NEW BLOG!!!

My New blog is up and running!!! I am super excited about it! Its a teaching blog so that I can post things that I have made for my classroom and just made for fun! Please come on over and see what fun stuff I have! Right now there isn't much because it just went live last night and I haven't had that much time to play around with it!!!

O"fish"ally Learning with Mrs. May

I am super excited about this!!!!

May Currently

So I have NEVER done one of these before... I have to post this here because I don't have my NEW blog design yet from Erin over at Creating & Teaching!!! 

It's coming down to the wire

Well here in South Texas we have 21 days left in the school year!!! With that being said it is also the scariest time of the school year. With a new school opening up and my current principal opening this school. She was able to take a few teachers with her to help her open the new school... I put in to go with her but knew that if I went it was going to be a last minute thing... Since I am still a probationary teacher (in my first three years of teaching) it is really hard for her to just up and say I WANT HER!! I did put in for a transfer to two other school over by where I live on the other side of the district. The district that I work for covers over 100 square miles!! (did i mention its in the hill country?) I currently drive from one city to another city to work, and have about a 45 minute drive to work and then about a 55 minute drive back home (more traffic in the afternoons) Well the other two school that I put in to transfer to I originally thought that they were filled so I had put that though out of my mind and also since I hadn't heard anything yet from my principal I assumed that I was just going to be staying at my current school and I would probably stay EA (which is our version of elementary life skills). So the two other teachers and I started planning out how WE wanted our three classrooms to be divided up with all the kids and were working on writing a proposal to present to our Principal and New Principal for next year! That was going all fine and dandy until WEDNESDAY of this week!! When we found out that I would NOT be an EA teacher for next year and that another teacher on campus was going to be switching positions and was coming to take my spot on the team!!! I was sad/mad all at the same time!!! Why was that not my position?!?!?! Then I had a little chat with our VP and left that meeting feeling like they didn't believe in my teaching abilities and the only place for me was either Behavior (which I DO NOT WANT) or Inclusion Support (Better but still not what I wanted to do for next year) but those were my ONLY choices... I couldn't switch to Gen. Ed like I thought I was going to be able to do. So yesterday I was in lets say a pissy mood for the morning hours of my day... Well I decided that I wasn't going to let it get me down! So I changed my attitude and actually had a pretty good day!
 
   So after school a group of teachers do the Insanity workout together in the Music room (KILLER) While we were working out our Principal poked her head in and said to come talk to her before I left for the day... Uh-OH is what went thru my mind... Well our talk consisted of she has picked the staff that she was going to take with her for sure and I was not currently one of them. Bummer but what I expected. She did say however that she still had a few openings on her staff but was told to keep them open for the time being because they were still working on placements for other staff members around the district. She also said that my #1 School that I really wanted to teach at (it is literally IN my neighborhood) well their Principal was asking about me and what I wanted to teach if I was able to come over to her school!!!! WOW!!! She was asking about ME?!?!?! Originally this school needed to LOOSE 3 teachers and now for whatever reason things have changed and there is STILL a chance that I could switch closer to home!!!
incredibly
  As happy as I would be to leave the campus I am at and work closer to home I would also be sad about leaving... My BEST friend works two doors down from me and I would do anything to stay with her... So here comes my problem... Do I stay here at my current school, and teach something that I really don't want to teach, but I'll be with people that I know and Love; OR do I move schools, go back into Gen. Ed and try to make new friends ALL over again?!?!

   OH WELL, the choice is not really up to me at this point... All I know is that I will have a job in the district (because I signed my contract a month ago) and I will be teaching SOMETHING!!! I just don't know what or where at this point!!! As scary as that thought is and the fact that after my meeting I still didn't have any answers to my questions about what or where I was going to be next year, I still felt like it was a good talk. I felt like I hadn't been forgotten and all the right people knew my name and knew what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be.

