There's Just No Time

March is a bad time to be a teacher, but more specifically, March is a bad time to be a special education teacher. April 1st is the magic deadline for the big counts that determine funding for the following year. Teachers begin to panic that we are 2/3 the way through the school year and Johnny isn't making progress like he should, so our referrals go up. Parents are freaking out that their kids are behind so our referrals go up. It's closer to when preschool parents start thinking about Kindergarten and realizing that maybe their kiddo needs a little extra push, so they go to the district's preschool evaluation team to see if there are supports to help their young one. All of these things happen every year! So, not only do we have this year's flood of kids coming in, but we also have last year's kids and the year before that. Needless to say, this logjam of students makes our jobs insane! I completely sympathize with our general education teachers. I don't feel like I'm under the same stress that they have been all year. Implementing common core standards, working with new report cards, worrying about the new teacher evaluations...walk into any school building and you will feel the tension from the demands that have been put on them and I have been lucky in that regards. I too am implementing common core, but in small pieces. I don't do report cards. I do, however, complete fifty plus progress reports every trimester. OSPI doesn't know what to do with people like SLPs so we're still on the old evaluation system. So, not as stressful of a year as it has been for our poor teachers. However, March is the month where special education shines in terms of being stressed out. In order to get your child into special education, you have to start a referral. A referral is a minimum of 4 documents, not including the teacher input form and the parent input form. Then, once we get consent back, we can start assessing a student. A child with articulation concerns? Maybe that will take the thirty minutes of standardized assessments, plus conversations with the classroom teacher, the child, and the child's parents. The student that I just finished that has difficulties with receptive, expressive, and pragmatic language? I gave that student five standardized assessments and probably spent at least four hours just in testing. Then we write our evaluation paperwork which is three separate documents, and is usually between 10-15 pages. Then we meet with the parents to go over the results. If they did not qualify, we are finished at that point, but if they qualified for services, then we write an IEP. That is also three separate documents, and also averages 10-15 pages for a speech-only kid and required another meeting! And that's just my caseload. I serve around 50 students at my school. About 15 of those students are speech only, so I am solely responsible for those students' paperwork, testing, programming, etc. Then, I have a primary (K-3) special education teacher that I work with. She and I share around 10 kids. There's also an intermediate (3-6) special education teacher. She and I share around 10 kids. And there's also a special education preschool at my building. He and I share around 15 kids. Does that add up to 50 yet? All of those teachers have annual IEPs that are due every year. Then, there are re-evaluations that are due every three years. Then, there are referrals that are constantly coming in and those are initial evals, plus many of them qualify for IEP services. Also in March, the trimester ends, which means that progress reports are also due...all 50ish of them. Starting about a week ago, my calendar has a meeting on it everyday from now until March 28th...the day before spring break. Some days have more than one meeting. Some days, like conference days, have THREE or FOUR meetings... Why am I sharing this? Am I looking for sympathy? Maybe just a little!! Am I looking for a change? Absolutely! I'm not sure if this change comes in the form of a change in career...haha!! Or if it just calls for a change in how we do business. How the state and federal government conducts special education. How the demands of paperwork are thought around because I am drowning! We are drowning! And it's not just at my school It's across the district! Across the state perhaps! Across the nation! When I began my career as a speech-language pathologist, I did not intend to spend my days writing paperwork. And yet, that's exactly what I am doing! I spend a majority of my time working on paperwork. Whether it be writing evaluations and IEPs, sending home meeting invitations, tracking down signatures for Medicaid consent, filling out preschool COSF forms, amending IEPs, completing buy-offs of paperwork that comes into the district, editing our monthly count...the list goes on and on. I don't think I've seen the top of my desk since November...maybe September because it's buried in paperwork. Why? Why do we have so much paperwork? Why do we have so many forms? Why do we have to have documents that are 15-30 pages long stating what a child needs, or where their program is going to take them. You know what? Quite often, their paperwork says I'm going to do great things! And I typically do my best to do great things. But, there's just no time! There's no time to be able to complete all the paperwork, see the kids for the time they need, plan for the next day, and actually enjoy the job. We're too busy! There's just no time! Something that I have always tried to stick to was leaving my work at work. I might stay until 5:00 every night, but I've always been pleased with myself in being able to leave my work at work and just be able to be a mom at home...until recently There's just no time! So, every day I'm dragging home files and assessments and paperwork and working at home. I refuse to take time away from my children, so I put them to bed, and begin to work on the reports that usually take me anywhere from 2-5 hours to complete. And sure, I could write less, or only give the student one goal as is suggested that we do. But, I just can't! I throw my heart and soul into that document, knowing that if I get sued, that's what the courts are going to look at. THAT'S what the courts are going to see. They aren't going to see the cute lesson on social skills that I worked through with a student. They aren't going to see the thirty minutes I spend with a student every week as he talks to me about memories about his grandmother because she died over the summer. They aren't going to see the little boy with Autism who head butts me every time I work with him because I'm a slow learner and get a little too close, but who sat in my lap today and said all of the cards we were working on this morning. They aren't going to see my tears flowing in meetings when I worry and fret and am anxious as we discuss transitioning a student to junior high. They aren't going to see the love and care that our special education teachers take with the students. They aren't going to see our teachers eating lunch with the students who have sensory issues and can't stand going to the lunch room. They