I just had to add that i am sorry that my posting came across as teacher bashing - I was a teacher in the public schools for almost 15 years before I left the profession. My last year of teaching K was one I will always remember - I had 28 kids in my classroom with no aide....2 asperger's children, 1 deaf child who had a sign language interp. and I had to wear a special microphone for him and 12 children with IEP's. I worked in a migrant farm area so many, many of the families did not speak English. I split myself into so many pieces trying to meet the needs of all my kids. I have seen so many different sides of things and one of the reasons why I left was because I was starting to see so many teachers (myself included) being told that we couldn't be creative in our teaching methods and that we needed to focus on improving test scores -the system is broken in my opinion and many things need to change.
DazedandConfused - many of your comments voice exactly what I am wanting to say. I am sorry that I am one of the negative voices on the board lately- this starting of the school year was really, really rough and probably one of the hardest things i have ever had to deal with to date with DS...you have no idea how much it helped just being able to "spill" all of my worries and frustration so that it wasn't put out on the table at home. For the future I will try to find a new venting spot because I would not want to drive someone away from the board because of all the negativity.
