Tuesday Full'a Nutthin'

My day really began when I attended a staffing this morning.  The major question of eligibility for this particular student was muddied by the fact that there had been major interruptions in their schooling.  With that being the case, the student shouldn't be eligible for special education services since, legally, that becomes an issue since this may constitute an effect of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.  The catch is that if the student isn't eligible then they won't get the services they need for remediation if it is due to inconsistent schooling.

Among the other highlights of the day: we were given the new Special Education Medicaid Initiative service logs.  On the upside, the forms are easier to fill out than the previous ones.  More of a check off thing than having to really write stuff.  On the downside, the new forms were only available as a PDF as opposed to the previous forms which were a Word document.  So now I couldn't type my forms up.

Do you know what you get when you prevent a geek from being able to complete things in the way that he wants?  You get an angry geek with a mission.  After several attempts to convert the documents with free online PDF to Word document conversion websites, I finally downloaded a free trial of higher grade program which got the job done.  I know I could have checked to see if our district had the full version of Adobe Acrobat but the turnaround time of finding out this information and actually getting access to it would have been stress inducing.  And turning the PDF into a form would have been a time consuming, manual process.  This program converted the form pretty instantaneously into a Word document that could be used right away.

Finally, I got together with one of my Spanish speaking coworkers and called a parent to see about making a change in a student's program.  So I have some paperwork lined up for me to do tomorrow, as well as a need to arrange some meeting dates.

Two more days of work left this week.  Friday is the big NJASP conference.  I'm looking forward to seeing some old friends and former coworkers.  If anyone reading this is going, let me know.

Excuses, excuses...

I could say that nothing really interesting happened on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and I wouldn't be lying, but that isn't the real reason I didn't post.  In all honesty, I just flaked due to the prospect of a four day weekend and the need to finish up season one of Leverage before it had to go back to the library.

Monday was another story altogether.  It started off normal enough.  I had to ask a coworker to cover for me at an initial referral conference because I had misread an email and accidentally rescheduled one of my own re-evaluation conferences for a time that was too close to cover both.  And it was a good thing I did because the parents of that afternoon meeting were extremely punctual.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So after I got another psych to cover for me, I started packing up my stuff to go to the school with the expectation that I would have several hours to do paperwork and perhaps get a little counseling done.  As fate would have it, that was not to be.  About 10 minutes after my arrival at the school, I get a phone call from my boss to go to another school for a risk assessment.

The situation was interesting.  The triggering incident didn't even happen in school.  It happened the day before at the student's home.  The student had gotten into an altercation with a sibling.  After the altercation, the student had gotten a weapon with the thought to do harm to the sibling but didn't because the parent had intervened.  No one was hurt.

The thing that was interesting was that neither the parent nor the student could keep the story straight.  Details of the story kept changing.  The only constant was that the student had gotten a weapon.  Since this was the first time something like this had happened, I recommended the student follow up outside the school to determine if they were a danger to themselves or others.  At the time of my interview, I didn't think the student was a danger to harm themselves or anyone else.  And from my experience with mental health screening, I'm fairly certain that a screener isn't going to think so either.  So my decision was partly a "cover my bases" thing but not completely.

I felt that the behavior indicated an escalation in behavior.  In the world of siblings, arguments and fighting are pretty common place.  Even in the world of just being boys, if my childhood was any indication, I would have a fight with my best friend.  The type where we would end up rolling around on the ground wrestling each other because we were upset.  Then go into our respective houses, angry.  Then five minutes later, we would call each other up on the phone and say, "Wanna go out and play?"

But when something standard like a sibling fight over standard stuff occurs and the reaction is to get a weapon with the thought of doing bodily harm then something has changed and it needs to be looked at.

Now the other thought that occurs to me with this is: since the student is already connected to services outside of the school, why wasn't this brought to those service providers attention?  Why come to the school?

I have some thoughts on that too.  Or rhetorical questions, actually.  Is the role of the school in the community changing?  Should schools become a mental health resource?  I know that there have been some school districts that have had mental health centers as part of their district, even having such centers open after school hours.  I don't know how I feel about that.  Part of me thinks that there does need to be some sort of boundary and definition of roles.  Or, at least if these boundaries are going to be blurred then administration needs a better understanding of what is being taken on.

