Do you ever find yourself trying to make sense of all the assessments your students are expected to take, only to end up with more questions (and maybe a headache)? When should they take the assessments? Are they for ALL students or only SOME students? Which teachers can administer them? Which students need testing accommodations, and which accommodations do they need? 

In my first year of teaching, I was hired as a special education teacher at an alternative high school on the south side of Chicago. I had a great experience there and truly loved working with high school students. I had never considered myself to be “a math person,” but I ended up enjoying teaching math much more than I expected. What I did not expect was that I would be teaching resource classes for high school seniors who were performing at around a 4th-grade level in math. In this situation, math interventions became my new best friend. 

Teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic brought about all kinds of challenges. My colleagues and I were relieved when we could go back to in-person learning, but it quickly became apparent that our students seemed to be missing a lot of important social-emotional skills. Unfortunately, the lack of socialization opportunities over the past two years and trying to re-learn how to engage in school left them falling behind in this area.