I'm still ranting about shit that happened at my last full time teaching job. I remember talking to Kelly about it when she was here and how I mentioned that I'm pretty much finished with the field of education. I can't find any teaching jobs and my references just expired last year. I'd have to get new references and that would necessitate observations and possibly at least a short term sub position.
I don't think that's going to happen. The idea of returning to teaching full-time just depresses me. I think about it and all the time that goes into lessons, grading, meetings and even just class time and it just exhausts me thinking about it. Then the politics pitfalls of saying the wrong thing at a meeting, getting a reputation for speaking out and being a trouble maker, like I do, make it tenuous at best when it comes to security. I've never known job security so it's reasonable to assume it's never going to happen in my lifetime.
It was nice of Kelly to feel pissed for me. It's not fair. It's not right that someone with my education, dedication, history of going above and beyond, focus on the kids, is not something that is welcome in our current educational climate. Common Core brought this home to me and I'm really glad to not be a part of it. Common Core has teachers teaching the same content on the same days using the same worksheets as other grade level and subject teachers. Yes it standardizes everything, making sure the essentials are taught. But it also presents a cookie cutter approach to education with not time built in for re-teaching when necessary and differentiating for differences in interests or abilities of students. Many will be left behind in the mad dash to the middle. Including bright kids who will be bored to insanity.
I've written a whole pessimistic article about this, including how the stress levels of kids can lead to brain tissue damage and loss of learned skills, at best a physical inability to learn. It has been called Cognitive Child Abuse by at least one neuro-scientist that I've heard of.
So I substitute and try to impart wisdom however I can to those that care to listen. I'm able to fly under the radar and not get caught up in the politics, meetings and curricula hell that public schools seem to be suffocating under. I enjoyed it for a while. Now I'm getting to the point of exhaustion again. Maybe I just can't seem to stick to anything. I resent students who don't know how to treat others like people with dignity and respect. Too many of them seem to have no manners. This year is actually better than the previous ones. We got rid of quite a few dickheads through graduation and movings.
So anyways, the damage as far as I can tell really started my second year in Elmira. I had taken the job in 2008 and moved 3 hours away from my house and husband to live in an apartment there. The apartment was shit with a leaky roof over the kitchen that drove me into more than one screaming fit of frustration. It was really unlivable and I probably should have pushed the issue but I was let out of the lease early when the house sold. I took an apartment across the street which was much better but again not perfect. Ants in the walls, next to a vacant house that smelled horrible and when I moved in I found mice droppings in the cabinets. I had to flush everything out in order to feel safe enough to put food in there. It was at least dry and warm.
2008 was a tough year but the principal seemed to have our backs. The whole staff every Friday would go to this Irish pub place and chat over appetizers for a couple of hours. I was really happy with the job. Maybe I said too much how I liked the place. I tend to be loud when it comes to whether I am pleased or displeased. The second year I may have been really loud about how pissed I was and how I felt we were being thrown under the bus. Word gets around apparently.
Anyway, I had problems with students. I had classes that fell apart because the kids would get so worked up they would mutiny. It was usually only one class per semester so it wasn't too bad but there were some incidents that stood out. I had one kid try to throw another out the window of the second floor. I had a serious issue with a student who was known to be incredibly violent towards women. I did not feel safe with him in the class and wished he'd get busted and tossed. Interestingly it was the day after I wrote that wish down that it happened. I was developing a bit of manifestation and was sometimes able to prod things into happening to the point where people would sometimes say word for word what I was thinking. Hubbie thinks it may have been the other way around. I was actually picking up on what they were thinking or something that was going to happen, premonitions instead of manifesting desires.
Whatever, he got caught punching someone in the head on camera on the front steps so that was the end of him. The biggest problem that year was a class of about 5 kids. One refused to come and skipped all the time. One was kicked out repeatedly for harassing me and pulling that superiority because he's a guy thing. I sent two of the only good kids next door to be with the reading teacher with worksheets and assignment sheets I sent with them. I couldn't figure out how to teach with all the aggression in the room. I had to babysit the idiots and wanted these two kids safe from harm. They didn't feel safe either. The last two boys ganged up on me. It was daily sexual harassment and personal attacks on me. A condom put on the handle of my door, pictures drawn and nasty things said constantly. I kept a book and wrote quotes of everything the little shits did. The principal was very on the fence. On one hand I had plenty to go to the police about, but on the other hand he assured me he would handle it. He needed enough ammunition to go to the board about this behavior.
I was at that meeting and it was a joke. I wasn't really questioned at all except over one thing to clarify something the student had said that I had said. Other than that I learned that all of the write-ups we had been writing had somehow decreased in number. I know I put in a write up a day for this kid. But somehow between all his classes he had less than 50. That doesn't make sense. I spoke with a couple other teachers who had been concerned that their write up copies had not come back to them. They started photocopying their write-ups before handing them in to keep tabs on what actually was happening and not just what the principal was admitting to.
