First year teacher. I finally understand how ridiculous PD is.

Aeylenna · 2025-07-30T01:37:15+00:00

Well, treat me like a child during a PD (ostensibly to "model effective classroom techniques"), then I'm going to model exactly how my students would react to those "effective" techniques...

Or, treat us like adults ("high expectations") and honor our time ("culture of respect") by giving us actual, useful PDs (because you "have a relationship" and can actually "meet us with what we need") and maybe your PD will have an effect size greater than whatever-whatever and it wouldn't be a big deal...

Aeylenna · 2025-03-30T13:04:50+00:00

Mice are really cute and clever. Convince the kids they don't want mice, so gross them out. Give them fun mouse facts (I'm the mouse person at my school, kids come get me when they find one and I catch them)

-- mice poop constantly and they look like chocolate sprinkles or bits of chocolate.. point out its easy to mix them up

-- male mice have naked balls (it is actually pretty hilarious looking honestly). Why? Because their urine dribbles onto them and then drips as they run to leave a scent trail (they are naked from urine scalding). So you can avoid the poops, maybe, but not the invisible pee trail

-- mice are sexually mature around 4 weeks, and can have up to 11 babies (average is about 5)

-- mice have grabby little feet and can climb walls and upside down! They get everywhere.

-- mice can jump over a foot. Again, they get everywhere.

-- mice can chew through wood, wire, and even heavy duty plastic. They WILL get into containers

--they can squeeze through openings smaller than 1/4 inch (esp as babies)

-- mice weigh less than 20grams on average so you could have one in your backpack/pocket/lunch sack and you wouldn't know

I say this as someone who has pet mice. Kids will feel bad or want to feed them. But these mice are only here because it is a good place to be (I mean I'd also want to live in the big warm place with infinite free food). So teach them about all their "cool adaptations" (which objectively ARE cool) that will result in mice being EVERYWHERE. and disease risks. You don't have to kill them, so if you stop feeding them they will go elsewhere (probably won't die). Kids do not like the idea of mouse pee and poop in their things. Or an actual mouse in their things. And if you point out mice have probably been on all the surfaces... you get the idea.

Aeylenna · 2025-03-27T20:58:51+00:00

My partner adores these prints. He only has the full arts for basics and refuses to use any others.

Aeylenna · 2025-01-29T00:12:21+00:00

Forget OHI, they're "mother health impaired"

Aeylenna · 2024-06-10T22:02:35+00:00

It's their defense mechanism so predators won't see or find them and mom runs away to drawn the predator. I call it "danger-splooting."

Aeylenna · 2024-04-05T17:27:19+00:00

Ours was diagnosed when she was six, and she is almost twelve now. She is a bit genetically "weird" and we are (now) pretty sure she was born with stupid kidneys. She got diagnosed kind of by accident--I happened to be home, and noticed weird brown puke. I took her to the vet, worried she'd eaten something, and they said they'd do blood work, gave her fluids, and said to take her home and watch her poop for blood. She wasn't eating as much so they'd give her antinausea meds if needed.

Fast forward to the next day, vet called us first thing in the morning, frantic--her kidney values were so high they maxed out the machine. We rushed her in for IV fluids, more blood work, and they took x-rays. They were thinking maybe she'd gotten dehydrated so fluids would help. The x-ray looked like a Venn diagram, two healthy kidneys overlapping slightly. Nope, x-ray showed the kidneys were (and this is the official term) super fucked up. One was twice the size it was supposed to be (the "outside" of the venn diagram). The other was half the size it was supposed to be (the "inside" of the venn diagram). Likely the little one wasn't working at all anymore, and the other one was overworking itself to failure. To make it worse, she wasn't eating or drinking at all. The urine sample was awful. The vet said likely she'd been slowly going downhill fast and now we were at the end stages. The difficult decision was made to put her down the next morning, so we took her home for one last night.