   So in the end I told my Principal that if it was best for the kids that I stay here at my current school and be placed in either the Behavior units or be the Inclusion Support teacher I would do what I was asked to teach and would do my best to be what those students needed next year... And if I do get to switch schools and become a Gen. Ed teacher well that would be AWESOME as well!

  Just thought I'd pop on and let you know what has been happening in my life here lately!!

~Michaela~

Following other Teachers

So I am relatively new to this whole blog world. I originally started my blog to let family members know what was going on in our lives... well that really didn't work because I never told anyone about it and I really didn't have any family members who would have wanted to follow it anyway... So now looking around at all the other blogs that I follow, mostly other teacher blogs that post what projects they are doing with their classes and selling some of the things that they make for their classes. I think that is more the direction that I want to go with this blog... Lets be honest here for a minute... my life is not that interesting that people want to follow or read about it on a regular basis! I don't have any strong convictions that I am preaching here (although I do wish I could do better with my faith). I think that I am pretty creative when it comes down to making different things for my classroom... I am a Special Ed teacher who has to make EVERYTHING for my classroom. Looking around at others blogs like this one. (My new favorite place to look and get inspired for next year). I have decided that I could do this... Well at least give it a good college try!! So hopefully even if I don't ever sell anything that I've made or no one reads or follows my blog I will have a place to go back and look at all the things that I have made. Or I can post about some ideas that I have to help with different things in the classroom... I have not been teaching for very long but I have two parents for teachers... although they are both High school teachers and I am Elementary but I have been around schools and teachers my WHOLE life!!! I am really excited about starting this up... I might not have a whole lot of ideas posted until next school year since this one is almost over!! (WooHoo 46 more days) I am making a few more things but not as many as I am sure I will need next year... I also have no idea what or where I will be teaching next year... Our principal is opening a new school closer to where we live and I put in for a transfer. The school I have worked at for the past two years is a good 45 minute drive from my house. If I do get the transfer (which was approved by my current principal) I will only have a 10 minute commute to work each day! Which means more time for my Family and study time for my Masters! (I am starting that this summer) I am getting my Masters in Special Education with a focus in Autism! I am really looking forward to doing all this new stuff!!! Hopefully I can get some help from others that are doing this and I can be succesful at this new venture... I figure if I have to make it for my classroom anyway, why not show everyone else out there what I am doing and maybe someone can use it in their classroom as well!!

I hope that if anyone is reading this I am making sense and that if you are a teacher you are looking forward to me helping you create stuff for your classroom!!!

Some of the thought that are running thru my head

Well lets start off this random blog post by saying that if anyone is reading this I am sorry for how much my brain jumps from one subject to another. SO with that being said... here goes

So the first random thought on my mind is that I cannot wait until March 1st so that I can actually register for my summer school classes to start off my Grad school experience. I am also really excited to be back in school and start getting into the Special Ed classes that focus more on Autism than other things... some of the classes I am not looking forward to are "Legal Issues in Special Ed." although thinking about it that class could hold some very interesting topics... SO that might be one that I actually really like, I am also looking forward to the Psychology class that I get to take... Since that was my first major before I decided to switch to Education I am really looking forward to getting back to a psych class. The only bad thing about going to summer school is that the classes are in the middle of the day AND they are Monday - Friday. So that means that I don't get to keep Jackson home like I did last year from school for three days a week. In July my parents said that they could probably keep him tuesday & Thursdays for me so that I could save a little bit of money from daycare. Again I will still be in class but I will only be taking one class instead of two like I will be in June. See this is how crazy I am, I am going to take two classes in the first summer session then one in the second session; for a grand total of 3 classes in two months. Then in August I am going to be taking 2 classes once a week, I really don't want to be in school forever so I am doubling up on classes during the "regular" semesters and taking 3 if possible for the two summers that I will be in school. With all that being said I am hoping that I will graduate in the fall of 2014 that's two years of school. Not to bad when you think about 36 hours of Grad school. Again I am very excited about the decision that I have made to go back to school. Oh in case you have no idea what I am going to school for I am getting my Masters in Education with a specific study in Low incidence (which is just another way of saying a focus in Autism).