I probably should have made a stink about it that year given what the science teacher went through the following year but I really thought things would get better. I believed the principal when he said he was working on it. And I really just wanted to get into a district and have an actual career. Not this one year and I'm out crap. There are bullshit reasons for the other two jobs being lost but I'll get into that later. These administrators have decades under their belt so they know all the manipulations and catch phrases to use to wiggle out of responsibility for maintaining a safe working environment. If a student attacks you it's your fault for having no classroom management skills, and it's all part of teaching. If you can't handle it then find another career. This is what the principal said to the counselor when a student tried to stab her with scissors. Get a thicker skin or find another job.
The second year started off good. I had some really good classes. I don't remember any major problems. 2009 ended well in the spring with a co-taught class of 9th graders and the reading teacher. We had fun. The principal wanted to repeat the experience so he set it up again in the fall of 2009. It didn't go as well. The reading teacher didn't really have much skills in enforcing boundaries. The kids would hide in her room and I'd have to go get them. She wouldn't shoo them out or anything. I don't care if the kids thought I was scary and mean. Their work and their responsibility was next door, not sipping tea and eating candy with the reading teacher. Class started at 8am and they would still be in there at 8:30am. So we didn't work well that year. I did manage to get a couple students to sit and work and actually pass that semester in that class. A lot of one on one time with one student in particular. I'm really glad I put the time in with him.
He was a senior with only 4 credits. His original school in the district would give him easy classes in the fall during basketball season then drop their support and let him sink as soon as basketball season was over. They used him then dumped him. Totally not fair. As a result he started out not even wanting to put his name on paper. But I had created worksheets that would present tasks in a fill-in-the-blank way. I had one two page essay drafting worksheet like that to help kids stretch out their essays modeled after step-up-to-writing.
I found that if I presented writing like mathematical equations the kids seem to respond better and feel like it was not a big risk and doable. I got much better responses after that.
He was doing really well by the end of the marking period. He got a 58 on the ELA in Jan and volunteered to review and take it again in June to get a better score. His attitude had gone from no self-confidence to being sure he could do better and working accordingly. Total turn-around.
There was another young lady I got off on a rocky start with but the second year things turned out well. In 2008 she was in my english class and I was doing short stories for plot analysis and practice writing thematic essays. It was quicker to read a short story and analyze it so we could write more essays for practice. Most of the assignments were modeled after ELA tasks since I treated my English 1 as a remedial course. Most students had already taken and failed it at their other school so I approached it totally differently. We had head a short story about the witch trials and she got upset. She left in protest because another student brought up Wicca. His mother was a practitioner. Apparently she had had a run-in with a Satanist that had turned nasty. At least that's the rumor that was passed to me. The reading teacher next door worked with her on an alternative assignment. I had her to a comparative essay on two articles about slavery instead of the witch hunts. She seemed to calm down quite a bit after that.
In 2010 in the spring she was in my journalism class and blossomed. The final assignment was a choice of journalist skills. Create your own newspaper, magazine, radio broadcast or TV anchor broadcast. Each choice had a list of requirements meant to demonstrate a total of what they had learned. All different types of skills and articles used. She did a great job. She was one of those students that had encouraged me to stay longer than I really meant to. She had brought me a Christmas card in December when I was really down and it made me cry. I stayed that spring semester because of that card. I got to see her graduate in June and that at least felt like completion.
The final nail in the coffin as far as why I left had to do with a complete attitude shift from the principal that second year. NYS had decided to audit the school. We had been declared a "school in need of improvement" the first year I was there but hadn't been notified of that status until august 2009. Over a year after the declaration. We got an extension on the requirements because Albany dropped the ball. All of a sudden the encouragement and comaraderie went out the window. Everyone descended on our school and started attacking us. The principal was ready to throw us all under the bus to save his own job and the union rep as well. They were both really close to retirement and didn't want to be let go because of the school closing.
I had to defend myself against attacks from board member and others, not just me but the other English teacher who wasn't there. We were blamed for failing grades of students that had never actually sat in our classes. It was the previous English teachers students, the ones he had taught, that were failing the exams. The kids that we taught when they took the exams in 2010 did really well comparatively. I still had the assist. principal yelling in my face that it doesn't matter, even with correction for attendance, we still are responsible for those scores.