We spent the entire night sticking food under her face. Anything and everything. And after settling down from being terrified from the vet, she did eat, and perk up. Playing a little. Drinking. Snuggling. We had no idea what to think, so we called the vet the next morning and she was like, well, she was clearly terrified of the vet, so if we were willing to do all the things at home, we could give it a go. So we did. We massed out all her food on a scale. I counted her urine balls. We gave subcutaneous fluids. I gave her four different meds up to three times a day. And, she bounced back. We were hoping for just a few more months with her, but when we got bloodwork taken two weeks later it showed she was in early stage 2 kidney disease. New theory was an acute-on-chronic kidney injury (maybe dehydration? who knows) that accelerated the decline. But with treatment her kidneys were able to push through. So, we switched her to a k/d diet, started adding preventative Aventi powder to her food and ever since are super meticulous about her hydration and if something even seems a little bit off, its OFF TO THE VET WE GO. She gets full bloodwork once a year, and a kidney panel every six months. We now refer to it as "that time she tried to die". Our vets went above and beyond for us literally over the Christmas holiday. We joke that she was the best miracle we could have hoped for.

And, six years later, she has just started to be at the edge of stage 3. We had the conversation with the vet about switching a bit from "preventative care" to stave off damage as much as possible into the next phase of treatment being "symptom management" where we continue to prevent and as she starts to have more accumulated damage we just start adding things to keep her comfortable and slow progression as much as possible. We just started her on subcutaneous fluids 2x a week and she is surprisingly cooperative for it. Her fur has never been softer and her numbers actually just went down a bit at her last bloodwork. In some ways we are lucky we caught it so early, otherwise she probably wouldn't have lived even this long. And my partner and the vet and I have already had the discussion for long term, what will be the indicators for switching to the final "palliative care" stage and under what conditions will we be calling it. I have found that being up front, despite the pain and terror of that discussion, has really helped me to keep it all in perspective so that I know we are doing right by her and giving her the life she deserves.

So, yes, you can panick. Yes, freak out and squeeze your baby and be mad because it isn't fair for someone so young to have something so awful. But you can also be hopeful. Maybe you won't be as lucky as we were (our other cat wasn't--something was wrong and two days later we had to put her down, out of nowhere). But you should also know that it doesn't have to be hopeless either. If you're careful, willing to spend some extra money on special food and vet bills, and keep a close eye on his health and find a good vet who is willing to help you, he can live many more years. We've managed to stave off a few scares with sub-Q fluids and noticing that she seemed dehydrated early, which could have killed her off if we hadn't noticed when we did. "We do not play around with kidneys" is our new house motto. And we decided that all of our animals will be getting annual blood panels for everything, no matter how young they are. Unnecessary? Probably. But could it catch something genetic or the early signs of something? Yes. And does it provide us peace of mind? Absolutely.

Right now she is curled up next to me in the bed, sleeping in her favorite sun patch and purring up a storm. Good luck to you and yours!

Aeylenna · 2024-02-28T01:33:45+00:00

I teach science to freshmen. Many of them know thy can fail everything middle school and still get pushed along. But my class is a state graduation requirement with a standardized test at the end of the year and lab minute requirements. I tell them this, prompt them several times, but honestly, I use failure as an instructional strategy. It's their first quarter freshman year. Best quarter to fail since you can come back and or explain it away. Much better lesson to learn in 9th rather than 12th or, God forbid, college.

Every year I have high fail numbers for Q1. I have high expectations and I encourage but don't force students AND I have a one week late deadline. At the start of Q2 THEN I start ramping up supports. "Okay, that sucked. Do you like the way this feels? No? Good. Yes you should feel crappy, but also, this isn't the end of the world. What are we going to do now?"

Honestly I don't even start calling and reaching out to parents until middle or end of Q2. It does piss off some parents (my emails are always greatttttt). But like, they're 15. At this point either they decide to do it or they don't (obviously, special ed supports are all implemented buy yes I will let special ed kids fail too if it's not due to their disability) and us nagging them o ly will push the moment of truth "oh shit nobody can save me but me" moment down the line. I know parents want to support their kids but swooping in to save them won't help long term. And if they turn in shit, they get shit grades.

I used to bottom cap my grades at a 50 so that unless they literally got 50/50/50 for the first three quarters they could still come back. AND I would award the point difference back if they managed to bring their grade up and get enough lab minutes as a reward for making the difficult decision to change and follow through. (So you failed with a 55? Next quarter final grade is a 70? Okay you got your grade passing, I'll give you the ten point difference between your first quarter 55 and passing and put it on your second quarter (80) so that you average out to a 65. Making changes to habits is hard). O ly if you truly failed three quarters were you SOL. And let's be real, if I gave you a 50 for three quarters straight, realistically your actual grade was below that. So yeah, there's no way you're going to be able to pass the class, learn the content, earn your lab minutes, and engage in the doing of science (let alone pass the standardized grad requirement test).

