Groundhog Day
February Monthly Blog
Happy Groundhog Day! We’re supposed to have an early spring. I’m not sure that I can trust the little critter. He’s gotten his information right only 40% of the time. Well, he keeps on trying.
You’ve probably noticed that we have a new website. We’re being hosted by Squarespace instead of Shopify. Tahlia did an awesome job creating the site and then quite casually had a baby. Teddy has a very creative mother.
I finally got approved for physical therapy. It seems as if it took forever for insurance to give the approval. My new PT had been part of a school district and then took a bit of a turn in her career. Since she had worked with special education students as had I when I taught, we got along famously. My walking is abysmal but the war stories we got to share were fun and made me remember when I taught in Florida.
This was so long ago that I’m not sure that the special education descriptions there are the same as when I lived there. At that time gifted education was part of special education services with the exception of having to write IEPs (individual education plans). Instead, we wrote GEPs (group education plans) for gifted classes. Each grade level had two classes for gifted/highly gifted students, but my class also had some students with IEPs due to physical issues. One student, Michael, had cerebral palsy making it difficult for him to walk or handwrite. We had a special computer for him in order for him to produce his work on the computer and, of course, he could self-assess for participating in physical education.
We lived in an area of Florida known as tornado alley but my Aunt Elise, who lived in the gated community next to ours, said that we’d never have a hurricane or a tornado because there hadn’t been one in the area as long as she could remember. She was from New York which, she said, made her right. She was wrong.
My classroom was in a trailer which, because of Michael, had a ramp up to the classroom door. It had been rather hot and sultry during the week and felt as if something ominous would happen, but I ascribed the feeling to my imagination going wild again. Unfortunately, I was as wrong as Aunt Elise. We had been out for recess when I saw in the far distance a very grey sort of upside down triangle. I was fascinated as it hopped-skipped in the distance. Just then we heard the “take cover” bells ring. Well, we had class in a trailer. That meant we had to walk quickly to the buildings and take cover in the inside classroom to which we’d been assigned. But there was Michael.
I had that cold, panicky feeling one gets when one is responsible and had the other trailer teacher take my class while I walked Michael. Inside myself I was so embarrassed. I wanted desperately to get into the building to take cover because even I could see, in my casual just moved here from California way, that the tornado was approaching more quickly than I wanted. But I was responsible for Michael. He was making a mighty effort to walk faster, but it seemed as if it would take forever to get to the building. I had to hand it to him, he was a trouper.
We did get to the building in time and the kids welcomed Michael with relief. They’d all been worried about him. I didn’t share how I felt torn between giving into my instinct to run and my sense of responsibility to protect someone else, but I knew how I’d felt. It’s funny how inner conflict works. There’s no blushing just a big sigh that it all worked out. I assume that the ground hog feels the same. Wrong/right about spring/winter. Cheered or not. Choices are tough.
Oh -- the tornado touched down on the playground and then hop-skipped away from the school. We were all cleared about 30 minutes later and went back to the trailer.