Allow me a short moment to vent. You want to know what I feel overwhelmed about almost every minute I am in my classroom (and am embarrassing amount of minutes at home…) – how many components my classroom’s curriculum needs to include! You’ve got academics, life skills, social skills, communication, behavior, pre-vocational skills, fine motor… Ay yi yi. In any given day the range of my instructions can span from multiplication to setting the table to verbally requesting items to toileting. There just simply is not enough time! UGH! Okay – rant over. Thank you for listening 😉
It’s time to add a new one to the list – doctor visit skills. Next week we are getting free medical exams for Special Olympics participation. Prior to this I had a parent mention to me that her child has never gotten his blood pressure taken because he always freaks out. And he is 14. Eek. Now you know I had to try and tackle this issue…
A few quick phone calls later and I got my hands on an electric blood pressure cuff. Haha – I have a huge family – so someone always has a hook up. So last week we practiced getting our blood pressure taken.
A bunch of kiddos did really well. My tough guy I mentioned did have a hard time but not any where near the monster meltdown I was expecting. The first time we did it, I fed him cheetohs the whole time. Hey! Gotta do what you can! By the third time he was content getting one cheetoh when he was done. We have now done 6 total blood pressure readings! We only got one accurate reading because he moves so much but we are getting there. So proud of him 🙂 While, this was a fun little endeavor – I think I am content with my choice to go into the teaching field. The medical world is just not for me – don’t know how they do it!
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4 Responses
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who feels this way. I feel like in public schools there is a huge push for academics for our students, but I’m finding it hard to always make it rigorous academically when we are working on behavior, social skills, transitions, life skills, fine motor skills etc. etc. etc. Stressing all the time about how to do it all well!! (your materials sure do help with this A LOT!)
Oh my, I am in Australia and our public system is no different…I so need an extra few hours in the school day to fit everything in! And it still wouldn’t be enough, lol.
Agh! How frustrating, right Kelly!? Happy you understand!
I know Kristen! I feel like every activity we do needs to incorporate SO many different areas just so we can fit it all in!