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I haven’t been posting or participating too much in online conversations this week, but by the time I get home, I was totally wiped and still had 2-3 hours of work to do each night (just the start of the school year).

I took email off my iPhone and you know something it helped with my stress level.  I don’t feel as though I have to look at every little beep and buzz like I used to.  I really don’t miss that functionality and won’t turn email back on unless I find that I need it, but I don’t foresee that happening.

Last week was the first full week of school with 4 out of 5 days having a normal daily schedule.  I know that I am still in the “honeymoon” phase of the school year, but my homeroom (a 46 minute START period) and my three block English Language Arts classes are going surprisingly well on the behavior end :-).  We finished the Paper Airplane Lesson and have actually gotten started with  Google Docs (creating and sharing documents), even if some students are finding out they can use it as a quasi-chat room.

My classes have gotten more accomplished than I believed we would over this short time,  even getting 1/2 of the NWEA testing done (lots of jockeying for computer time in the computer labs on that one).  So from my vantage point – academically and behaviorally it has been a great start.

On the Special Education side there has been a lot of negotiating, persuading, talking with teachers, parents and administrators to get students in the classes they should be in, the supports that are in the IEP,  finding out how much students are blowing up at home (due to homework loads already) and other issues that pop up on a daily basis.  This has been a tough start, talking with some of the other Special Educators in the building, they don’t remember a year when things have been this intense.

Hopefully, next week things will begin to slow down a bit and I will be able to start getting ahead of the power curve, with my Special Education duties (but for some reason or other I am not betting on it).

Here are my top 5 posts for the week:

1. SPECIAL EDUCATORS-DO WE DO TOO MUCH?
2. 25 GOOGLE CHROME EXTENSIONS I USE
3. PAPER AIRPLANE LESSON PLAN 2010
4. THE CHANGE TO GOOGLE CHROME
5. PERSONAL APPEARANCE MAKES A DIFFERENCE

I believe that the students enjoyed my Paper Airplane Lesson Plan – I did have change the questionsconsiderably when I began to use them in class.

So thank you everyone for taking the time to read my blog and I foresee a few more weeks of
very reduced publishing on my blog.

“Do the right thing for the right reason and make a difference.”