So towards the end of the day today, our IST teacher comes in and from the look on her face I knew it was bad news. One more student coming my way. In a way, I feel awful for seeing it as a bad thing. But, that will bring my caseload up to 19 students, bigger than our sixth grade homerooms! I have a very hard time thinking of it as "special education" when I am simply keeping tabs on kids to make sure they don't go missing.
I love inclusion, and really push for it whenever possible. However, I have found that with this many students, I feel like I'm juggling 18 million things at once. Six different teachers to deal with, keeping track of tests and assignments, who is missing what, who is doing poorly. Thank goodness I have my aide, who is truly wonderful. Without her I would have lost it a long time ago!
This is the first year I am really struggling with what I do. I love it, I love the kids, I have a great time....but I am stressed, constantly. It's one of those things where you know there isn't much you can do to make it better, but you keep throwing everything you've got at the problem hoping something comes of it. Well, at this point, I'm just about tapped out of ideas!
Ok, enough of my whine-fest....speaking of wine....
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