These are a few of my favorite things...

I'm a very frugal gal and have been an extreme couponer long before it was popular.

But for a few select items, I am a brand-snob. Mind you, I try to wait until a sale and then stock up, but there are certain things I cannot buy generic.

The following is a "vacation-style" post to help keep my mind off of the upcoming stressful year I am dreading.

1. Diet Coke-- just for the taste of it. Preferably from a fountain dispenser with lots of ice.


2. Press 'n Seal Wrap-- after an unfortunate bat-stuck-in-the-storm-window incident while in college, I vowed never to go generic on this stuff again.


3. Contingo water bottles-- we own 7 of these and I'd buy more in a heart beat if I found them for the right price. One handed, non-leaky, BPA-free, watery-goodness.


4. Crayola crayons-- I go through hundreds of crayons per year. I will no longer settle for the cruddy generic crayons. Not even for free.


5. Mr. Sketch markers-- not only are there no other markers that draw as well as these (with the possible exception of Crayola), but nothing smells as good. And you know you've done your job well when children leave your room with little dots of color all over their noses....



Spill it reader. What brand names are just worth it.


Proclaimer: This post was sponsored by no one. These are my real opinions. If a brand I mentioned would like to compensate me for my free advertising, I would be happy to accept payment in the form of free products. However, unless they do me wrong, I will continue to support and buy these items.

Ninja/Action Unit (June)

I was so excited about this unit! Unfortunately, June is a month of catching up, last minute testing, language samples, and end of the year field trips and parties. This means that I was only able to use 2 of the awesome ninja books I had checked out from the library.

I used The Boy Who Cried Ninja and Wink-The Ninja Who Wanted to Nap for working on vocabulary and story retelling. I was disappointed that The Boy Who Cried Ninja had very little in fact to do with ninjas, but it did make for a great book for 1st-3rd graders to work on retelling skills. Wink-The Ninja Who Wanted to Nap had awesome illustrations (simple, cut paper style), but the story was pretty confusing for my younger students (Wink was trying to avoid his fans so that he could rest) and did not make a lot of sense if you are unfamiliar with the other book by the same author: Wink- The Ninja Who Wanted to be Noticed.


Since ninja vocabulary seemed to be completely unnecessary for my life skills classrooms, I worked on verb/action words for Bingo. This was very successful, and I almost wished I had done it earlier in the year since verbs are such an important part of language.

Overall, it was fun to put books together on a topic of my choice and not worry about state testing, grade level curriculum, etc. for my theme. Maybe next June I'll try out some of the other ninja books, or go for a new topic of my interest all together! Suggestions for ninja books or for fun topics for next June?

I don't want to play

Dear administrator,

I take it back.

You can have my printer.

And my reasons for being a school based Speech Pathologist.

I really don't think I can continue to do this. Not with 70 students, 19 of whom are young students with extensive needs for Augmentative Communication, Picture Exchange, and Positive Behavior Support. Not with 4 regular education students with daily visual schedule, extensive libraries of personalized social stories, and weekly (sometimes daily) meetings with their assistants to work on behavior ideas. Not with 6 less hours of assistant time next year (reduced from 21 to 15). And certainly not if you really plan on following through with the proposed 45 minute extra recess/lunch duty that you announced on the last work day before summer. The meeting that left me in tears and nauseous (I'm still nauseous even now).

6 hours less of assistant time and 5 hours less of service time (45 minutes per day + transitions) means 11 hours less speech therapy per week. That is the equivalent of 22-88 student therapy times affected. 88!

So, something will have to give. Many somethings.

I can't reduce many of my obligations for legal reasons. I can't eliminate my 113 yearly meetings. Or my 35 evaluations and write-ups.

The first thing to go will obviously be my sanity. My lunch will be gone. Paperwork time (which is at least 1/3 of my job) will disappear. The next to go will be service times. Next my group sizes will increase substantially. So substantially that by the time I pick the students up from class and settle them down, there is little reason to even bother seeing them. They would get more out of staying in class for that half hour.

I've calculated the cost of this new duty. The tax payers will pay me almost $5000 over the next school year to referee the students at lunch at recess. If I had been providing speech therapy during that time and billing Medicaid, I could make $5400+ in revenues for the district. If families wanted to pay for private speech therapy during that lunch period, I could personally make about $650 (per WEEK).

Don't mistake my feelings about the importance of supervision at recess and the need for order and help in the cafeteria. However, I strongly feel that the district is misusing it's resources by putting the only employee who can EARN the district money, and who already is stretched way too thin on this daily, torturous duty.

Please, please reconsider. My summertime ulcer (and search for another job) will cease if and when I hear the word.

With hopeful thoughts (and a sick bag on hand),

Super Woman

PS: I promise to give up my printer in exchange for this relief