Ah, May... time for spring, Mother's Day, graduations, all lovely things, right? BUT - it's also time for end-of-the-school-year paperwork crunch and timelines! The stress of it all! The Frenzied SLPs are writing posts all month long to make your own frenzied and stressed SLP life a little easier!
My tip is:
post visuals around your room to encourage yourself.
Pictured below is a
Wall of Fame, which came about from desperately trying to cover ugly walls. At the end of the 2011-12 school year, I was discouraged about how many students I felt like I had not helped. Sitting at my table, with my face in my hands, I looked up to see that 13 students had been dismissed! It was a huge encourager. I vowed to never go without a Wall of Fame again. Here is this year's
Wall of Fame that goes with the school theme of
Saddle Up for a Great Year!
That's 8 kids who have been dismissed! Now, I could focus on
only eight. But I choose not to. Instead, I focus on the celebration and how many students are working to get their own names on the Wall of Fame!
The second thing I often look at is a note.
It's anonymous. I have no idea who wrote it. But it's on my bulletin board. When I'm typing away on reports and FIEs and re-evals and IEPs and whatever else, this note is in direct sight when I look up from my laptop. It's a reminder. No matter how much I'm sighing when I fill out the (redundant) COSF or bill for Medicaid that doesn't go to the SLP pot, this note reminds me that someone is always watching. What can I do to help and encourage others? If paperwork is the bane of my existence, I have it pretty good compared to the self-contained Sp Ed teacher who gets bitten, the principal who gets chewed out by parents, the custodians who have to clean up bodily fluids, and the list goes on.
So keep those nice notes and post them! And here's another tip for your bulletin board - move things around. You don't have to change things, but once you get used to seeing them, you look past them. You know how the grocery store changes things up so you actually have to look for products? That's to shake up shopping habits. By rearranging items on your bulletin board, you'll take a fresh look at them!
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