Amber Attwood

Teamwork. Flexibility. Support. If you follow me on twitter, you may have seen these words posted before. They aren't random words, they are the 3 pillars to the educator team I work with. I teach a special needs class, which means I work with a team of educators. If we put it into team perspective, I am the "team lead". I have teammates (educational assistants) who are absolutely amazing, and I also work with an incredible administrative staff team. Over the time we have worked together, we have discovered the 3 pillars to our team, and why we work so effectively together. ______________________________________________ Teamwork. "The combined action of a group of people". The key words being, the combined action. In our team, everyone plays an important role. We work together, we communicate together, we share ideas together. As the team lead, I always communicate updates, changes, necessary student information as this helps us be effective. I ensur...

Well, here we are - today was the 10th day of school! I hope to blog more often this school year, so I'm using this opportunity to reflect on the start of the school year so far. A little background: this is my second year in the same classroom/school, with the same teammate (Educational Assistant) - third year teaching special education, and sixth year of teaching overall.  This year, I decided that "slow and steady" would be the theme of September. Reflecting on the previous' years start to the school year, I found I pressured myself to hit the ground running - start assessment, read all the paperwork, get programming started, write IEPs . . . except, all it did was cause pressure and stress. This year, we are going slow . I have a small class (since I teach special education, my class maximum is 10 students), and the majority of them are new to the school. New building, new play structure, new teachers, new routines . . . the list goes on. So this year, we ar...

You know the commercial, late August - a parent is shopping through Staples (a stationary store) and the song begins... "It's the most wonderful time of the year..." ♪♪♪ And honestly, it is! Don't get me wrong, I love summer - the time to rest, see friends & family, travel - but I can't control time and September is coming, so I am ready to EMBRACE it and be EXCITED for it. Here's a little preview into THREE big things I've prepared this week as I get ready for the new school year (which for my school begins on Tuesday, September 3). 1. I've prepared my classroom I will admit, I'm very lucky to have such a large space. Stuart Shanker, in his book Calm, Alert, and Learning: Classroom Strategies for Self-Regulation writes, "For a number of years, educational programs such as Reggio Emilia have asserted that children concentrate better in a classroom with a reduced number of visual distractors" (p. 12, Shanker). We use thi...

How many days of school left? I have no idea. Why? Because as much as I am of course looking forward to warmer weather (I’m in Canada so summer equals sun & warm weather) and some time off to rest - I’m going to miss my class. Am I leaving? Nope. Actually, this is my very first year where I will be returning to the same school and same classroom again in September! Many of my students, however, are moving on to new schools in their education journey, and my “little gang” of students is going to be fresh and new next year. As we begin to journey into our last 2 months together, I find myself reflecting on our school year - both as a class perspective and myself as an educator. I started with a photo wall - instead of a countdown to summer. It began with just simply printing a few photos of moments I caught in our class - a photo of students reading a book, working hard on their writing or laughing together. This led to many “Ms Amber, can you take a photo and pu...

Last night I tuned in to my podcast app to catch up on some episodes I've missed in the Podcast Edu world, and I decided to listen to this episode:  https://theedpodcast.podbean.com/e/check-in-35-at-what-cost/ I really connected with the episode because it discussed things I've been reflecting on this school year. The discussion of the educator life/personal life balance got me reflecting on my current and past school year, to which I'll share a bit about. _____________________ First let me give you some background. My name is Amber, and I'm a special education teacher for students in grade 1-3. This is my second year in special education (4th year teaching overall). The opportunity to jump into this field of teaching presented itself last school year, and from there I discovered both the challenge and passion of this area. My first full year in special education was a lot of learning. If someone asked me years ago "what is your dream grade/area to teach?...

# IMetALotOfTwitterEDUPeopleIFollowInRealLifeAndItWasAmazing I first heard of EdCamp through Twitter in 2017. . . after it happened. I saw all the tweets about it and thought, how did I miss this? So, this year I made sure I kept an eye out for the information. I actually got so excited that, I accidently registered early . . . it was still the 2017 link. What were my goals going into #EdCampOttawa 2018? My main goal was simple: connect with other educators. For the first few years of my teaching career, I was a guest teacher ("substitute teacher") and I jumped around multiple schools. Which meant, I got to meet a lot of other educators, observe practices, check out technology that they were using, resources they've implemented, etc. But for the past 2 years, I've been in the same school for the whole school year. And don't get me wrong, I've learned a lot from my colleagues that I shared a school location with. And Twitter also provides that connection ...