First Day of Kids

I wasn't quite prepared to hit the floor running...but I had to since today marks the first day of the second full week of school. Last week, I spent my time organizing the room (it reminded me of my first week at my first job; tons of materials just dumped in the room), attending a gang of meetings, preparing and attending Back-To-School-Night, scheduling, reading IEPs and 40+ page reports.

It used to not take me long to look up goals and services, but apparently, there are a good number of IEPs that are unsigned...Big sign that I have my work cut out for me. Hopefully, I can stand my ground.

I felt pretty good about jumping in and doing my thing with the autism kiddos today. The individual sessions went well. The second group I did...not so well. It was really poor planning on my part; I thought we could work in the classroom (while my assistant worked in the Speech Room), but when we got there, one of the other kiddos was having an episode (aggression, property destruction) so we were shoo'd out. We ended up in the lunch area with major distractions, and it took me a while to get one kid into a groove, while the other kid's behaviorists basically did my job...

On a positive note, I thought I'd be more stressed out about my new job, but I haven't really been that stressed. I feel the typical beginning of the year pressure to get my program up and running stat, so that's nothing out of the ordinary.

It's different for me to work for the district though. I keep hearing my old boss nag me about eating in the lunch room to make new friends, but I'm so asocial that I don't want to! I'm trying, though.

I'm liking it here so far. Although there isn't a beach for me to walk to at lunch, there is a beautiful lake with ducks that's even closer than my 2nd year working in Manhattan Beach.

And you can't beat working 7 minutes away from work! The only thing that sucks about my short commute is that there isn't a Starbucks or Coffee Bean along the way!