After this my morning went on fairly smoothly.  My meeting arrived, as did the parents.  As I said, it was a re-evaluation planning meeting.  With this we reviewed the previous testing.  For anyone reading this that isn't a school psychologist and is thinking of becoming one then consider this: Are you able to tell someone bad news?  Or tell them news that will be hard for them to hear?  That may even make them cry?

It was one of those situations.  Unless you have been with the family since the student was first found eligible, you really don't know just how much the parents know until you talk about it with them.  Even then you don't know how much the parents may understand.

This student had cognitive limitations and I had to discuss this with them and I also started discussing working on a program that is going to meet the needs of the student and prepare them for life outside of school.  It could have gone one of two ones: the parents could have left feeling that I was placing a limitation on their child or they could have left feeling that we were going to develop a plan that would help the student meet their potential.  I hope it was the latter.  I know how angry I would be as a parent if I felt someone that doesn't know me or my son was putting a limitation on what my child could do.

In Search of a Title

I don't know how people come up with titles for daily blog entries.  Maybe I'm just beating a dead horse.

Most people at school are in Thanksgiving weekend mode.  I know I feel that mood teasing at my mind.  Even so, I had a bunch of stuff to get done and I actually managed to accomplish some of it.

I put in a call to a mother whose child was in an short-term care facility (STCF).  My purpose was three, maybe even four, fold.  First, to find out how the student was; second to inform her that the STCF hadn't called me back and this was likely due to HIPAA and I would need a release to get them to talk to me; and third (okay, I guess it was three-fold) to discuss scheduling a re-evaluation planning meeting.

From my call, I found out that the student had just been discharged and was returning to school; that the mother was irate with the STCF; and that she was able to proceed with the re-evaluation planning meeting.  So we worked out the details after a few calls with the out of district school and I wrote up the paperwork.

I finished writing my risk assessment from the other day.  I also started another psychological report.  In addition to this, I completed my assessment of the student from yesterday so I now have that one in the hopper.

Due to scheduling conflicts, I still didn't get to contact a Spanish speaking only parent since my potential translator was tied up with other stuff.  In the afternoon, I did some paperwork stuff, which included faxing psych and ed reports to a neurologist that was seeing a student of my for an evaluation.  In turn, the neurologist sent me a rating scale to give to teachers.  I also sent out a letter, and the copies of my risk assessments to the proper administrators.

In the late afternoon, I helped a coworker deal with our IEP software...thinking about that program raises my blood pressure.  Then I attended the staffing for a student that I evaluated and we found that the dear child still qualifies.

And so ended my day.

Catchin' Up

So the weekend passed without putting up the Friday post, so I'm grouping Friday and Monday, together.


To be honest, not a whole lot happened on Friday.  I did the risk assessment that had been scheduled the previous day.  The student wasn't a risk to their self but was a very angry, young person.  And very suspicious of adults, so I made sure I was very straightforward.  Most of the conversation revolved around his trust of counselors since the student was going to be taken to outside counseling again by their parents.  I talked with the student about addressing the ground rules for confidentiality with the counselor so they could begin with a clear cut understanding.  Building trust with this student will be a long haul.  Lucky me...I was just assigned as the student's in-school counselor.

That was the highlight for Friday.  Today, I started my evaluation of one of my students.  I got a good way into the assessment before sending them on their way.  Then I sat in on an IEP meeting for one of my coworkers.  After that, most of the morning was shot and I had to return to the office for a Thanksgiving day party for the alternative program in my department building.  It was more a political thing than something I really felt like doing today.  On the plus side, I did get a good meal.  After this, I banged my head against a psychological report and managed to come out of it with something resembling English.  The Flesch grade level of the report was a bit higher than my usual but it was the actual simplicity of the report that drove it up, I think.

When I type my reports in Word, I run the spell and grammar check with the readability options turned on.  This gives me the percentage of passive sentences, as well as the grade level and Flesch-Kincaid reading level.  If you've never done this, you should try it.  I remember a presentation at an NJASP conference where a speaker there said you should try to keep your reports grade level at around the 10th grade.  By way of comparison, some report sample text from the  Essentials of WISC-IV Assessment (Essentials of Psychological Assessment), when typed into word and assessed came out at the 18th to 22nd grade level.  So watch out for the jargon in your reports and think about who is going to read your report: parents.

Following this I started the risk assessment write up from Friday and finished my day staring at the computer screen.

