Archive January 13, 2014

With my work comp case settled. I have me my disability teachers pension and things settling a bit…..I realize part of me will always be a teacher. Heck I have 87 local, state and national teaching awards. I have the highest honor the county can give to a science and math teacher. I was good at what I did and I loved it but all things change. So as I go along bay stepping my way to a new life….I will post to my data i used from my classroom of the many things I created and wrote.
And I will post what as I go along about chairs, repurposed furniture and of course my rescued dogs and cats under “Home classroom” because while I may not have the same brain I did before…..I can still try new things and share the old things.

I guess I have chairs on the brain as the one thing I do love to do is read old chairs and make them into Upcycled furniture for fun!
So that’s is what I do, and now I have a lot of chairs but I also worked on reprinting the house. As I found out it didn’t matter how many doctors agreed I should not go back to teaching, my pension and everything else was wrapped up in my work comp injuries. So I went a whole year with no money coming in, living as frugally as possible, couponing all the time, and depending on others. Really a hard thing to do considering I was the caretaker in the family.

This chairs is made after one of my and my students favorite books ” Where’s My Mummy?”

Well I packed all my things, most of my things. I owned almost everything including my reading table, my desk, and lots of chairs. For a school system closing schools I don’t know why they can’t find me the materials or furniture I needed.(yes I admit it I dumpster dived in so e cases and I did curb side shopping too). I spent eight year with 15 – 18 students in half a room. No manufacturer makes stuff for half a room. So I made a wall out of metal cabinets and hunted and pecked for what else I needed. My last year in my classroom I did not have enough chairs so I bought them second hand and painted them. EVERYONE loved my painted chairs so that’s what I worked on last summer. Painting chairs, having corrective surgeries, and giving away my precious teaching items.

The results say I should have never started the school year. I agree. As the year goes on my immune system is deteriorating. I am catching every virus every student has and by the end of the year I am getting viruses first. I sleep all the time I can and my life is getting up, going to work, coming home, eating, napping, getting up and finishing school work and going back to bed. Aside from physical therapy and doctors I works and sleep.
Oh yeah. High anxiety, his emotions, high stress, and high stimulation make my brain injury worse……and if it continues it will never get any better…..
The secretary keep referring to me as the metal teacher, to my students, my fellow teachers and parents…..great.
So I promised my partner teacher I will try to make it to the end of year. I find out the school system cannot ensure my safety. If I get hurt again it’s at my own liability so I decide not to go back next year.

I am going on with my work. I am going to the TBI. It took a whole first semester. The first doctor I went to there said ” he didn’t want me for a patient” I had too many other injuries. So I went to find a new referral and it took four months but I finally got an appointment. I went thru twenty house of testing and it was the end of January and I got the results… And semester one is over.

With the help of my sister, I keep going and going. I barely can keep up at school. I take tone of work home. My sister helps he copy, correlate and keep things together. I have two gardening bags striped and flowered. We number each pocket I each bag. Then when I do work at home my sister keeps a steno pad with details. When I can’t find something and I panic…..I call my sister she looks it up. ” flower book bag pocket 8″ yes it’s that bad. The panic and anxiety are constant.

I can do this! I can’t remember anything that happens currently, not the new computer systems, not the new curriculum, not the changes they make to something I already learned before the TBI. In my research I have found that there is a Traumatic Brain Injury Unti and I am going g to see if they can help me.

You know how when you read that chapter in Harry Potter and he is the “boy who lived” and it sounded so strange? Well I am the teacher who can’t! So I try to cover up what I can’t do with the exception of my partner teacher. She knows all and she is wonderful to cover up for me. I decided I had to learn more about brain injuries and with help of my sister, my fiancé, one of my best friends…..I learn what I can’t do. Organizing, planning, remembering in the short term, numbers, problem solving. I am better when I am alone but in the high stimulation of a classroom sometimes I feel just worthless.

I was suppose to have a teaching partner and five minutes before my third graders walked in for the school year (yes changed my grade level again third grade level in three years) my partner teacher walked in the classroom. So working for an urban system and inner city kids is hard, working within the bureaucracy even worse. Luckily she understood I was learning how to live with a life long disability and it was all new! The newest …… I can’t read a clock and numbers mean nothing to me! What a surprise to be a teacher and not be able to know what numbers are. How do you survive in data based instruction when data mean nothing?

I was sick all summer that year and I slept and slept. I went to the doctors follow up and had CATS SCANS, all inconclusive. Then I went to a neurologist and he sent me for a MRI. came back…..I had a brain injury. It seems sleeping is the way your brain heels from trauma. I had been through a lot of trauma last school year. But the time the doctors told me the diagnosis, summer was over…..school had started and I had to survive with a brain injury.