Ok now on two another random thought that is going thru my mind here lately. I have go the bug in me that I want to start to take family trips, not to local places like get on a plane and go across the country to another courntry and travel around there for awhile. Some of the places that I really want to go are

• Dubai
• Russia
• Italy
• Greece
• London (where I was born)
• Ireland
• Bali
• Austria
• Germany
• South Africa
• Australia
• Turks & Caicos
• Tibet
• Thailand
• The Netherlands
• Portugal (we use to go there in the summers)
• the Bahamas (I really want to stay in Atlantis)
• Poland
• and a few other countries that I can't think of right now....

See what I mean. I had a friend email me a slideshow of an Aquarium in Dubai and that go the juices flowing again on wanting to take cross country trips with the family. Not only do I think traveling the world makes a great cultured life but it is just really fun to see how other people live in other parts of the world, and just to travel is SOOOOO exciting!!! I hope that Jackson takes as much joy out of it as I do and he doesn't just think or here we go again another trip to Rome... Not that my son would ever think that way but you never know.. 

Well I think that is all I am going to bore you with today... If anyone even reads this... If not then at least it was a great way for me to document my thoughts. 

Pulling at my Heart Strings

I have gone back and forth on if I wanted to post anything about this but couldn't come up with the right words to express how sick it made me feel. After thinking about it for a few days I really don't care what words I use to express how I am feeling I am just going to get it out. So this is going to be a very wordy and LONG post so if you don't really care then that red X at the top right is for you. So here goes... Let me first say that there are many similarities between myself and the person that this horrible thing happened to. 1: We came from the same High School and Transferred to the Same school. The difference I transferred Freshman year and still didn't fit in after 4 years. This person transferred about a month ago their senior year. SO here it goes...

My mom who is a High School Senior Teacher at my old High School had a new student transfer in from the same High School that I transferred from. When my mom told me this I don't know why I got really excited. I have never met this kid, I don't even know their name... All I know is that they came from my HOME school and transferred to the School that I actually graduated from. Well this student is deaf and wears two hearing aids. My mom says that this student is very bright and smart and is a very very sweet kid. They were never wanting any special treatment because they came in the middle of the nine weeks and would have been behind on all the work. They were going to do all the work with no extra time, that's how dedicated this student was to fitting in right away. Well my mom had mentioned that this student hadn't been to class in a while and was going to call their counselor to double check to make sure everything was OK. On the same day that my mom was going to ask about this student their counselor came up to my mom with a withdrawal form for this student. My mom said, "Oh no, So and So withdrew? That's sad, they were such a sweet kid. Is everything alright?" This is what my mom was told by the counselor.
                             NO. The student was going off campus with two other students under the rouse that they were all going to smoke some pot. So they all went off campus to some woods (there is a park not to far from the school). When they got to the park the two kids decided that they were going to beat the SHIT out of this student with a CROWBAR!!!!

They really did a number on this poor defenseless CHILD. (I am crying just typing it here) Granted it was probably not a smart choice to leave school and go smoke pot but when you are new to a school that has such life long clicks, and you are trying to fit in and these people approach you and act like they are going to befriend you then beat the living shit out of you. WTF!!! Well needless to say the two baby boys that did this to the other student are no longer at the school, they were expelled completely, if you ask me they should be rotting in prison for a hate crime. OH did I mention the only reason they did this was to pick on the DEAF kid?!?!?!? Keep in mind that he spoke almost perfectly, there were only a few words that you could really tell he was deaf, he also wore two hearing aids. This student's mom didn't feel that he was safe at that school any more so she withdrew him and transferred him back to the school that he came from.

