A day in the life at a last chance school has been the topic of my blogs for the last few days. I have focused on what a last chance school is and what typically went on behavior-wise in the school. What I haven’t touched on is what was more important in this school, a school for severely behavior-disordered students. Were academics the focus or were behaviors? Because our school was solely for children with severe behavior problems, we of course, focused a lot, and I mean A LOT on the social skills that would allow these kids to be … Continue reading →

If you have read my blog about last chance schools for special education students you will know that I mentioned I would speak of my experience teaching at one. What was a typical day like teaching gang members and kids who really didn’t seem to care if they ever got an education or not? Let me journey down memory lane and share my experience. I remember stepping into the school for the first time. I was fresh out of college and just starting work on my master’s degree. I had graduated with a B.A. in Elementary Education and minor in … Continue reading →

My first two-and-a-half years of my teaching career were spent in a school for severely behavior-disordered students. It was a unique setting for the area in which I lived and taught, the only school of its kind that was actually part of the Area Education Agency. This school was entirely segregated from other schools and honestly, only the worst of the worst from the surrounding public schools were sent there. Every student who came to the school was staffed, at the time, as 3.6 Behavior Disordered. This weighting meant that these kids had the most severe behavior problems than any … Continue reading →

I visit another message board and I am constantly astounded about how often I read some message a parent has posted complaining about his or her child’s teacher or school. Some of these parents have me shaking my head in disbelief over the things that they are blaming teachers or schools for, when in reality these parents should be blaming their own children for the issue. Let me explain further. One parent posted on how she was upset that her child received a certain number of days of in-school suspension for having a cell phone in class. She went on … Continue reading →

Schools require a lot of different people putting in various different types of work in order for the school to be what it is. So, just whom do we need to thank for making schools run well? It may not always be the teachers and the administrators. While those people put in a lot of time and work to help a school be successful, so do many other people, just in different ways. Who else do we need to thank? In this blog series I will share just whom the country needs to thank for schools being a success. Wandering … Continue reading →