans make terrible internet decisions every day online (see hilarious pictures at the end of this post).   The question becomes, why do teachers make front page media when they make mistakes? Isn’t that unfair? We’re only human! There are thousands of pedophiles getting busted daily by cops, drug lords dealing to young people, parents abusing their children, but the minute a teacher tweets something inappropriate, the press stops and stares. Is this another societal “double standard”?

Yep. Deal with it.
You are a teacher. You are working with a child for 6-8 hours (if not more, per day). Often, this is more time than these children spend with their parents at home not counting sleep time. They look up to you, emulate you, respect you, and copy you. Especially with elementary and middle school, most of these kids loooooove you. Can you imagine their little heart broken faces when they find out that their runny nose ruined your day? That you think that they are “stupid”?

Yes, it is a double standard.
Back in college, (yes this is a #fbf story), I was in a sorority all 4 years of my undergraduate degree, doing usual sorority things, as well as the fun fulfilling charity work and activities the media does not portray. During my Junior/Senior years, I was the head of the “Standards Board”. This is the board of women who sit and make sure that the sororities image is maintained and bylaws were followed. This is when social media was just becoming a HUGE thing. I had to call in young women for inappropriate behavior and pictures weekly.  This meant that if I messed up, it was a. big. deal. I was held to a different standard back then. This was not a fair situation, but like teaching, it was never meant to be. There were reasons that in the 1910’s they had rules like this:

(Crazy right?)

You are in charge of the world’s future. You tell them right from wrong, what is acceptable and what isn’t. How to be a better person. How can you do this while also being a giant hypocrite?
Nowadays, the world’s future leaders also, tweet, and text, and go on facebook. They will find out what you say, their parents will, your bosses will. Would you have written those things if you knew that? Why write them at all?
In my opinion, teachers who say terrible things about their jobs regularly either A) Should not be in the teaching profession, or B) Were really too dumb to realize that their information is public, and therefore, refer to A.

We all make mistakes. Teachers have tough jobs. Do I deserve glasses upon glasses of wine after long, complicated IEP’s, being slapped by students, and mountains of paperwork? Sure. Do I need to go online and describe how the parents were “totally stupid” and the kid is awful and how much my life sucks? Absolutely not.

Usually, when I have a ‘ranty’ post to write, I re-read it and consider, is this really how I want to come across? As a teacher, and as a human being?  Internet common sense dictates that you ‘think before you post’. I would take it a step further and say that if you really need to think that hard about if your words are appropriate, then don’t post it at all. Isn’t this what we teach our students anyways? That if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all…

Society will always judge teachers like they judge Taylor Swift. We are all good people, doing good things, unworthy of press time, until BAM, we do something wrong, unclassy, or scandalous. That is how the media and society works. The bad will always outweigh the good in people’s eyes.  Did it matter that the lady tweeting racist remarks had been an upstanding teacher for more than 20 Years? Nope. Did it matter that the Bay Area teacher was working with an underprivileged population and her students all loved her? You bet not.

Society will do what society does. But teachers can outsmart society, and don’t give it something to talk about.

---

The tweet that got the Texas Teacher fired, and the article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2829375/Texas-teacher-fired-racist-tweet-Ferguson-police-shooting-raged-white-detractors-kill-themselves.html

People who forget they “friended” their boss….

People who forget to switch their Twitter account out from their day job…

People who are not very good at their jobs in Social Media Relations…

And a teacher who really needs to stop posting. just stop.

Or see here for more bright people that will make you feel better about your posts about your cats 🙂

Hello, you’ve found it! I’ve decided to switch to wordpress for my blogging needs from now on.

If you are looking for my posts about Vietnam, they are no more. If for some reason, you wanted to view them, let me know and Ill send you my backup file 🙂