RtI = The Killer

I had been pre-warned that upon entering a school you would be attacked by virus after virus. But I thought to myself, I'm all good. I worked with foster kids for 6 years. Uh no. I have now had 3 horrendous colds. Being the crazy worker bee that I am I have pretty much barreled through all of them and come to internship with a box of kleenex and a bottle of hand sanitizer, but the last one was a doozie and I ended up staying home on a Friday to recuperate! I really hope that was the last of them. It is, right? Pretty please with a cherry on top? I have pretty much been sick on an off for a month now, ick. I guess all those pre-warnings were true. Vitamin C will be my new best friend.

I really feel that RtI is to blame for all of this. I mean, RtI, what did I ever do to you?? All these grade level screenings are going to kill me. In the last two weeks I have probably read with around 200 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders. It's like, how big of a germ pool can I expose myself to? Those kiddos are adorable little germ carriers though. I actually enjoy doing the screenings - I know, I know - I'm weird. Although I must say that I MUCH prefer the 1 reading prompt method over the 3 reading prompts. I know that the 3 gives you more reliable results, but to me it would be much more efficient to do 1 for all grade level and then due 3 for follow up for the bottom 25 percentile to make sure you've identified the kids who need to be identified or if a couple of them just had a bad day/were scared/were asleep the day they were initially screened.

In altogether unrelated news: I think I am changing my thesis to research social skills. I think it would be interesting to do a social skills group and do a pre and post test with the kids as my project. That way I wouldn't have to rely on someone else to do the work (like with my previous thesis idea) and I would also get some group counseling experience. It seems like a good idea to me. Supervisors #2 seemed open to the idea when I emailed him today, so we will see how it goes. I started researching curriculum this morning and I am really intrigued!