Testing and Monitoring: Day 3

Thursday, October 29th
I went into work, grabbed my test kit, and headed to the middle school. I then spent the next 3 hours teaching one of the most hyperactive middle schoolers I have ever met. Wow, that was exhausting. And I still have to go back to finish up one more part. Toward the middle end of the my time with the student, I started getting calls from my office. The monitors wanted to see more charts and did I know of any other re-evals or initials from the middle school. I wracked my brain and gave some names.

When I got back to the office, I checked in with the secretaries and they were still looking for charts. I thought of some more and got them together. Later, I learned that one of the issues was that we were using the wrong documents. But we were using the documents that were in the program purchased from a state vendor. I don't know how it is in other states but from what I know, a state vendor is required to update documents within 14 days of a new state form. Well, not only wasn't our state vendor reliably updating the documents but when they did, they didn't remove the old documents. And we also learned that other districts had been getting in trouble with state monitors because of the same vendor. This just continued to increase my dislike for this special education software even more.

A short while later, the monitors were gone for the day after also questioning the pre-school and elementary CST staff. They will be returning in November to speak with the high school CST and look around at the schools. Overall, the monitors were pleasant and helpful.

Following lunch, I started working on the psych report from yesterdays testing. I also got into a discussion with my office mate about organizational systems. She has been going to elaborate lengths to develop spreadsheets and other electronic formats to organize herself. Her abilities are to be praised and she is certainly disciplined. I am not that disciplined and some of the things would be more work than reward for me. In the end, the conversation boils down to different strokes for different folks.

After some more work on the report I started, it is time to go home. Friday is almost here.