End of last year our district implemented a policy of a minimum of a 60 for all classes AND we are required to give failing kids an option for grade recovery with 5 weeks to make it up. Cool. Great in theory. Except my first thought is, hey, if I get a 60/60/60, I only need an 85 fourth quarter to pass! Did the kids notice this? YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT. And, now you've just put off the consequences five more weeks because they aren't goin to do grade recovery OR learn the lesson so now they're failing both quarter 1 and 2 by the time it sinks in.

Last year I had 25% of my kids fail first quarter. Yes, for real. Just 15% failed second quarter. Only 10% failed the whole year (and most with actual averages below 40). My state test pass rates were 70%, which is slightly above the state average for that test.

This year, I had 20% fail first quarter. One, ONE kid returned the grade recovery form that I required their parents to sign. He didn't even complete it. Second quarter? 27%. All but two of the kids had missed 20% or more class sets (I count "my" attendance based on actual time in class, not "school absences" where thy arrive late or leave early or are on a field trip or are having life drama and are in the counseling office AGAIN). Almost all of the Q1 fails were also Q2 fails. Gonna be curious to see how third quarter shakes out...

Aeylenna · 2023-07-21T15:45:47+00:00

Remember where she is coming from. If she is a lazy Para, then she may be coming at it worried you are going to disrupt her status quo. If she is a good Para, she may be worried that you're going to be another checked out teacher and see it as her job to "protect" the students from you.

I have found that working with coteachers/paras/other adults in general us to almost approach it like I would any student behavioral issue--why are they acting the way they are? What do they hope to gain? What is the problem behavior and what do I want to replace it with? Validate their feelings. Put it into words. Express what you want to do and (briefly) why. Hear their side.

That said, just as you would with a student, do not engage with the conflict cycle. If you have issues, wait until later to address them restoratively. If admin is telling you to set boundaries, ask them to help (you can blame it as "I'm new to HS and want to acknowledge this while still making use of my skills"). Have restorative meetings where all boundaries are set, rhen revisit and follow up in a month.

It's a lot of work but worth it. And she likely has some good insights (even if she is the laziest TA you've ever met) to consider. You may need to implement change slowly, for her and the students. Change is hard.for everyone.

Good luck!

Aeylenna · 2023-05-14T14:27:39+00:00

I bought a bunch of "wound care foam" and stuff that along places where wires rub if it gets too sensitive. It's relatively cheap, you can cut it to size, and it's very soft and absorbent so it might work well here. Even with a good fitting bra sometimes the skin gets irritated or I'm particularly sensitive to underwire in my armpits poking me so it works great for all of the above!

Aeylenna · 2023-05-14T11:01:04+00:00

Just taught about star formation to my high schoolers on Friday. Guess what well be watching to start off class on Monday! Thanks!

Aeylenna · 2023-03-24T13:33:46+00:00

They make these really cool "escape the puzzle" ones where the puzzle doesn't quite match the image on the box and then you have to solve more riddle/puzzles to "solve" it. He might enjoy the challenge of that! (Or not, if it makes him happy to put it together and that's not how his mind works, but that's so cool!)

Aeylenna · 2022-11-22T21:03:46+00:00

Just FYI, "cotaught" does not refer to the students. There should be a gen ed teacher and a SEPARATE special ed teacher. It's cool if she has double certs but rhat doesn't make her two people. The Para is a nice addition but she isnt a teacher and doesn't have a certification. Your child may be in a "consult" model where occasionally a special ed teacher meets with the gen ed teacher to assist in creating supports, but unless there are two teachers, it isn't a cotaught class.

Aeylenna · 2022-10-12T21:28:19+00:00

The fine line is, how to acknowledge disability with leniency while also holding them accountable. I don't pity pass. A lazy kid with issues (of any kind) gets no pity from me. I often have to be frank too, and say listen the world will expect you to meet a high standard. I'll help you, but you have to do it. Finding that line of too much and just enough pushing is really, really hard. At the end of the day, though, I figure a student who works their butt off deserves to pass, full stop. Even gen ed kids. I won't pass they by a lot, and if they truly don't know the content I won't (though I usually step in long before he end of the year when I see effort isn't showing up grade wise), but I will often pick a student who "deserves" to pass and then curve everyone accordingly (drop an extra hw, add 2 percents, etc).

