This episode is all about helping special educators in the classroom enjoy your job again.
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Welcome to The Teacher Nook with Ayo Jones of NoodleNook.Net, where we break down strategies, tools, and resources to help self-contained educators teaching students with significant disabilities including Autism. Learn tips and tricks to manage behavior, improve communication, and build vocational skills in less time and with less stress. Work smarter, not harder. Ayo Jones has coached hundreds of teachers, trained thousands of educators, and her blog has reached over a million readers.
Listener Question:
“I feel like I started teaching to make change with my students but I’m not feeling like change is actually happening. I just push paperwork and tick tally marks… what can I do to be more excited about my job when the BS gets in the way?”
-Lissa
When you’ve been in the classroom for awhile, it can be easy to feel like your job isn’t as rewarding.
Here are three ideas to reignite the love and reignite the fire and help you enjoy your sped job again.
Data??? To Enjoy my SpEd Job MORE??
Before we talk about anything else, let’s talk about progress. Keep data on goals and also on classroom activities that are not related to individual student IEP goals. I know that seems counterproductive, but when you work with students in special populations, it can take YEARS to see growth. You may want to keep data on activities and goals for all the students you work with so that you can see growth unrelated to specific IEP goals. It will help you see positive growth over time and feel more satisfied overall.
Read more about data collection here!
Infuse Yourself…
Bring more you into the classwork and in the classroom. We spend so much time and energy investing in our classroom and in our students. They are long days. You may find more satisfaction if you bring a little of you to the classroom. Include your passions and your loves in the classroom. Incorporate it into what your students are working on and make it feel like a place you and your students love to be.
Read more about teacher motivation here!
Connect to Your WHY!
Three: Connect with what brought you to the classroom in the first place. For the amount of education, time, and energy we spend to make our classrooms and students successful is not proportional to our pay. You didn’t get into teaching to be a millionaire. Far from it. You got into education with special needs students because of something much deeper and likely more heartfelt. I want you to take a moment to reconnect with what brought you to the classroom in the first place. You might find reconnecting that way helps you enjoy your SpEd job again.
Read more about suggested reading for sped teachers here.
A Break is Okay.
As an aside, it is okay to take a break from special needs populations if you think you need it. A year or two working with another group of students may give you enough of a break to reinvigorate you and pull you back. Acknowledge that this is a lot of work and a lot of effort… and it takes a toll. Accepting and allowing yourself to take a break for awhile is okay. It is about what is sustainable for you and what is in the best interest of your family too.
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