One Step at a Time in Education

Breaking Out of the Vacuum   So, tonight has not been the most inspirational evening to stir up creative juices for my first true blog posting assignment. If you can imagine: near constant interruptions from my two young children, a long (but actually pretty great) school day, followed by spectating a cross country meet for my nine year old, a quick dinner eaten over the computer keyboard and now my tired mind forming the words for this blog post.   My kids and I would much rather that I lay down to read bedtime stories to them, but this time is also important - for me. Blogging provides a valuable time for self reflection and self expression. For a once journalism major, I rarely write down (or type out) my thoughts to share with others. That's pretty lame. Working in a classroom can be a socially isolating experience for adults. Last year, while I was subbing for a kindergarten teacher out on a maternity leave, I would sometimes go to leave the classroom at the end of t...

(Lillian, aged 2) This is my Lillian, she moves through life with an unabashed (and contagious) joy. Lillian will be four next month. She is curious, kind and loving.  She inspires me to try to be a little less structured and to be a little more playful in life.  I am less than a month into my current job as a special education paraprofessional. I love to laugh with the students that I work with, but I save the majority of my silliness for joking around with my team members - a group of eight fantastic and talented women, and two skilled supervisors. I love my immediate team mates - I am grateful for our shared laughter and support.  I currently dread going into work on Mondays, this was not my experience in my previous position as a Reading and Math Interventionist. But I also did not work with combative students in that position. The children that I work with now are unpredictable and one of them, whom I no longer work with, left me seeing stars and hearing the cla...