It’s February 18th as I write this and yesterday I realized how closely IEP season is looming. Today marks my 3rd consecutive day home due to the snow and ice that is covering most of the country right now. I live in the Deep South and although we are completely fine, warm, and fed, we are most assuredly not prepared for this type of weather. I woke up this morning wholeheartedly expecting most of the white to be gone, just as I have the past two mornings. The infrequent snow storms we experience here even more infrequently last longer than a day. Yet, the view from my window has been white for 4 days now. Even more shocking, Monday was supposed to be a make up day from a brief snow storm a few weeks ago. And we thought 2021 would usher in normalcy?
So yes, IEP season. Yesterday it occurred to me that this is the time of year I would normally start gathering data for IEPs. And now we’ve missed an entire week. I haven’t had the heart to actually check my IEP dates yet, but I know they’re likely to start coming due in the next 2-3 weeks. My biggest hope lies in the fact that many IEPs were extended due to the COVID interruptions last spring. So we might actually have a little longer.
I’ve also been musing over how difficult it will be to go back to work after this unexpected break. Nothing about this past year has been even remotely normal, of course. Just when the school year starts to seem so, something new will happen that reminds me. No, this is not normal. It becomes difficult to instill rhythms or routines that sustain, personally or professionally. I’m extending extreme amounts of grace to both myself and my students. I can hardly expect much of myself, much less of them.
I started this newsletter sometime right around the beginning of COVID. I kept up with it for a few months, then abandoned it. Like many people, I had grand illusions of all the ways lockdown would benefit my productivity and my business. And despite the fact that I had a fairly successful year, most of my business endeavors were half-hearted and ever-changing. Sometime in the fall I gave into it, threw my hands up, and declared that I would get back to it when I felt like getting back to it.
Then, another shift happened. I realized that I was tired of Instagram. Then I realized that I was tired of blogging. I realized that what I really want to do was being gobbled up by the things I felt I had to do in order to be successful at what I wanted to do. And so, a month or so ago, I deactivated my Instagram and Facebook. A week or so ago I reduced my blog to a landing page. I got myself a Twitter to see if that was a decent way to keep up with the world without feeling I was going made along with the rest of the world. I signed up for a ton of newsletters. And I decided to throw my energy into my store itself. I’ve retained only Pinterest as a marketing tool and, obviously, am writing this now. I remembered that what I liked about this space was the permission I felt to just write about being an SLP. There’s no need to busy myself with loads of graphics or fuss over SEO or take the perfect photo or find the right hashtags. It’s just me and my typewriter, thinking over the state of being an educator and material developer in this crazy world.
I guess you can consider this my State of A Happy Learner address. I have a lot of big goals and dreams for it, but almost none of them involve social media, business marketing practices, or the like.
Expect new products to drop. I’ll mention them here and I’ll pin them from TpT.
Expect to see even newer products to drop. As in, I’m branching out beyond just speech therapy stuff (I hope). Stay tuned.
Expect old products to get revised or fixed up.
Expect to hear from me when I have something to say. I hope it will make you think or chuckle. I hope it will fill you with some joy, from my educator’s heart to yours.