Thursday Flagging

After my last two days, I was pretty tired so I tried to concentrate on paperwork.  I worked on the Excel sheet for my PLC group.  I managed to break down the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades for the last two years.  After I finished it, I saved it as a pdf and sent it out to the folks in my PLC group.

Following this, I went back to work on my psych reports.  This required me to go back and crunch some more numbers on a BASC-2 because of the teacher's unwillingness to commit to responses on a series of the items.  The hardest part for me on any of my psych reports are the social/emotional sections.  I just need to take in all the information and I have to feel inspired to write it.  I have to get a picture of how all the information comes together.  I'm almost there with this one report.

At the end of my day, I got called to come over to a coworker's office.  I was told about a student that needs to have a risk assessment tomorrow.  We discuss the student and the various things that they have been doing and saying that have been setting staff on edge.  So first thing tomorrow, I'm off to see that student.

Catching Up

I know I said that I wasn't going to post on Monday or Tuesday since I had some personal business to attend to on those days.  Technically I'm actually sticking with what I said since I didn't post on either of those days but some of my plans changed on Monday and I actually went to work for half the day.

On Monday, I really didn't get to do much of anything that I had planned.  I ended up in a parent meeting for a coworker that ended shortly due to the parent being unhappy with what was being said.  The parent left, threatening to see us in court.  My one interesting interaction was with the case manager of an out of district placement.  One of my students attends this placement.  They were actually placed there by the district.  It is a very therapeutic placement.  So something happened with my student where they had not attended in several days and I got a 5 day letter.  So I was following up on it.  I had left a message for the mother and hadn't received a callback and I called the case manager.  The case manager said that she couldn't tell me anything about what had happened due to HIPAA laws.  I found this very unusual.  Considering that we are responsible for the student's educational program and are the ones providing the payment then some incident that leads to the student not being in that program would seem to me to be fair game for sharing information.  It would seem odd that we would need HIPAA release papers signed to share the information with us.  Or at least odd that that isn't standard practice.

On the other hand, this placement doesn't just receive students from school districts.  They have a residential component to their program and receive DYFS placements and referrals from non-educational agencies.  So that might be where the difference comes in and that extra layer of confidential arises.  Still, this is the first time I've encountered this.

So that pretty much ended my Monday.

I returned to work today to find that I had to reschedule a re-evaluation planning meeting for the second time because the rescheduled time was next week when the teachers had half-days.  So I rescheduled that.  I also called a parent to find out if they had met with a neurologist for an appointment, just to see if I would have to harass the neurologist to get the report.  The parent told me that the appointment was scheduled for next week.

I was also a little trapped at my office today.  I didn't have my work keys with me, so I was nervous about going anywhere and getting locked out.  So I stayed in the office and did the follow up work that I mentioned.  Also, I finally spoke with the parent of the out of district student and got the information.  This resulted in speaking with my director and making a follow up call to find out information about education for the student while they are not attending the out of district placement.

I also worked on the report of one of the three psychological evaluations that I completed last week.  The good news is that I am almost done with that report.

Finally, I attended an eligibility conference and worked on calming the parent who became upset when reading the section of where I reported the results of the BASC-2.  This is the problem with the law that says that we must provide the parents with copies of our reports 10 days prior to the eligibility meeting.  As much as you may try to avoid using the jargon of the profession in a report, and I have been taught and believe that you should try to avoid it as much as possible, when you report the names of scales, there is almost no avoiding it.  So you are sending out information that uses words like "depression" and "anxiety" and "hyperactivity" to people that don't know the instruments and whose understanding of such words are formed by popular culture.  Everyone has an idea of what "depression" is.  Just not what it may mean on the BASC-2.

When I think about it, I know there are somethings that I need to work out for my reports to try to avoid this in the future.  I just have to make the time to work that out.

Finally, I'm going to talk about what happens when your personal life begins to impact your professional life.  This is a particularly important topic for this profession and any helping profession.  Again, I'm not going to go into too much detail since this blog has been about the profession.

Someone very close to me is very sick.  This has placed a great deal of stress on me in my personal life and the days that I have taken off, such as Monday and Tuesday, have been related to the care of this person.  The situation and the stress related to the situation has made it difficult to focus at work, particularly when the situation originally arose toward the end of last school year.  This situation was the reason I didn't work during the summer.

