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Deb Horner
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900
Educating children with cognitive disabilities
06/10/20 at 12:15AM UTC
in
Career

Do I look or do I leap?

Last summer I accepted a teaching contract for a charter school 22 miles from my front door through the back roads of a rural county. On the first day of school I was told that I essentially had two special ed classrooms (self-contained - not resource rooms) in two drastically different types of special education. One classroom were students with cognitive impairment while the other had normal cognition and emotional disturbance. I went from a morning in a classroom where I was being physically aggressed to an afternoon of being emotionally and verbally aggressed. This continued throughout the first semester. The week after Christmas break, I was informed that I was being transferred to a building 11 miles further from my home. I went from a drive with 2 traffic lights to one with 15+ traffic lights. The day in the other building started 30 minutes earlier, which totally disrupted my morning routine. Suddenly I was out of contact with my family and friends. All during the school year, I was being verbally abused by a woman who was allegedly my mentor. Then came COVID 19, and suddenly I was teaching my students with autism and cognitive impairment over the internet. My only goal was that we not lose communication skills over the shut down. Most of my students were available to meet with me, but I was unable to meet with one student for most of the ten weeks. Two of the students lived in a group home, and their staff were not helpful. My two least able students met with me regularly. At the end of the school year, I was informed that I would have three additional students in the fall, two classrooms to cover, and an age gap of 15 years. Then the anti-mentor struck again. Fill out the paperwork this way - and when I did, she complained about it to the point that I thought I was going to have a stroke, my blood pressure was so high. My dilemma is: Do I go back to this situation in the fall, and risk dying from a stroke, or do I bite the bullet and retire? I'll be 65 in October, and I could choose to stay home. It's a very difficult situation.

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Krystie Michelle
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12
06/10/20 at 3:31AM UTC
If you can retire, retire. I teach high school juniors and seniors and don’t have near the age or ability difference that you do. You have to have some kind of life outside of work

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