That special someone!!

The real story behind the special guy in my life...

It all started back in late April 2011. I was working away at Lake Shore Elementary School, taking my students down to the cafeteria for breakfast. Out of the corner of my eye, and by the trash cans of course, I saw a very nice looking guy throwing his breakfast away with the students. A quick and random thought popped into my head, "I wonder if I am supposed to meet this guy?" Being shocked from where that stemmed from I went about my work day. Through the rest of the week and the weeks to come this handsome fellow would pop into breakfast with an adorable little girl. They would sit down and enjoy a humorous meal together before she was off to class. Some days he would even be wearing his fire fighter blues!! Soon enough, I started crunching numbers in my head thinking how old this guy is to have a daughter in kindergarten already! Well, it turns out that a co-worker of mine knew this young man...it is her nephew. She was telling me all about him, "comes from a great family, wants to be a fire fighter, works at a car wash." I wasn't really ready for anything serious, especially coming from the last loser I dated.... I simply replied, "I don't really want to be dating a 20 year old who works at a car wash and has a daughter. I need to focus on school and work." OUCH! ha ha... she politely informed me that the adorable little girl was his 6 year old sister!! A few days later we were properly introduced, and I waited for him to contact me.  3 days later I learned that he had been searching and searching for me on the famous FACEBOOK.... but no luck. It proves that creepers can't find me since I'm not listed as my full name! So I looked him up and we began chatting.

In typical Courtney fashion, I don't like waiting for things or wasting my time. We had been chatting all day and nothing was going anywhere yet, typical, so I just laid it out there... "Do you want to go bowling sometime?" "Sure when?' "Tonight!!" That was May 11,2011. Since that day we were always together, except when he was working at the fire station. We had a wonderful year together until.... he made it official!


May 26,2012


A day I will never forget.... Garrett James Riley had been contacting all the women in our lives to ask me a very important question. He lined them up along a stretch of road leading to his house and gave them all a very important sign. With an early morning phone call, "Can you come pick me up?! I have a flat tire and need to get to work." I was out the door, headed to go rescue my love. Little did I know what was soon to follow...

We ended the special day with a beautiful brunch put on by his family. It was a great day and I can't wait to be..... MRS. COURTNEY RILEY!!!

Special Education Student Supports

 Life in a special education classroom is very fun! Its constantly changing with each second which makes it unpredictable and challenging. These are two things that keep me from being bored and pushing myself to be a better educator. Throughout the year I have made several projects to help students transition, communicate, be independent, and learn social skills. Creating tools to help the students function throughout the day with little staff involvement gets the student one more step closer to inclusion with general education peers, and more ready for life. Below I have listed just a few of the many projects for students in my classroom!

 These are transitioning sticks I adapted for a student. I say "check schedule" and the student will take the stick, walk to their schedule, put the stick in the pocket, and grab the next icon off the schedule. These are adapted because there are bigger (help with grasping) than the other sticks we use and colorful (high interest).

This is a student's schedule. For the most part each schedule is the same. The pocket in the foreground is where the transitioning stick is placed, and the square icons are the activities for the day.

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The schedule will show a picture of an activity, (i.e. jobs). The student will take the icon off, walk to the jobs area of the classroom where they find a bigger icon of the jobs picture, and they will put the small icon in the pocket provided.  The next step would be to select a job from the clipboards in the picture below.

These are the jobs student's can choose from. Some jobs are taking out recycling, shredding paper, and washing dishes. Each job has picture and written directions depending on the student's academic level. The job list also has check boxes to mark when a step is complete.

These picture cards, replace the icon cards. This student benefits from seeing the actual physical space and area he is attending or transition too. This student also benefits from songs, so I have made a transitioning routine to the tune of "Where is Thumb-kin" which we sing each morning, and hum as he transitions. This is a newer routine and lots of physical supports are still needed.

This is a PECS book. PECS stands for Picture Exchange Communication System. The basic idea is the student finds a picture of the item they want, and they give it to the adult present, and the student receives that item or activity. Buying these online are easily 50.00+ a piece. I made them for 5.99, or the cost of a small binder. (I also had access to folders, labels, and printing though the school).

I made this Number Monster to create a "buy-in" for a student to practice and enjoy stating numbers presented to him. When the student got the number right, the number monster ate the number. The student enjoyed putting the monster on his head and asking me to save him!

This is something I created for a student to use at home. He often got up in the middle of the night and stayed awake ordering his video games, or playing the games. As he came to school the next day he would be tired which resulted in aggressive behaviors. So I made a night time routine that included his favorite night time activity, but also ended the activity quickly so the student would go back to bed.

Students with Autism need to be taught social skills and social expectations. We had a student who had a hard time keeping his hands to himself. I made this social story, and recoded the narration on my phone, which I uploaded to an iPad for him to watch several times a day and practice the things he can do with his hands.

These are typing folders for students who are at basic or moderate levels for typing. Some students have selected passages from general education curriculum they read and type. Other students have pictures sentences which they type.

This student is at the beginning level of typing. The page with the cut out squares are all the letters in his name. This is done because it eliminates the chance of him pressing a wrong key. The template page is taped on top of the keyboard and he is guided with verbal prompting and the visual name to type the correct sequence of his name.

This is an activity schedule. Students would find this already at a work station. It would prompt the student what to do first, color, cut, then glue. 

I have many more exciting tools that are in the classroom. I will be posting those as I get pictures!! I hope you enjoyed taking a peek into how I prepare for school days in a SPED classroom!