I'm having one of those slippery-slope complexes where every day I don't update my blog I become less likely to update it because I gain more and more material that has to be put into the blogs. Therefore, I am not going to give an all-encompassing monologue updating you on my service, I'll just try to write things that I remember and that will do me good to type out in this format.
Truth be told, I'm having a hard time. Not because my life is hard; it's actually great! I had a wonderful break where I got to see almost every friend that I'd been missing, spend some time with my family and my fiance (oh yeah, and I got a fiance!), and visit the school I'll be working in next year and scope out the Nashville scene for Pat's and my future life. I go to school every day and have a lot of positive interactions with students and teachers and feel pretty good about my effort in my job and my impact with students in their behavior and attendance.
However, my class is in shambles in every sense of the expression. I lost my teacher (yes, again) and now have a substitute that changes almost daily. The class lessons are being given to us by the other 6th grade teacher, but only the morning of. THE MORNING OF. How do you think that turns out for 1st period, when we don't have any materials prepared and have only just glanced at the lesson plan? Oh yeah, and that class is 1/3 special education students.
The worst part is that tomorrow we have a district-mandated expository writing test, where students are required to respond to a prompt with a 5-paragraph essay. The first time students had even heard the word 'expository' was today. TODAY. We had one day to practice a completely unfamiliar skill that they will be tested on tomorrow. The only thing the students have written to date was a creative super hero narrative. They didn't have any idea what a strong main idea was, let alone how to form one of their own from a prompt. It would be laughable if it the children's entire academic futures weren't riding on tests like these.
I spoke with the administrator about my situation and was told that they don't want to rush into hiring someone who won't last. My substitute regularly tells the students that they are bad students and that they scared off the other teachers. I reported that to the administrator and received sympathy for the students. She felt bad for what they are going through, but no action was taken.
I heard one of the students repeat this during lunch (that the other teacher quit because she didn't like them), and one of my students corrected him. He said that she just wanted to teach elementary school like she did before (with a "duh" added for emphasis), which is what I told my students had happened because that's the truth. I warmed my heart to see him defending that against the student who just wanted to blab about how "bad" they were.
The truth is that my students are better behaved than they have ever been. They are spinning their wheels in my class and it is killing me that I can't do much about that. I led the class through the prewriting exercise in class today because my substitute's procedure was to point at the instructions and loudly rebuke students who didn't immediately understand what they were supposed to do with a completely new concept and activity by telling them that they should know how to do this by now.
Although I feel like I am making an impact with my students and my personal life and future are looking very bright, I am truthfully terrified for my students and their future. It is so very hard to make up instructional time for students who fall behind in their coursework, especially in English and Math. My students have effectively been without a certified teacher for 3 months.
If you remember, spare a few thoughts for us tomorrow as you go through your day. Send some positivity toward Room 112 and the students that want to learn in there, but are struggling through little fault of their own.
Truth be told, I'm having a hard time. Not because my life is hard; it's actually great! I had a wonderful break where I got to see almost every friend that I'd been missing, spend some time with my family and my fiance (oh yeah, and I got a fiance!), and visit the school I'll be working in next year and scope out the Nashville scene for Pat's and my future life. I go to school every day and have a lot of positive interactions with students and teachers and feel pretty good about my effort in my job and my impact with students in their behavior and attendance.
However, my class is in shambles in every sense of the expression. I lost my teacher (yes, again) and now have a substitute that changes almost daily. The class lessons are being given to us by the other 6th grade teacher, but only the morning of. THE MORNING OF. How do you think that turns out for 1st period, when we don't have any materials prepared and have only just glanced at the lesson plan? Oh yeah, and that class is 1/3 special education students.
The worst part is that tomorrow we have a district-mandated expository writing test, where students are required to respond to a prompt with a 5-paragraph essay. The first time students had even heard the word 'expository' was today. TODAY. We had one day to practice a completely unfamiliar skill that they will be tested on tomorrow. The only thing the students have written to date was a creative super hero narrative. They didn't have any idea what a strong main idea was, let alone how to form one of their own from a prompt. It would be laughable if it the children's entire academic futures weren't riding on tests like these.
I spoke with the administrator about my situation and was told that they don't want to rush into hiring someone who won't last. My substitute regularly tells the students that they are bad students and that they scared off the other teachers. I reported that to the administrator and received sympathy for the students. She felt bad for what they are going through, but no action was taken.
I heard one of the students repeat this during lunch (that the other teacher quit because she didn't like them), and one of my students corrected him. He said that she just wanted to teach elementary school like she did before (with a "duh" added for emphasis), which is what I told my students had happened because that's the truth. I warmed my heart to see him defending that against the student who just wanted to blab about how "bad" they were.
The truth is that my students are better behaved than they have ever been. They are spinning their wheels in my class and it is killing me that I can't do much about that. I led the class through the prewriting exercise in class today because my substitute's procedure was to point at the instructions and loudly rebuke students who didn't immediately understand what they were supposed to do with a completely new concept and activity by telling them that they should know how to do this by now.
Although I feel like I am making an impact with my students and my personal life and future are looking very bright, I am truthfully terrified for my students and their future. It is so very hard to make up instructional time for students who fall behind in their coursework, especially in English and Math. My students have effectively been without a certified teacher for 3 months.
If you remember, spare a few thoughts for us tomorrow as you go through your day. Send some positivity toward Room 112 and the students that want to learn in there, but are struggling through little fault of their own.
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