Making progress

I ran into Sandy Lewis, one of the teachers I student taught with, at 24 Hour Fitness on Tuesday. Talk about crazy! This woman is in her 60s and she was working out with her husband. Future goal? Be Sandy Lewis! haha

We only chatted for a couple of minutes because I was on my way to a workout class, but I told her that I was teaching at Centennial Middle School and she congratulated me and asked me how it was going. I said it was going pretty well, but I it was definitely a learning process (or something like that). Her reply was, "Well, as long as your students are making progress, you're doing well."

What a great point. I think we often stress out about having things perfect:

perfect classroom management
perfect IEPs
perfect contact with parents, other faculty, administration, etc.
perfect lesson plans
(heaven forbid) perfect students!

BUT what is the important thing? Progress!

Things don't have to be perfect, things just need to be progressing. I think this is a huge principle in Special Education. Students are not going to have high rates of success in the usual areas. They are going to make small leaps of success, but they are not going to be your average achieving student (at least not without A LOT of help). So what is important? (I think you can answer this now...) PROGRESS! How are they compared to last year? How are they compared to at the beginning of the year? These are things we need to keep track of and monitor. And when our students see success, make a big deal out of it!

Now to throw things for a loop - - -

In a quiet moment of contemplation, I was thinking about what Sandy had said about progress and I turned it around from my students making progress and thought about myself: am I making progress?
We all need to be making progress. Progress will be different for each of us. What we are tracking and progressing in will be different for everyone, but we still need to be striving for and working on something.

-Ms. Damron-