Special Education for Beginners | Managing Paraprofessionals, Special Education Strategies, First Year Sped Teachers, Special Ed Overwhelm, Paperwork for Special Education Teachers

Episode 68: 4 Ways to Set Your Paraprofessionals Up for Success in the New Year (or anytime!) HaPPy NeW YeAR!! This is the first episode of 2022 and I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling good. I’m feeling like I had a very restful break as far as being a teacher goes and now I’m ready to jump into this new year of teaching with the motivation and the initiative I need to finish out yet another s...

Episode 67: 5 Differences Between Bosses and Leaders I was out in public one day a long time ago and ran into one of the paraprofessionals who worked within my department and she introduced me to her husband as her boss. Now, I was probably 10-15 years younger than her and I hadn’t been teaching for very long when this happened so it hit me weird…Me? A boss? That’s not something that I ever though...

Episode 66: The Importance of Giving Back: Why You Should Mentor Other Special Educators In the spirit of the holidays, today's episode is all about giving back. If you are listening to this episode at the time of its release, then you know Christmas is just a few short days away and so I wanted to focus on something that I feel can bring the spirit of Christmas to our departments and our pro...

Managing behavior might very well be one of the hardest aspects of being a special educator. Luckily, collecting data on those behaviors doesn't have to be difficult. Today’s guest is Caitlin Beltran and we're talking about all things dealing with the how, when and why of collecting behavior data. Listen in as Caitlin and I chat about:  What behavior data is and what is it used for The d...

Episode 64: Assisting Teachers with Assistive Technology How is it possible to go through 27 years of teaching and not be more knowledgeable about assistive technology?? I thought I was doing what I needed to for my students by determining if they needed special pencils or scissors. Or maybe they needed a large button keyboard or a slant board for writing. But I was today years old when I found ou...

Episode 63: The 3 Things I Refuse to Teach Without Let me ask you a question...As a special educator, what are 3 things you absolutely would refuse to do your job without? Like dig your heels in, clench your jaw, die on this hill  kinda things? I would absolutely love it if you’d message me on Instagram with your top 3. I’m just truly curious as to what they’d be. Maybe I’m missing something and y...

Episode 62: The Importance of Showing Gratitude (even for the hard stuff) This episode is being released just the day before Thanksgiving and so I thought what better of a time to show gratitude than Thanksgiving. I feel as though the majority of us don’t show gratitude enough and by going back through last week's episode and re-listening to Paul's words, it has definitely helped open my...

Episode 61: A Special Teacher Wowza!! Grab your Kleenex before pushing play on this one! What an amazing and impactful episode this is. This week’s guest is another fellow podcaster and special education teacher. I didn’t have any idea when I created my podcast that there were so many podcasts hosted by special education teachers, but this podcaster has a different story from the majority of us. P...

#60 5 Things I Wish I'd Been Taught in College As a teacher leader and someone who provides support to other special educators both online and throughout my district as a department head and through providing professional development to teachers...I hear this All.  The. Time. I wasn’t taught that in college. And the sad truth is that they are right. They weren’t taught a lot of things in coll...

Ep. 59 The Letter I Wish I'd Had as a 1st Year Special Education Teacher As a veteran special educator, I can look back on my career and think, “Holy crap...I have come a long, long way since that first year.” In fact those first 5 years were pretty cringy if I say so myself. I think I was still trying to fit into some kind of mold of what a special education teacher should look like based on...

Ep 58: The Why and How of Building Relationships with Parents If you aren't building strong relationships with the parents of your students...you need to begin to make an intentional effort to do so and today's episode of the Sped Prep Academy Podcast will tell you why and how you should go about it. This episode includes a story about how a typical IEP meeting with a parent became a ver...

Episode 57:  Why Evaluating Your Paraprofessionals is a Must-Do I'm riding solo this week to bring you a public service announcement... EVALUATE YOUR PARAPROFESSIONALS on a consistent and frequent basis. You see...I am a reflective teacher through and through. I will take a 20 minute car ride home in complete silence processing the events of a day and trying to figure out what went right, wha...