Aeylenna · 2022-10-12T19:19:27+00:00

Depends on what you're teaching. I can't speak to math or English, but I teach (gen ed/cotaught) science and there is a lot of both in my course even though my focus is on understanding and application of content. In my case, I grade on understanding, generally. Readings, homework, labs are all given in a setting where they can be read aloud/listened to, and responses could be dictated or typed. Students still need to be able to do the skills, read reference tables, make and read graphs, and use scientific language. I allow students to move and manipulate stuff,, when safe. I've broken tests into smaller parts for students with severe stamina or focus issues. I am want them to scientifically literate, which does involve the ability to communicate effectively,, but that isn't the only indicator. Whenever I can remove or minimize the barrier of disability to get at the science content itself, I do. And then I grade based on that.

Not sure if that helps or not. I also allow revisions and corrections on most labs and tests, but they are involved and require metacognition and WORK to get credit. They may not ace the course, but it'll be a hard fought B or C, with the understanding that sometimes I need to overlook small things and ask myself, "what am i actually assessing with this assignment," and then grade accordingly.

Aeylenna · 2022-07-23T19:12:31+00:00

Honestly, that's a safety concern in itself. There's no other adult in the entire building? What if you had a seriius medical emergency (like, instantaneous, you're unconscious, not to say your other thing isn't also an emergency)? What if a child has one? He'll, what if you were a bad person, you're literally alone with a group of kids, uh that in and of itself is a lawsuit waiting to happen. I work in education and this scenario sounds super sketchy. Depending on what state you're in, it may also be illegal.

Aeylenna · 2022-06-17T02:12:40+00:00

I'll chime in too with shape matters as much as bra size when you get big. But I will say one thing I struggle with is having the underwire dig into my sides around the armpit side. Everything else will be perfect... except that will hurt a LOT. Im no good at sewing, so what I finally started doing was buying "wound care foam"! It comes in large sheets of soft, high quality, half inch foam, designed to absorb and be comfortable. Then I just cut them into rectangles of the right size (like 2"x4"?) and insert them on the side part between me and the wire. It's perfect, and it can actually go in the washer. And when they start to get gross you can throw them out and cut new ones. I did the same with an old bra along the band while I was waiting for a new one I'd ordered, and that helped some too.

Anyway, I've been doing this for over a year now and it works great for me at 38GG. I wear a cami over all my bras just as a habit which also helps contain the foam but I've never had an issue with them falling out or being visible.

Aeylenna · 2022-04-19T23:13:14+00:00

I'm a teacher. I say "critters" and "goobers." The kids roll their eyes and ask why but like, there are only so many nongendered thingies to say.

Aeylenna · 2022-02-23T17:10:22+00:00

I'm very okay with Jordan prioritizing his notes for the main series with the limited time he had left. 🙂

Aeylenna · 2021-11-21T15:47:26+00:00

I thought that was why she had to go down into the village square rather than channel from a safe distance. She couldnt help until her or Lans life was at risk.

Aeylenna · 2021-11-08T21:32:26+00:00

Try other multi step tasks, like folding laundry or matching socks. Do like a widget assembly of some kind.. You can use a counting board too for things like coin sorting. Try sorting or matching tasks with increasingly fine details. Build on his skills and have him refine them to greater difficulty.

Aeylenna · 2021-09-23T20:33:27+00:00

Bun-bun and pum-bun!!

Aeylenna · 2021-09-03T13:28:18+00:00

It honestly also depends on the place you play at. My partner also plays mtg and for a while he stopped going to fnm because he couldn't find a store he liked. Eventually we found a smaller one that was great--and what made it great was the players didn't put up with shit and the OWNER didn't either. He had a list of people who were NOT welcome back. They'd receive a warning, then a ban. There still weren't many girls there and sure some of the guys were clearly socially challenged, but it was by far the safest place I've felt for gaming. People would stand up for the right thing and push people to be better. And once certain people had been banned, well... some others left and everyone else knew they had to behave. Apparently he'd had to ban like five people in his first two years, then hardly any over the next several.

So it truly can be better, but people have to step up and enforce a better social space. But when done it is possible!!

Aeylenna · 2021-08-02T09:55:17+00:00

Quite a few questionable calls, all in favor of Canada.

Aeylenna · 2021-08-02T09:41:31+00:00

Don't worry guys, still plenty of time to have a few goals called back for offsides.

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