It's about time......

I am finally updating. Yes, I know, it has been forever. It has been hard to find time to sit and post. Where do I even begin? Well, I started my classroom. That is probably the biggest news of all. It has been the most amazing experience of my life and the most stressful. I love all my students but dealing with paperwork has been tough. The school I am working at is wonderful but I often feel out of the loop. All the teachers have a team to work with and I don't really have anyone else. For example, the Kindergarten teachers all work together because they are doing the exact same things in their classrooms. So they help eachother plan and copy and all that. Whereas I am the only class with a mixture of K-3 students. It has been insane trying to plan their curriculum. And the district promised us wonderful new curriculum and I have not been able to get everything I need for math. Yet, I am held accountable for teaching this new curriculum. A lot of times things just don't make sense. I am lucky, however, to know the other special education teachers in the district and they have been extremely helpful and supportive.

My students make me laugh everyday. We have ups and downs but for the most part I am grateful to have a great class, behavior wise. My students listen and give their best effort. I also have 2 great paraeducators as my aides. They have a lot of experience and don't seem to mind that I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing a lot of the time.

Besides teaching, I feel like Ryan and I have been super busy. We drove to a wedding in Oregon. It was a good 7 hour drive. Pretty intense, but totally worth it to see our friends Kim and Griffin get married. We went to another wedding this weekend. It was my cousin Elise's wedding. It was sooooooooo beautiful. They had it on a working cattle ranch. The house was built in the 1800's and was absolutely stunning. Then we have another wedding on Oct. 3. I am ready for things to calm down a bit. I am definately stressed out. I found a freakin gray hair! Not cool. Everyday seems to get a little better as I learn more and more about the process of everything and I learn more about my students. I feel like I have meetings everyday after work. And if I don't have a meeting I am trying to plan for the rest of the week or something else that is coming up. I'm gone from the house on average 12 hours everyday and I usually don't get to take my lunch. Ryan gets mad about that but it's difficult to leave the class if a kid is having a meltdown or if everything we planned on doing didn't work out and I need to stay to finish some lessons. But all in all, I love working with the kids. They seem to like me as well, which makes me feel like I am doing somethign right. All the parents of my students have been wonderful as well.

Ryan got a part time job which has helped keep him busy and earn some money. He interviewed for an insurance company and the guy seemed to really like him. It just looks like it will be a long process. If he does get the job he will have to go train in MN for 5 or 6 months which is not appealing to me, but I know it would be worth it for the job. I guess that about sums up everything going on for now. I'll try to post more often when funny things happen in my classroom.