Our lovely para was sick today. Everyone in our classroom was bummed.
Yesterday, the special ed teacher at Nicollet emailed the two of us a resource that provided examples of things to say/do with students who have reactive attachment disorder (RAD). I read it this morning over breakfast. It was GREAT! I had so many great ideas after reading it; I felt confident and ready to face the day. And throughout the school day all those ideas disappeared. I think I might need to read it every morning before school until I have it memorized. Sure I remembered some of the stuff, but I definitely made a lot of mistakes today.
Trying to stay one step ahead of this student completely wore me out. I was trying different tactics I thought might work to get this student to do the assigned homework... and it seemed like this student didn't get anything done the whole day. Maybe it's not true. I don't know. This kid was bummed the para wasn't there and was therefore more emotional, which led to more arguments over stupid stuff and more tears. Just what every teacher wants to deal with.
On the plus side, we did get the majority of our art projects finished up. Most of the 5th graders have a good start on their powerpoints. The memory work is coming along slowly but surely. The 2nd graders are cruising on their math! They seem to be making less mistakes on their math packets.
I just remembered something funny that happened right before lunch. One of the tactics in the RAD paper I read said that if a student isn't completing the work, the teacher can say, "How sad for you that you did not do your reading work. You are so lucky that you have an awesome teacher who will give you the chance to practice reading during computer time!" This student didn't finish the English assignment, dawdling around for 99% of the work time. This student had just told me that I was an awesome teacher (probably because we were going to play the State Smacking Game instead of Spanish vocab today). Since the work wasn't done, this kid wouldn't get to play. I think I said something like, "Since I'm such a great teacher, I'm going to give you more time to work on that assignment. When you finish five more problems, feel free to join us!" The other 5th graders thought that was hilarious. One of the boys even brought it up during computer time that afternoon.
On somewhat of a side-note, this student did 6 English problems and then played the game with us until lunch.
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