Kim Gregg is one of several Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) teachers who will be making their way back to the classroom next week in preparation for the start of a new school year.
Preplanning for teachers starts Monday, followed by the return of students on Aug. 11.
For Gregg, who has taught at Carolyn Beatrice Parker Elementary School since 2007, with a focus on students with disabilities for roughly five to six years, that preplanning process consists of a wide range of tasks.
Like a good majority of her peers, Gregg does the normal unpacking and organizing of her classroom, which she shares with her colleague, Mollie Grote.
In terms of supplies, Gregg said she doesn’t use a lot in her role, adding she’ll have the usual pencils, paper, etc.
A lot of these materials, Gregg said, are left over from the prior year and get put back out for the new school year.
Gregg defined her specialization as “any child that has an individualized education plan (IEP).” She added that issues can range from physical, emotional and intellectual disabilities to attentional problems and autism.
Part of Gregg’s preparation for a new school year includes reviewing student IEPs, which are created to ensure that a child with an identified disability who is attending an elementary or secondary educational institution receives specialized instruction and related services.
During preplanning, Gregg said she and Grote will review class and student lists and determine a schedule that allows a student to get the allocated minutes, per his or her IEPs.
“It’s a lot of meetings,” Gregg said. “Going through what the student’s goals are [and] what their accommodations are, if I have behavioral issues, [discussing] some ways of handling that behavior that we found [to be] helpful to the student in the past.”
When asked about preparing for a wide range of learning and behavioral needs at the start of the year, Gregg said she has “a lot” of resources she can turn to. However, she noted that each year, she’ll have a student arrive with a specific disability that she hasn’t worked with in the past.
“And so, I’ll do some research there,” Gregg added. “Maybe we’ll have a meeting with parents and have them come in and just sort of figure out, ‘OK, how do we meet that child’s needs?’”
To make her students feel successful at the beginning of the year, Gregg said she tries to be a “warm demander.”
“I want build trust with my students,” she said, “but in order for them to progress, there has to be a certain amount of demands made on them. And that just looks different for different students. If I have a highly anxious student, there is going to be a whole lot more smiling. But if I have a student that needs a little bit more of a push, I can do that too.”
Gregg said collaborating with students in small groups and individual settings is one aspect of her job she enjoys most.
“I think that there are a lot of teachers nowadays who are feeling a little demoralized,” Gregg said. “They feel like their hands are tied in some ways, and the situations that they’re in, they maybe don’t feel as effective. But I feel like I’m able to be effective. If I didn’t feel like I was able to be effective, I’d find something else to do.”
Nick Anschultz is a Report for America corps member and writes about education for Mainstreet Daily News.