Episode 56:  How to Support Your Staff When Dealing with Significant Behaviors with Nicole from Adaptation Station On today’s show I have a special guest who, if you hang out on the teacher gram and follow other special educators, I bet you’ve heard of her. Nicole Morris has her Master’s Degree in special education with graduate certificates in Applied Behavior Analysis and Adapted Curriculum. She...

Episode 55: How to Make the Move from Gen Ed to Sped Today’s guest is Bristol Bale. Bristol is a colleague and friend of mine from the district where we teach. Bristol was the 2019 Teacher of the year for her school, has also served as grade level chair and worked to create science and math curriculum for the district. She serves as head of the science fair for the district, and is the girl’s wres...

Episode 54: Making the Move from Para to Teacher with Jade Gilmore Have you ever had an amazing paraprofessional who you know, just by watching them work with the students, that they would make an excellent teacher? In the special ed world, it's likely you've encountered this situation and it's almost like a double edged sword. On one hand, you are happy that they are taking the lea...

Episode 53: How to Prepare Families for Transition and Beyond I'm not going to lie...I learned a whole lot of information today and I'm a little jealous of my guest. Working in the area of transition where I would get to prepare students to move from the world of school to the world of adulthood sounds so rewarding. On today's episode of the Sped Prep Academy Podcast, we will be cha...

Episode 52: The Power of Playing Games in the Classroom Let's have some FUN!!   Today’s show was so much fun to record and it just so happens to be all about having fun! On this episode, we are chatting with Nicole Manley from Teaching in a Top Knot about how to implement game playing in a special education classroom. Nicole shares all the pros of playing games with your students from...learn...

Episode 51: How to Get Excited for a New School Year Today’s episode is all about making the 21-22 school year a great one! During a "normal" school year,  there seems to be two camps when it comes time to head back into the classroom each year.  The first group includes the teachers who are stoked for a new school year. They are in their rooms early July putting everything together, mak...

#50 Tips for Having a Successful School Year with Dawn Ellis Having today's guest on today’s show is so exciting for me because I have a brand new online friend! Dawn Ellis is the face behind the brand Cultivating Exceptional Minds and we have so much in common. From podcasting to TPT to Sped to Teachers of the Year Finalists, Dawn and I connected instantly and made plans to continue our virt...

#49 What Your Paraprofessionals Want From a Supervisor-Part 4 Today’s episode is Part 4 and the final part of the Paraprofessional Interview series that I’ve created to go along with the launch of my course The Ultimate Paraprofessional Training Guide. It's only open a few times a year so check it out before next week! If you haven’t listened to all of the episodes in the series, go back to e...

#48 What Your Paraprofessionals Want From a Supervisor-Part 3 Today’s episode is Part 3 of the Paraprofessional Interview Series. Each week in August, I will have a different paraprofessional come on the show to talk about their experiences in the classroom from what they need from their teachers to what training they desire to what support they crave. And all of this coincides with a live masterc...

#47 What Your Paraprofessionals Want From a Supervisor-Part 2 Today’s episode is Part 2 of the Paraprofessional Interview Series. Each week in August, I will have a different paraprofessional come on the show to talk about their experiences in the classroom from what they need from their teachers to what training they desire to what support they crave. And all of this coincides with my course The...

#46 What Your Paraprofessionals Want From a Supervisor-Part 1 Best. Guest. Ever! Ok...I might be a tad partial to today's guest but it's for a good reason. Today my daughter, Kamryn, joins us to share her experience working as a paraprofessional. This interview with Kamryn kicks off a full month of chats with paraprofessionals and if you haven't figured it out yet...it's my fav...

#45 Supplement Your Teacher Salary as an Adjunct College Professor As I was leaving college with my Bachelor's Degree in December 1994 (Holy crap that sounds so long ago!) I told myself that somehow, someday I would teach college myself. I had a couple of amazing professors who inspired me to dream that big dream at the ripe old age of 22. After 26 years of teaching K-6, I got that chance. I...

#44 How Self-Reflection Makes You a Great Teacher Today’s topic is something that I feel has helped me significantly when it comes to having a long and successful career as a special education teacher. We hear so often about the burnout rate and how hard being a special educator can be but we rarely hear about the things that teachers intentionally do to keep them going day after day, week after w...