At this point, I'm just going to say that in a helping profession you need to be aware of how your personal life impacts your professional life and how your stress level may make you more prone to acting in a rash manner.  You need to be aware of your triggers and insecurities so that you can guard against overreacting or not reacting when you should.

As time goes on, I can only see the stress of my situation increasing and I have to remain aware of how this is impacting me at work.

Delayed Friday

Sorry for the delay.  Friday was a bit tiring after work.

I got into work and did a Google Maps search for the school I was going to.  I found that the school was much closer than I expected so I killed some time with paperwork.  When the time came, I drove out to the school and met with the student.  Due to the nature of the student's disability, I completed the WISC in record time.  Much less than the two hours that I allotted for it.

Once I got back to work, I found myself with much more time than I anticipated.  I found that work had become something of a ghost town due to a number of people being absent or at trainings.  I had a number of hours until my afternoon appointments, both of which were set for the same time.  Just one of those funny little things.  In the end it was okay.  One of those appointments was canceled.

My remaining afternoon appointment was our first professional learning community meeting.  I'm sure somewhere in the posts from last year, I mentioned this.  Last year, they had been put on hold for a number of reasons but they have started up once again.  Unlike many of the groups from last year, my group has remained pretty much intact and we even gained a new member.


Our topic remains the same: risk assessments.  This year was interesting because, thanks to my personal improvement plan, we now have data on risk assessments from the past two years.  We took a look at the data and saw that there was actually an increase in risk assessments from '08-'09 to '09-'10.  The most interesting thing was that the "bubble" of risk assessments in the grades of the first year continued and increased in the second year.  So we decided to take a look at that group in particular to see if there are any common factors.  We also saw somethings that were to be expected like the spike of risk assessments during December and May.  We concluded the meeting with delegating tasks and scheduling the next one.

The Thursday Push

I'm going to be out of work for a few days next week so I've been making a push to get a lot of stuff done this week.  By stuff, I mean testing.  So I finished that one student yesterday and tested a whole other student today.  They were the ones that set off my rant.  Tomorrow, I'm taking a field trip to an out-of-district placement to test another student.  At least I'll feel I'm ahead of the game in one area of my job.

I was actually surprised that I finished with the student today.  I went back to my office and finished scoring the student from yesterday and then started scoring the results from today's student.  Beyond that, there was very little to report.

I spoke with my director about a couple of issues I had come up.  I inherited an initial referral that was started last year but slipped through the cracks of summer, so I have to treat it like an initial referral.  So I have to speak with the guidance counselor and principal about that ASAP.  That will be tomorrow's project after my road trip.

Just stop the lying...

[rant]I recently started using the School Motivation and Learning Strategies Inventory (SMALSI) with students this year.  I figured that it would be good to get an idea of students' study and classroom habits since the academic difficulties that students have may be due to poor school skills than an actual deficit, or it may exacerbate the deficit.

Now I know the best way to administer an inventory is to let the student fill out the inventory on their own.  Have them read it themselves and "x" out their answer.  But after a number of experiences where I spent twice the time to administer explaining what a word was or rephrasing the statement, I have started to get into a habit of reading the statements to the student.  This has also allowed me to ask the students follow up questions.  I've done this with the Conners and BASC as well.  It is easier than looking over the entire protocol after they fill it out and asking follow up questions.

I've tried to preface this sort of thing by telling the students that I'm not there to judge them.  I'm not going to get angry with them.  I'm not going to go tell teachers that they hate them.  I just want to find out what is going on.

So students: lets just stop the lying.  I know you don't do your homework between classes or at lunch time.  I know you don't copy your notes over later on so you can understand them.  I know you don't review the questions at the end of the chapter before you read the chapter.  How do I know?  Because I didn't do it either.  And if you did, it is very likely we wouldn't be meeting.

I also know that you don't copy down everything the teacher writes on the board; I know you forget your homework; I know you put off doing your work in class.  How do I know?  Because I was watching you not copy notes from the board and getting reprimanded for not turning in your work.  I watched the teacher stand over you and direct you to do each question while trying to get you to stop talking to the student next to you.

Can we, please, just stop the lies?[/rant]

Flaws with Fluxx

I started my day by going over to my assigned school and doing some counseling.  I have a few compensatory sessions that I need to do with my students in counseling but I feel weird seeing them so soon after just seeing them two days before.  I meet with some of them and then one of my coworkers comes to the school to test one of my students and I end up vacating the office in the school so they have a place to test.

