I have asked for referrals to volunteer teach in some local special ed classrooms. I just emailed one and I will be calling the other two tomorrow. I'm very excited and nervous about this, but I think it's about time, too. I need the classroom exposure. I need to make sure that this is what I want to do.

After getting drummed out of my first teaching credential program, I guess that I just am feeling really gunshy. I know this is what I want to do and that I would be good at it, but I still feel really insecure about it. I think the classroom time would let me get comfortable with the whole thing and more confident. In dealing with kids, confidence in myself is going to be important, so I need to get back to it.

As I have been getting into my classes, I have been coming up against some things that really make me sad.

It makes me sad that they shuffle perfectly intelligent and capable English as a Second Language (ESL) kids into Special Ed classes. Special Ed classes are supposed to be for kids with learning disabilities or problems that make learning difficult or challenging for them. It would not be so bad, in my opinion, if they made ESL instruction part of Special Education and provided funding for ESL kids, but they don't. ESL kids end up in Special Ed when the teacher in their regular classroom doesn't know how to deal with them. Eventually, because there is a quantifiable discrepancy between the kid's ability and their test scores, they get shuffled off to Special Ed.

I would be able to do a good job of helping kids in that situation, but realistically, a Special Ed teacher can't focus a class for an ESL kid and an ADHD kid and have it be successful necessarily for both, unless it's an Spanish-speaking ADHD student. I think a native ADHD kid would be kind of freaked if I instructed partially in Spanish. (Spanish because 92% of ESL speakers in our state speak Spanish as a first language.)

No Child Left Behind does nothing to help teach ESL kids. I am not even sure about the funding they are going to offer to special ed programs. I know that around here, that 90% of the special ed budget is locally funded, anyhow, and most of that is designated for litigation. That seems stuipd, doesn't it? If they just gave the kids the services they needed, there would be no litigation. *sigh*

In other sad news, I think Genny has an ear infection, so I am taking her to the doctor's tomorrow. I am going to place a call to the ENT we saw because while there's been a 2 month break since the last ear infection, it's still scary. She's starting to get such a command of language, although Daddy read her "Shikn Boom Boom." Apparently, they couldn't find the more popular version, "Chicka, chicka, Boom Boom."