Ctrl. Alt. Succeed.

Lately my Facebook timeline has contained strands of hate: Trump this, gun violence that, CPS strike blah blah blah. Direct insertions of disagreements for the sake of debate. People whose perspectives I wouldn’t normally care about shoved down my throat as I scroll seeking some kind of positivity. Opinion. Opinion. Opinion. A dumping ground of opinions. That being said, whenever I come across something positive on Facebook, it really stands out to me and sticks with me. A friend of mine shared a video on my Timeline that will forever be engrained in how I plan to run my future classroom. The video shows a special education teacher complimenting each and every one of his students on their way into his class in the morning. What an awesome way to start every day! Sometimes our students don’t hear good things about themselves from their friends and even their own parents at home. All the need sometimes is someone to just point out the good things. A few nice words can g...

No two people are the same and their learning styles aren’t either. While some students learn better by listening others might retain information better from reading or writing. I took a Biology class last semester and I might as well have been taking Chinese. Listening to and taking notes on the lectures was totally above my head. Even reading from the book wasn’t enough to help my learning. Thank God for YouTube. After class, I would go home and watch videos on YouTube explaining the concepts we covered in class. I didn’t learn mitosis from a book or from a teacher, but I learned it from the World Wide Web. YouTube videos contained the visual representations and demonstrations that I needed to grasp the concepts and processes. The friendly and quirky YouTube scientists delivered the information in video form and a way that made it easier for me to understand and apply. It’s the night before a final paper is due. 30 pages. 10 scholarly sources. 5 hours. This is when my best work...

Yesterday was early dismissal and her cab never came. Her uncle forgot to arrange for her to be picked up and dropped off at Pookey the babysitter’s house after school. (She would kill me for calling Pookey a “babysitter” because she is NOT a babysitter she is a “day care provider”) Anyways, the bus doesn’t reach Pookeys house so she takes a cab to get there every day. “Oh I am so gonna give it to that Rhonda….always making me wait around” She said. She’s a first name basis kinda girl. I like that. “I’m sure Rhonda is a nice cab driver and this is a miscommunication, little lady.” “She is...” she answered. “…she took me through the drive thru for a pop the other day because I told her I had money but she didn’t know it was 32 cents.” A girl that knows how to get what she wants. I like that. She keeps meatballs in her purse, because yeah…she gets hungry…you don’t keep meatballs in your purse? What’s wrong with you? Her purse is an extension of herself, filled with chaos an...

I currently work in a high school special education classroom, and let me tell you...the influence that technology's presence in the classroom has on my students is huge. This is both a great thing and a bad thing. Down syndrome is a language all of its own. Some of my students with down syndrome can go on and on for hours but you'd never understand what they were saying to you. With so much to say and inability to do so, they use an iPad that literally speaks for them. They can express their emotions, opinions, and interests via the iPad AND communicate more effectively. How awesome? One of my students used her iPad to send illicit photos via some messenger of herself to her "booboo bear crush". Connected to the messenger thread are all the other students in special ed. Each iPad contained the indecent angles she gingerly thought were private. Little did she know that the police would be involved and she'd never see her "booboo bear crush" ever aga...