Managing my own personal time with school time, it’s really important to be able to divide the two up otherwise you’re just not going to make it. You’re not going to last through the year, let alone a five year, ten year, twenty year career in the teaching profession and certainly not in special ed. There are things that I have to say to myself, prioritize what I need to do and what I have to do and what I want to do. There are going to be some things that I am going to take the little marker to and say, “NO, NO, NO” or “Not today” or “Not this year.” You kind of have to pace yourself. I try and prioritize the things that have the greatest impact, the broadest impact, in terms of the students in my class or in terms of my obligations and responsibilities with regards to administrative kinds of things or special ed. district kinds of things. Then, I start chipping away at my list of priorities. Hopefully those priorities really match pretty closely the needs of what your students are. The truth of the matter is that there are some things, maybe more than we would like to deal with, but there are things that we are asked to do that are fringe. They are fringe things that someone has to do but it doesn’t really impact your program as much. Some times those are the things that you do just well enough to say, “Done, check it off” and that’s as good as it’s going to be. If you stay at it long enough, special ed. is like regular ed. in that hopefully you are putting together some binders or file folders so that the following year, you are pulling out the file folder and you’re not recreating the wheel every year, you are simply adding to it and expanding it.
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