I return to my other office and do some paperwork.  Yesterday, my office mate and I tried Fluxx to get used to the rules.  I still think it is a good game to play with students but some of my students have reading comprehension issues and may have difficulty with reading some of the rules.  So I took a look at some other card games that are out there and found another one by the same company.

Aquarius by Looney Labs is a simpler game.  In some ways, it is like dominoes.  From their website:

Each player is given a secret goal card of one of the five elements. Element cards are played on the table connected like dominoes, with each player trying to win by connecting seven panels of their goal. Action cards allow players to shake up the action in six different ways. The game is fast, fun, colorful, and easy to learn - with enough bluffing and strategy to keep adults engaged.

So I picked it up today and tried it with my office mates.  It was a much smoother game with less rules and very little reading involved.  In addition, there is a good level of strategy added to the game with the action cards.  There is even a preschool level of play in the instructions.  My social worker coworker gave some other things to observe during game play: frustration level, cooperation, and I'll add in executive functioning.

In the afternoon, I finished testing the student I started yesterday.  I also got a request for information from our county juvenile detention center asking for information on a student of mine that is now in their care.  I photocopied the needed documents to mail out.

Super Tuesday

Alright, it is a week late but I needed something catchy for a title.

I started my day by torturing a...I mean testing a student.  My goal had been to test two students today but I only got the one and I still have to finish this one up.  So now I'm hoping to finish the one I started on Thursday and begin the second one.

After my testing session, I received a call from a guidance counselor that one of my students had said something unusual in a very brief conversation just before the counselor went into a meeting.  The counselor was calling to see if I would like to meet with the student because they were going to be in an I&RS meeting for the rest of the day.  So it was important enough to call me, who is not in the building that day, but not important enough to postpone attending this meeting to explore further with the student themselves.

Maybe I'm being a little critical but if the student had been a general education student would the counselor have taken the time to meet with the student?  There is a feeling in education, at least in the districts that I have worked in, that special education students don't belong to the general education.  That they are ours.

Just as their is this perception, people in special education both rail against this and promote it, depending upon convenience.  Or so it seems to me.  I know I have been guilty of this.

I did end up going over to see the student and it turned out to be nothing.  A five minute conversation would have resulted in this conclusion.  A few simple questions.  Although I may have known what questions to ask while the guidance counselor may not.

I returned to the office later on after lunch.  I did some paperwork and looked up some information on students that I'm testing.  I also arrange my first field trip of the year to an out of district school to test a student.  I get to travel on Friday which will be fun.

I ended up accomplishing a few things today so I feel pretty good.

Back from Break

The weekend was at once too long and too short.  I returned to work with a plan to keep up with my counseling and evaluations.  I checked my calendar for the day and saw that I didn't have anything scheduled...or thought that was the case.  So I went over to the middle school to complete my second classroom observation before heading to my school for counseling.

During the observation, my phone went off.  It wasn't a call, and it was on vibrate, and I saw that I had a meeting to attend in 5 minutes...at another school...crap.  So I ran back to my office and got what I needed for the meeting.  I keep all my appointments on my cell phone.  It is the only way that I have been able to keep track of appointments.  I really dislike planners that I have to write in.  I like having something that I know will always be with me like my phone.

So after a brisk run and a quick drive over to one of the elementary school, I arrive to the meeting just in time to find out the parent is running late.  Well I needed to burn the calories.  Probably the most exercise I'll get all week.

The meeting went well and I went on to my school.  My counseling went alright with only one student absent.  I spoke with the guidance counselor about some old referrals from last year.  I did some digging to get information for her and I also found a lack of information.  I decided that I needed to return to the office to have access to the actual files.  At that point it was lunch time so I took my leave from the school.

While I was picking up lunch, I stopped at a local comic book store to pick up a card game to play with my students during counseling.  The game that I researched was called Fluxx by Looney Labs.  Its an interesting little game without any of the usual gamer themes (dragons, zombies, etc) that I usually like.  The idea is that it starts out with a basic rule, draw 1 card and play 1 card, and some of the cards modify the rules.  Some cards dictate what the goal of the game is and some cards are actions.  So the rules are all on the cards and learned through play and the rules and goals of the game change during play.

