Is It Friday Yet?

I find myself very tired this afternoon. Yesterday morning I set my alarm for 4:30, planning to get up and do a preliminary writeup for a journal entry due Friday for my Gifted and Talented certification class. I woke up at 3:30, stayed in bed till the alarm went off. Got up, and realized I'd left my articles I was supposed to reflect on, at work the previous day. So I stayed up, went to work.

Yesterday evening was our first PTA meeting. It went fine, the principal introduced us. I did see some things however, in a couple parents' reactions, that came across to me as well... catty. Remarks they'd made back and forth. Parents that usually I considered pretty level headed. Seeing this made me realize I should take a step back. I try to avoid people that are always talking negatively about other people or children. I want to surround myself with positiveness.

Anyhoo... I got home from that about 8pm, and was back up and at school at 7am this morning. At our faculty meeting today, we found out that the state of GA has changed the Student Support Team process. It has added a ton of documentation, implementation of strategies BEFORE a child can "be in" the SST process. Last year the procedure was for the strategies to be part of the process. Also, the new techniques we try now has to be for at least 12 weeks instead of 6. The upswing of all this is that fewer kids will get referred simply because of the amount of paperwork and data collection and time involved. BUT.... as a kindergarten teacher, if I think there's any smidgeon of a chance that a child might be recommended to be "rehoused" (the PC term for repeating kindergarten), then I have to start my documenting TODAY. A mere 3 weeks into the school year. Parents are notified of the possibility of rehousing a child in February. In order to be notified, the child already has to be in SST. Hence me starting now.

Some might say it's impossible to tell so early on, but I can tell the ones I'm already concerned about. Students who lack the basics taught in a Pre-K or with an involved parent, students who seem very very young developmentally.

Kindergarten is not like when I was in it. The only thing that stays the same is change.


oh, and paperwork.