No voice....slight problem

There are some things that they don't tell you in graduate school. Actually, make that quite a few things....One of these terrific life lessons is that it's almost impossible to conduct therapy with no voice.

The wonderful cold that one of my students gave to me last week has finally morphed into an all out germ-infestation hiding out in my throat. I decided to be smart yesterday and avoid making the situation worse by pulling out the "magic" microphone. When I am holding this sparkly fake microphone, my students have to be quiet and listen to me. It works great with the older ones 4-5 and somewhat with the 2-3. I didn't have first graders, but typically they are not the greatest listeners (which is why following directions is on pretty much every single goal list lol). Unfortunately, my students seem to sense when I'm feeling under the weather and act completely crazy. The kindergartners took the cake in spite of the inclusion setting....one wanted to sing for 45 minutes straight, two wouldn't pay attention no matter how many times they were redirected, and one decided to have a total meltdown and run around screaming as loudly as possible without shoes (which is a daily thing so I expected it at least). I really love working with these students and learning from them as it is my first year working with such a needy bunch. However, I had practically lost my voice by the end of the day and was pretty much ready to cry. I also was in the process of guilt-tripping myself for having to ask the EC facilitator to lead my IEP meeting so I could rest my voice.

Needless to say, I've spent the majority of today's sick leave in a theraflu daytime induced haze. It's probably not a good idea to drink two cups of straight black coffee within 30 minutes of taking theraflu unless you enjoy feeling like a zombie. It took forever for me to fall asleep and then I was out for the whole afternoon. I blame the theraflu as well for this post as I will probably wonder what I was thinking as I wrote this in a few days....lol. It currently seems like a good idea.

In the meantime, I'm still be accused of lying about Carmen SanDiego. One of my kids totally did not buy into the Hank Williams clue that Carmen just happened to email to me. He's the same one who called me out on the letter being fake. I've got another one who is convinced that Carmen is out to get him.....The lock-down drill yesterday didn't help much with dissuading him.  "I promise that Carmen is only out to steal stuff and won't hurt you." ERERERERBEEEEEPPPPP "Attention staff, we are going into lock-down." "It's CARMEN!!!!!!!" **face palms**