I was so thankful when the auditor came right out and told the other two principals in the district to stop using the school as a garbage dump for the kids they don't want to deal with. The sad thing about alternative is that the first year it opened over a decade ago, it was decent. Kids had to fill out a graduation plan, have a portfolio of work and interview to get in. Kids wanted to be there. The second year the district decided to let the other two high schools send whoever they wanted and alternative couldn't turn them away. That's when everything changed. Kids viewed it as a punishment, as being labeled garbage (which it was in the district's eyes) and they acted out. That's why it was so crazy and violent. The math teacher year 2008-2009 said that she had been there from the first day and noticed the change when the district made that decision. That first year had been heaven and then the change made everything hostile and crazy.
So, I believe that I was sabatoged that spring. Either that or his expectations from the previous semester based on how I had helped that one kid, were way inflated. He told me he would give me "a couple" of 8th grade students that he thought were ready for ninth grade. They were also age appropriate having been in the alternative middle school longer than they should have been. I was okay with it. He said that if they didn't do well by the first five weeks he would move them back. I now know he must have told the middle school teachers something different. When I saw a troup of ten kids coming down the hall I about flipped. What the heck was that? He gave me a TA from one of the middle school rooms the "help transition" but she was only there 30 minutes out of 80. She also sat at the back table and did nothing. Even when I asked her to work with a student her response was to ask him if he "needed" help. He said no and she walked away and went back to sitting. I'm wondering what the middle school teacher had told her. Did she tell her to not help me to let me sink because they had plans to push me out?
It certainly felt that way.
These kids were not ready. They couldn't write sentences, much less paragraphs and essays. I don't know what the middle school teacher was doing with those kids in her room but teaching them according to NYS standards was not it. By 8th grade kids must be able to write a 4-5 paragraph essy. They must know their literary terms. They must be able to engage in discussion in a classroom or with a partner. They must be able to pick out themes and analyse literature. Not at an 11th grade level but the beginnings of analysis occur around that time. I had been in her room and seen her workbooking them. No discussion or teamwork seemed to ever occur. These kids had no idea how to function in a classroom.
Add to that a total brawl on day one because two girls who had restraining orders against each other were seated in the same room, and all hell broke loose. I was pretty much done by week 2. I held on because of the assurance that the five week mark would lead to a look at who should stay and who should go. The two seventh graders were definitely on my list.
I was being sexually harassed by girls. The things they said, like I'd enjoy being raped cause it was the only action I would get, were just disgusting. Don't get me wrong. I found out about her sexual abuse so I get why she was so crass and fucked up. But that doesn't make what she was saying and doing any less than abuse.
Five weeks came around and no changes. By ten weeks I was work booking the kids and doing independent projects with the upper classmen. I had one poor student stuck in this class, a good kid, but she's get so worked up by the idiocy and hostility that the following period in Eng 2 she would be uncontrollable until halfway through the period. finally around week 13 he took the whole class away from me. I had been telling him over and over again that he needed to remove all but two 8th grade kids. So he took the whole class and gave it to the reading teacher. That's when I contacted the union president. The counselor gave me her e-mail. I let her know what had happened and she told me to not count on a recommendation and to check my employee file to make sure nothing suspicious was added without my knowledge. I guess it's not unheard of for principals to add complaints after the fact that the teacher never knew was in their to sabotage other teaching job opportunities.
I did all that. At the same time I advised the science teacher to contact the NYS labor board because of sexual harassment from a student in her room. The kid was never disciplined for his behavior. Finally, he grabbed her ass in class and she flipped out screaming and threw a book at him. They had to evacuate the class and counsel her down from her hysteria. I think he got 2 days and then was "counseled" back into her class.
We had also done away with write-ups. The principal was trying to cover the tracks to not get us labeled a violent school. We were that close because of the violent write ups from the previous year. We had like 400 of them. So we did away with write-ups and went to counseling forms instead. We would send a kid to the counselor or the building Teacher Instructor and they would counsel the student on their behavior. Then they'd be brought back to class. This worked horribly.
As far as staff, most of the teachers were great. The history teacher not so much. He was an oversized frat boy. He criticized my classroom management. I respond, ofcourse I have trouble controlling kids who only recognize physical prowess as worthy of respect. I don't manhandle my students.
He did. He grabbed a girl and lifted her up and swung her into the classroom then slammed the door in the other kids face. He bullied staff members. He ignored the counselor and slammed the door in her face. He'd walk away when she tried to talk to him about a student. He screamed at the Teacher Instructor to get the hell out of his room. He was a huge bully. But apparently his daddy has status in the school district so his precious snowflake can rest assured that his job will never be in danger.
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Gotta quit. It's late and I have to substitute tomorrow. I'll re-read and try to do some emotional work with all this. Ranting can't be left by itself. It does not good and does no healing. The ritual for letting go of a job would be appropriate in the next week or so.
Next ritual date is the 15th of January.
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