Reply to FCPS is in big trouble

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "FCPS is in big trouble"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was a self-contained special ed teacher for many years in FCPS. I came early and stayed late. I was required to eat lunch in the cafeteria with my students to provide behavioral support, which was a duty I traded every other day with my IA, in return for covering recess. We each got about 23 minutes daily for lunch with this trading off system, although if a child was in crisis, I had to deal with that, and ate my sandwich when I could.

I was supposed to get four hours of unencumbered planning time per week. That’s an hour a day while the students were at specials. One of the days, I was required to attend a grade-level team meeting. This often had little to do with my students, as they might be discussing new groups for the gen ed math or reading instruction, and my students were not involved. Now, most schools require two meetings a week for this, so one is math and the other reading. That takes me to three hours a week of planning time. Remember that I teach all subjects, at varying levels. I often had three distinct reading levels, plus a kid that was very advanced or very low as an outlier.

Now, I also had to use one of my hours to meet with the special education team for staffing, and of course IEP or other meetings held while my kids were at specials. On top of this, I had a ton of paperwork, to include IEP data, responding to parent emails, etc. When did I have time to actually plan lessons, gather materials, and otherwise do what any elementary teacher had to do? Not much time. [/quote]

I think the vast majority of parents in this forum recognize the challenges/burdens SpEd teachers have - and appreciate what you do for our kids.  FCPS has a growing problem with attracting and retaining teachers, especially SpEd teachers.  What suggestions do you have for parents to help you?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics