PHEW!! WEEK 1 Completed!!!

PHEW!!!! The first week is done! And it was quite successful considering all the idiosyncrasies of each student we deal with as special education teachers and obstacles that come our way.
  This year is already proving to be a challenge, but I refuse to look negatively on it and accept it all as a challenge.
First, it was the air conditioner in my classroom breaking and causing havoc with the ceiling tiles; yep you know those wonderful rectangular tiles set on Tbars in classrooms. I'm sure you've seen them or have them. Then it was the custodial crews needed to reclean the room. All of this delayed the setup of my room by about 1 week. I usually go in 1 day during the week before teachers report and get all the big stuff moved. All of this prevented me from being partially setup on my first day back because I couldn't get into the room until Monday afternoon (the first teachers' day) to even begin setup.
NEVER has anything like this happened to me before so I am adopting the slant that I am lucky and moving forward.
PHEW!!!!
Scramble scramble scramble and thank goodness the room was presentable for Orientation on Thursday.PHEW!
The first week came...special education kids getting into new schedules, a few running attempts, some crying, undressing before you get to the bathroom, not pulling up pants before leaving the bathroom;  if you're a special education teacher...you know how it goes! PHEW!!
Wednesday- Kids are settling down, we've started a routine and I think we're going to make it through the first week. very well. We have a few beginning of the year assessments done! HOWEVER, a big storm at the end of the school day dumps buckets of rain. We get dismissal done first before the downpour begins. PHEW!
Thursday - Ooops! the brand new ceiling  has several water stains on it. Something somewhere is leaking AGAIN! Office secretary contacts the maintenance department but it storms and storms right at the end of the day again! Thank goodness most of dismissal got done and everyone got home happy....but there's one more day left.
FRIDAY...Several large leaks in the room; more calls to maintenance and they show up. First the A/C people. This evokes lots of crying in the room because he is taking up a large area of the room and certain routine activities have to be moved or modified.  I have several students on the autism spectrum and  they do not adjust to schedule changes easily, but they make it through it and he leaves.
Then the roof people come. They take up two large areas of the room so there is more crying and carrying on because unknown people are in our room and things are in disarray. They take a hose up on the roof and water it down and massive dripping ensues in the classroom. So now we have the area rug rolled up and plastic bins and trash cans catching the drips. We muddle through it with one crying in my office and one hunkered down in a beanbag. Finally the diagnoses are made!
PHEW!!!!
My Assistant Principal comes in and shares that next week-weather permitting- they are going to fix both issues and we will need to move to another classroom for a day or two until the repairs are completed.
OMG....more of this next week? In an unfamiliar room? With kids that don't like schedule changes, much less classroom changes.
This too shall pass. What a start to a new school year!  PHEW!!! I'm  still alive and its the weekend!

Since I was so wrapped up in my first week of school and missed posting this week PLUS giving you a freebie, I am sharing now.
A gift from me to you. Hoping YOUR first week whenever it is or was...is a great one!  If not...remember that I understand your pain!
Share YOUR first week with me ! I'd love to hear about it.

One of the activities we did get completed this week was a review of money skills.  Counting nickels proves to be an easy task for my upper grade kids. Counting by 5's and using touch points to count the nickels are all ways I've used to help them master this skill.
For your FREEBIE I hope you enjoy my Nickel Coin Cup Count Task Cards. Check them out in my store from this link.


Enjoy the FREEBIE and let me hear from you!  I'd LOVE to hear from you.
See you next time!


Classroom Freebies Manic Monday
7