I am for the first time ever in almost 8 years since I graduated High School completely ashamed to say that I graduated from Churchill High School. I know first hand how the kids there bully you around, won't invite you into their clicks, look at you like you are a walking plague, and no matter how long you are there and what activities you are involved in the "popular" kids still won't accept you into their little group of people. From the day I transferred I only had a few friends, I wouldn't have traded them for anything, I would have liked to expand my circle of friends to the other girls that I cheered with for Four years. Every year when tryouts came around I had to stay away from all the other girls (accept my true friends) because they would try to get into my head and tell me I wasn't good enough to make the team again, or that they hoped I'd fall and break something, or that I didn't deserve to be on the team because I wasn't a true Churchill person. WTF? What is a true Churchill person? I understand that you grew up with all the same people for years but did it never occur to you that being a nice person to new people will help you grow as a person?? Anyway this is not about me...

I can relate to the hatred that some of the students expressed to anyone that was NEW... Although I never got beaten up or anything I know what it was like to be bullied for being "different" at Churchill.

I hope that if you are reading this you understand what HATE CRIMES are going on right here in our own little area. We need to BUMP up the efforts to help kids see that the 4 years they spend at a high school they are still nobodies... When they get out into the real world or go off to college NO ONE is going to GIVE A RATS ASS if you were in the popular group at your high school. And when you graduate from College NO ONE IS GOING TO GIVE A RATS ASS who you were in College either (unless you are a BAD ASS football player). When I graduated from High school I wanted to get as far away from everyone I knew at that school (accept for my few friends and my now husband), granted we have lost touch of a few people along the way because of where our lives have taken us but some of us are starting to find each other again. Now here I am back in the same area Teaching Special Ed to "Different" students, some of which I hope never get picked on for being a little different. I am also going back to school to get my masters degree in Special ED because I want to grow in my future and help more and more kids.

I truly don't understand how there can be that much hatred in a person at such a young age to think oh lets lure this deaf kid out to the woods and beat him with a CROWBAR!!!! What has this world come to when 17/18 year old kids are almost killing other kids their same age?? This area that the school is in is NOT know to have Gangs or anything like that, it's in a nice part of town, granted not everyone there has rich parents but no one is joining gangs to keep "safe" from a rival gang in the area. It was just two stupid kids being mean to another helpless child!!!

I don't know what else to say about any of this, Just that I am still sick to my stomach about what happened to this poor kid. I want to go and find this kid and tell them I am truly sorry for everything that has happened to them and I love them (yes love them; without even knowing who they are) I understand the need to fit in and hang out with other kids who you think are your friends, not to have people talk behind your backs and beat you up both physically and emotionally.

To the students who did the beating... I hope that you get the same treatment wherever you go in life. I hope that you are sitting in a prison being some mans slave and never getting a break from the HATE CRIME that you two committed!!!

I'm Going Back

Well I have officially applied to Grad school!!! I have been talking about wanting to do it for a little bit but could never decide what I wanted my masters in. I wanted it to be something that I could use later on in my teaching career. I didn't want a pointless masters degree just to say that I had one. So after some consideration and hard time sitting in front of my computer at school looking at 25 different options I decided that I would go back to UTSA and get my masters in Special Education. With that being said I have also applied for different grants and scholarships to help me get thru the two or three years that it will take me to obtain my masters. I am excited and nervous at the same time. I really hope that I get accepted, I don't see why I wouldn't but the thought still crosses my mind. I am also nervous about being able to keep up with all the readings and classwork because I will have a two and a half year old by then. I applied to start in the Fall of 2012, just because I didn't think I would be ready to start in Jan/Feb. Who knows if I hear back soon I might start in the summer of  '12. My "sister" is getting her masters in counseling and it really hit me that I probably didn't want to stay the same and not be able to move up in my career. Also if I start next year or the following year I won't have to take the GRE because my GPA was high enough and it was within the 5 year limits. Jack is very supportive of me right now with wanting to continue my education and supports me in what I am doing. Hopefully he will continue to support me when I tell him I need him to watch Jackson because I have to get my paper finished or I have to get stuff done for my classroom. I am sure that he will help me out as much as he can, since he owns his own business he has a little more flexibility in how his schedule is set but it is also hard once it is set to change it because of his clients. We will manage like everyone else who has gone thru with this process. Just thought I'd share with you.