aren't going to see that we give up our lunch or our planning or our breaks to deal with behaviors that the general education teachers send us. Nope, they're going to be checking that document. Those evaluations and IEPs that mean so much to them. The paperwork where you miss one sheet, you have five more sheets to put in explaining why you missed that one sheet. I understand accountability. And I understand that there are some teachers who don't care, and who those documents were probably made for, but in the meantime the rest of us suffer. Special education teachers suffer, and because of the stress and pressure we are under, our children suffer. It's not fair! This is NOT why I got into speech. This is not what I wanted to do when I signed up to work with special education children. I did not go to school for six years to turn my children over to my assistant while I sit at my computer and write reports. But, this is where we are, and it seems to get worse every year! In a time when people seem to consistently be outraged with teachers, as a teacher I'm pleading and begging people to just stop and take a breath. The common core that I see plastered all over Facebook and Twitter and news stories? The anger and bad feelings towards where we are headed? Maybe don't me mad at a teacher for that? Have you asked how we feel? And the teacher evaluations? I hear that people want accountability. That we are responsible for teaching children and getting them college ready, workforce ready...but evaluating our performance on how a student performs on a test? Really? So, I know that I'm not on that evaluation right now, but I'm pretty sure that I will be! So, if we look at my student population and determine that my job will be based off of how they do on an evaluation, I better pack my boxes now. Because as hard as I work, and as fast as I teach, many of my kids will not pass the test. Pessimistic, huh? Maybe! But, my students don't come to school worried about performing on a test! My students come to school with empty stomachs. My students' have such dire language concerns, that we work on things like "This is a cow. It is a farm animal. It eats grass and gives us milk. Baby cows are called calves." We're not worried about using complete sentences on the writing portion of the MSP. I wish we were, but we're not. My students come to school sad because their mom ran away. My students have parents in denial about what is going on and they are left to flounder rather that get answers and assistance to help them be successful. My students are angry or tired or sad or anxious. My students are on medications that slow their processing down, make them not want to eat, make them sleep poorly. My students have had siblings pass away. My students want to be heard and hugged and helped, not with math or reading or writing, but with listening, and problem-solving life. And the bottom line? There's just no time! My co-workers and I today talked about writing our legislature about the demands of the paperwork on our jobs. And then we laughed that there was just no time! I'm not certain that any congressmen read my blog, or much of the public that seem to hate educators right now. But, something has got to give! Unfortunately for me, the give was the sanctity of my home, and having to cave and bring work home. For three nights in a row now I've worked on IEPs and Evals from home. I've spent 2-3 hours typing every night. I just finished before I decided to vent here on my blog. Last night, Amelia lost her stuffed turtle that she sleeps with every night. Rather than take a minute to help her find it, I snapped at her, told her to go to bed, that I had work to do. This isn't what I signed up for either! Because now, the paperwork is not only impacting me at work, but it's encroaching into my home life. During the time that I need to shut out work and just be a mom, I'm being an SLP. I'm thinking about 50 other children, while I tuck my own in early, hoping to get a few extra minutes to write. And then, when I'm done writing, I lay in bed and think about all of the students that we've met on. How I can make their paperwork better. What I can do differently to support them in the classroom. How do get them to stop hitting their classmates. How to explain something as abstract as emotion and feelings to students who are pragmatically impaired and language impaired. As I was tucking Amelia into bed tonight, I asked her if she had Slowpoke (the turtle that was missing from last night). "Yes, mommy. I'll try not to lose him again." "Amelia, I know that you didn't lose him on purpose. We just misplaced him. It's Ok!" "No, it's not, mommy. We don't want you to get fired!" "Um, why would I get fired?" "Well, if we keep you up looking for turtles and babies and blankies, then you won't have time to do your homework and you might get fired." "Oh, Amelia, I'm not going to get fired. I bring my work home because there's just no time!" "I know, mommy. You say that a lot lately. I'm sorry you're so busy." "I'm sorry too. I need to leave my work at work like I used to." "Well, you gotta do what you gotta do. And we love you, no matter how much time you have!" I kissed her good night and told her I loved her and I left her room, to go to the computer and start my report for the night. And I did it. I completed one report. Only three more to go for this week. But as I'm writing this, tears are welling up in my eyes because I'm stressed to the max! There's just no time. There's no time for the things that really matter. And, like I said, I work all day and come home. I cook dinner for my kids, do homework with them, bath, reading, and then tuck them into bed. And then my mind is back at work. I'm so busy thinking about the 50 kids I leave at work everyday, that sometimes I forget about the two that are living with me in this house. And I know that this is true for any teacher. We carry our students' burdens with us. We try to fix them and everything about them, and when we can't it's frustrating. You won't read about those things in any report though. So, to my teacher friends, I'm sorry that we are ALL stressed to the max! It's a rough time to be in this rough profession, and it doesn't seem to get any easier. But, at least in March, if you could take a second and think about your special education friends. Because we are stressed to the max right now, just with paperwork. And we do our best to keep up with the everyday stuff that your kiddos throw at us too, sometimes literally! And to my friends that aren't teachers? Pause and give thought to those people you know who are teachers, whether they teach your own children, or are friends that are teachers. We get a raw deal when it comes to the media. And I know there are bad eggs out there, but don't assume we all are! As I'm typing this, there are hundred of teachers right now doing something for their classrooms for tomorrow. So, hug a teacher tomorrow and thank them for the countless hours and time and love they put in to teach your students! And bring chocolate to your special education teacher friends... :) There's ALWAYS time for chocolate!