• Quiet
• Sit down
• Stop
• No more/That’s it/None

Working in an EBD classroom is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Some days are good and there are little Aha! moments where you feel you’ve just affected a child’s life for the better, but I have to be honest: each and every day is a colossal struggle. A struggle to learn, a struggle to deal with emotions that cannot be named or even put into simple words, a struggle to keep a modicum of order and sanity within the classroom, a struggle to remember it is not the child per se but their lack of coping skills.

Don and Kellie Rainwater give a good description in their book, How to Manage a Behavior Classroom: The Beginners Guide to Teaching the Emotionally Disabled and the Oppositional Defiant Child (2008):

Most of these children are on medication, but sometimes the lack of supervision at home does not allow them to take their medication on a consistent basis.
[...]
Of these students, one out of two children will be emotionally disturbed. This could range from mild to severe.
[...]
The children that come into your classroom are usually the children that the mainstream teachers cannot handle and even the administration has almost given up on.
[...]
The students you will receive are mainly damaged from family situations…. (pg. 3-4)

A lot of the time I wonder at the fact that I’m not required to have a psychology background. I get frustrated when I can’t help, when I don’t know enough to help a child with this really heavy shit they shouldn’t have to deal with.

Before working here, I never thought of the existence of students like this. It’s still unfathomable.

I am just about finished with yet another overhaul of the home office. Maybe at some point in my life I will finally reach the point where I will stay on top of it and not let it turn into a pit. This time I ordered some heavy-duty shelving and bought a lot of storage containers to take care of the closet, which houses my bordering-on-insane collection of office supplies and art materials. I also realized I have issues of Bitch Magazine beginning with their 15th issue up to present. I’m not sure how easy it would be to get the first 14 issues, but I’d like to have a complete archive.

I went the GTD route again, and have two large containers serving as an inbox/catch-all. The bottom container hasn’t been touched in several weeks, so I’m hoping I can let most of that shit go when I sort through it this afternoon.

I have so much shit, y’all.

I’ve also repotted (or, finally put it into a respectable pot) my ficus elastica, aka rubber plant and several of our inherited cacti from The Canadian-cum-Australian. I love-hate cacti because (1) they fucking hurt and (2) it’s hard to kill them.

Anyone know of a good site for identifying cacti? We’ve got this weird tall one and have no idea what it is.

The Partner and I are also close to finishing up work for a client that has been spanning four months, at least. We’re creating a business CD for their art gallery and from a design point it’s been pretty fun working on it. I’ve learned to let go and allow clients their choice of colors and love of small fonts.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what to do with all the domains I own, including this one. While I love WordPress, I’m enamored with Tumblr‘s simplicity and ease of posting specific types of entries quickly and without much fuss. I hate that Tumblr is not ran on my own servers, much like Blogger, which is why I switched away from Blogger all those years ago. One domain I think I’ll just turn into an ad site, as I bought it mainly to snatch up the name. One was a client’s and will expire later this year as it’s no longer needed, but the rest are all sites I’ve, at one point, vowed to do something with, like theviennabook.com. I’ve still not finished scanning the books for that project.

Finally, spring has GOT to be here soon as I’ve packed away my winter coat and all but one of my hats and scarves. Come on 60-degree weather!

I know! It’s VERY exciting. My extended vacation has come to an end and not by means of graduate school. But, I believe I’ll learn just as much through this position and it should enable me to narrow down grad school possibilities. I interviewed Friday, observed the classroom Monday, and started today. However, and this is a depressing however, “classroom” means I’ll be working with Other People’s Children. If it’s one thing you ought not blog about, it’s Other People’s Children. At least not those you work with.

This is a major bummer because I will have OUTRAGEOUS stories to tell; but alas, they cannot be for your eyes. Perhaps I can get away with snippets of conversation here and there. We’ll see. This is new territory for me—I’ve never ever worked with children, but so far my only worries concern winter and whether or not they’ll infect me with their child diseases.

Relatedly, here’s something from Taylor Mali that I’m pretty sure I’ve posted before, but you should watch it all the same as it will inspire the pants off anybody: