January 10

For as much as I complain about the stress and paperwork associated with my job (and my crazy boss!), I really do love it. The kids, naughty as some of them may be, are all cute and they all pretty much love coming to school and doing their work. As we "teach through play", all of the work our kids do - all the concepts we teach - have to be embedded into games and play and therapy. It's a lot of fun. This is what my classroom looks like. You can't see the sensory table, science center, or art center as they are to my right and left in this picture (part of the manipulative corner is cut out, too).
The other thing I love about my job is the people I work with. In special ed you hear all the time "It takes a special person to do your job". I don't know about that, but we are a "special" bunch to say the least. Let's be honest, when you work with 3-5 year olds all day, you have to be firm but caring, fun but disciplined, and otherwise "on" all day long. We cherish the downtime that we get each day (our lunchbreaks and before or after school). There Early Childhood classrooms at my school are a suite. There is my room and Lisa's room, connected by our shared office, the front of which is the speech therapist's office. Behind our classrooms is a mudroom that we share and a motor therapy room that the OT and PT share. There are 10 people on the EC team, 8 of us have been together since last year, and 6 of them have been together for years (Lisa, the other teacher, and I are both 2nd year at this building). Anyway, we have a good time together. We joke and kid around and, on occasion, do stupid things. All special ed teachers/thearpists have a "reason" why they teach special ed (mine is because I can do the math in special ed). Yesterday I walked into work to find this:


Note the number of people involved here. My one assistant is walking into my office because she saw my camera, but she was actively watching this craziness, too. Lisa was behind me, but also watching and laughing at her assistant and the OT trying to dislodge a tinker toy from a funnel. Maybe you had to be there, but it just brought up the "How many special ed teachers does it take...." jokes. Apparently it takes 7 - two to pull, one to brace, and 4 to laugh their asses off at the first two. The tinker toy never came out, by the way.