ch-ch-ch-changes

What can I say? It's been a while...

I have been working in a school serving students with hearing loss since September of this year. It's my first year in "the field" as people like to call it....and already I'm being asked to move.

Not because of anything I did! They love me at school, and are so bummed I'm leaving. However -- our enrollment is down, and kids keep moving, so one of the classrooms in our program is closing. And since I'm the youngest and newest teacher in the program, I get to move.

As of tomorrow morning at 8:00 am, I will no longer be a classroom D/HH teacher. No -- I've already spent countless hours packing up my classroom, preparing students for the transition to a new teacher, hauling borders and markers and posters and dixie cups in my small-ish Alero to my even smaller bedroom.... and now I'm on to the next phase: Life as an Itinerant.

The itinerant world is a complete 180 from the classroom world. In the classroom world, we have our students all day, we are the main source of information and instruction. The focus is on content, passing tests, strategies, and lots of contact time with students. In the itinerant world, we travel from school to school, serving one student at a time or small groups of students. We are not the main source of information and instruction for them....their classroom teachers are. The focus is on teaching kids to advocate for themselves, teaching the other adults who work with the child about hearing loss, certain portions of content, due process, and limited contact time with students.

Two completely different jobs under the same title. I'll keep you posted about how it goes, and which setting I find most preferable.