Stage Three...

Then the day comes when I finally have to do a real IEP meeting, a re-eval, and I realize how utterly incompetent I am at the job I’ve been hired to do. I mean, these people are paying me. Month after month. And I feel so incompetent that it’s not even funny. I sit through this meeting, and my mentor (thank God for her) literally has to run the meeting (my meeting) point by point and sentence by sentence because I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. I’ve read about re-evals. I’ve sat through workshops about them and really thought I understood what I’d need to do. Until I actually had to do one, that is. And it’s at this point that I just get pissed. I’m heated. Not at the people that I work with, not at my mentor or anyone who’s trying to be patient and help, etc. I’m pissed at the program that supposedly ‘trained’ me for this job. Don’t get me wrong… They taught me – drilled me, in fact – in the mechanics of writing a quality lesson plan. I can do backwards planning on a unit and do a daggone good job at it, too. Meaningful lessons connected to State standards, etc…. all that, yep, got it. What they didn’t teach me was anything specific about dealing with Special Education students. Not the book stuff – the real, everyday, this-is-what-you-do stuff. Like HOW TO RUN AN ACTUAL IEP MEETING with some semblance of competence!!!

I don’t know anything specific about any (a-n-y) of the categories of disability. I just know what the category names are. And yeeetttt… I’m a Special Ed teacher. I don’t have a clue on what the exact steps are (I mean exact steps you follow when you’re actually running the meeting and all the other participants are looking to you to know what the heck you’re doing so their time’s not wasted) to the different types of IEP meetings that you can have. And yet, it’s my job to facilitate.  I don’t know enough about my subject to be able to give the gen ed teachers help and suggestions when they ask for them. And yet, this is supposed to be my area of ‘specialty’. Wow. This is a joke. And what the heck was I thinking in taking this on anyway??? I should have gone to a Masters program specializing in this instead. At least then I’d come out prepared to actually, oh I don’t know… DO MY JOB???  (Can you smell the Disillusionment in the air?? And it’s only October!)