While this isn't a therapeutic game, I could argue that it involves executive function and adaptation.

So after returning to the office, I type up my classroom observation and then look into the students whose names were given to me by the guidance counselor.  I find that two of them were never referred by I&RS and one had seemingly fallen through the cracks during the summer.  I managed to have a brief talk with my director but this requires a longer face to face than time allowed.  So I'll have to address it tomorrow.

Friday Comes Early

Today was the last day of the week thanks to the NJEA Convention this weekend.  I started my day with some paperwork and then a trip to the middle school for a classroom observation.  I got to learn how to round numbers again which was as much fun as observing the student.  I had intended on going to another classroom to watch another student but then I realized they had lunch next period.  So I had gone back to my office with the intention of going back a period later but I lost track of time.  By the time I realized it, the student didn't have any good classes in which to watch them.  The road to Hell...

So I wrote up my observation and did various other tasks throughout the rest of the day.  One of my office mates received a phone call from a mother whose child (now a 6th grader) was declassified several years ago.  The mother just had a 504 planning meeting yesterday and was in somewhat of a panic that the plan wouldn't be sufficient for her child's needs.  After a speaker phone conversation among the three of us, we helped the mother decide to request a child study team evaluation.  I told her that the worst that could occur, without knowing anything about her child at the moment of our conversation, was that we would do the initial referral conference and decide that an evaluation wasn't warranted at this time and might make additional modification suggestions to the 504 team.

Following this I gave my director a heads up about the incoming request.

I was also doing some research on the DSM-IV and was looking over APA DSM-V Development website.  I thought there was some interesting stuff in there, including the new Non-Suicidal Self-Injury diagnosis.  While I know nothing is finalized and the diagnosis of disorders is beyond the purview of my position, it still had some interesting ideas on the reorganization and the change in diagnostic criteria.  Since my entire professional background before working in a school was in behavioral mental health, I still geek out about this sort of thing.  It is also interesting to see the comparisons to the old criteria and the rationale for the changes.  Thanks to the internet, it is almost like looking at the beta test results of a video game.

If you are in the Dirty Jerz and work for a school, have a good long weekend.

When did kids stop dreaming?

So there wasn't a whole lot new or unusual to report today.  I got my cubicle wall so now I have a little more privacy as well as space to hang stuff up.  I did some counseling and got some paperwork done.

I met with this one student who doesn't have counseling in their IEP but there have been reports about problems with this student.  Inattention, making noises in class, not completing work.  So I was talking with the kid to find out his take on how things are going and the reasons.  While talking to the student, I asked what they wanted to do when they grow up.  The response: I don't know.

I starting to find this to be a disturbing trend.  While I don't think my upbringing was typical (I had more than my share of loss in my early years), I'd like to think that I was typical at the same age for ideas of wanting to be something when I grew up.  Astronaut, firefighter, policeman, a Duke of Hazzard, whatever.  But the thing is: I wanted to be something.

I'm finding more and more kids that don't have any idea whatsoever.  Is it a part of upbringing?  Is it a sense of hopelessness?  Does it have to do with not having a sense that you can be something?  If it is, is that a product of the family environment?  A product of the economy?

When the most recent recession started, there was an increase in referrals for risk assessments in my district.  A large number of them were in the school in which I'm now stationed.  I don't know if there is any correlation.

So I went home tonight and asked my child, who is three, what he wanted to be when he grows up.  I hope I can engender some idea that he can be something when he grows up and that it is okay to dream.

Monday Observation

More precisely, my observation.  As in the first of my three observations for the school year as an un-tenured staff member.  That was really the highlight of the day.  My director sat in on one of my IEP meetings.  The really awkward part of the meeting with the observation was that it was a bilingual meeting so my coworker was present to translate for me.  So even though I ran the meeting overall, I felt that I didn't say much because Spanish seems to use a lot more words to explain something and the parent needed things explained several times.

I don't know how I did because I haven't met with my director yet but when I got back to my office building, I couldn't get my key into the door due to a malfunctioning lock and I thought to myself, "I didn't think the meeting went so bad that they changed the locks on me."

I found out that I won't have to move again so that was a relief.  Other than that, not a whole lot going on.  I sent out an invitation for a re-eval planning meeting.  This is going to be a short week because my district, like many in NJ, is closed on Thursday and Friday for the NJEA convention.