Alright friends...here we go. I created this page/blog to talk about what it is really like in the trenches. (at least in my little corner of the educational world...) So...heres my first official post for the start of the new school year...Although it talks about last year...hmmm...anyway... BRUISES AND BATTLESCARS: I know I said I was going to be off the grid for a few days, but as I sat down to finish my online class, I found myself walking away from it every time I tried. So, instead of just fighting with myself, I tried to figure out what it was that was stopping me. (Sidenote: Let me warn you now…this is going to be a long one, so grab a drink, a snack, glass of wine, etc…) Here goes… It suddenly hit me as I was trolling my Facebook news feed to procrastinate doing my work. (That seems to be my catch all right now… Any time there’s something I don’t want to do…my friends will see me posting…a lot, lol)…So, anyway, I was trolling my feed and I saw the posts of two of my former students, who are now teachers. They are both in their second year teaching (Yes, Sarah and LB…I’m talking about you guys ! lol) and they’re both really excited to get back into their classrooms and back to a job they love. As I read these posts, I had an empty feeling inside in the pit of my stomach because I realized that I remember that feeling….and I don’t have it anymore. NOW WAIT !! Before you send the men with pitchforks out after me (or report me to Whoopie Goldberg as a “Bad Teacher”) let me tell you my side of the story. If you recall (those of you who’ve been with me for a while), I told you that I would eventually talk about the fact that last school year, my 15th year teaching, was the most difficult of my career. I hadn’t talked about it yet, because I figured that if I ignored it, it would go away. But like most things you try not to deal with, it always rears its ugly head and bites you in the butt when you least expect it. So here it is…here’s my story…and to tell it…I’m going to take you back more than 15 years. You see, I never planned to be a teacher. I can remember as a kid, playing teacher and school with my brother and my friends, but it wasn’t necessarily a career path that was encouraged. I think it had a lot to do with the low income possibilities and also, there was a family business that I grew up assuming I would be a part of (yada yada…lots of things we think when we are kids…) Well, when I went to college, I had the intention of going to law school and being a lawyer, because I thought that’s what was expected of me. To enter a career field that was respected and would make me a lot of money. I won’t bore you with the details, but after a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree, I had no employment or education prospects. I suck at standardized tests so I received denials from the law schools I applied to and I found myself at 23 years old, living with my parents and working as an extremely overqualified shoe saleswoman. At this point, a lot of people were telling me I should get my teaching certificate as a “fall-back.” So even though I have an extreme love for shoes (and the closet to prove it), I thought I’d give it a shot…I went back to school to be a teacher. In the interest of keeping this story shorter, I’ll leave the story there, but what I will say is that fate is a fickle thing and that I didn’t find teaching…teaching found me. And when I walked into my very first classroom for my very first field experience, I felt something I had never felt when doing anything else that I was trained to do. I knew I had found where I belonged…in a classroom. I can remember driving almost an hour every morning (and I am NOT a morning person) for my student teaching and I could not wait to get there every single day ! Now believe me, it wasn’t completely a walk in the park. I’ve worked in the same district for my entire career and well, how can I describe our district? ……… Hmmm….think of a school you might find in the middle of the Bronx or Brooklyn……but with a lot more trees! We’re about 1 ½ hours outside of the city (depending upon traffic) and 15-20 years ago, there was a large population boom and people moved out of the city to Pennsylvania to give their kids a better life. The only problem with that was that they brought the city with them. So, basically, I teach in an inner-city school with trees. Having grown up in an extremely small town in the coal-region of Pennsylvania, you can imagine my culture shock when I entered my first classroom !! But it worked out. It was hard, and I made a lot of mistakes, but no matter how bad or difficult things got, I never lost the idealism and my joy or my belief that I could make a difference. Fast forward 15 years. (Sorry for the long-windedness but I felt I needed to set the stage for the many of you who don’t know me personally). This profession is not the same as it was when I entered it 15 years ago. I don’t know how it is in most states, but in Pennsylvania, we’ve been dealing with pretty a big ole pile of shyte handed down to us from every direction. Four years ago, a Republican governor was elected who, no matter what lies spew from his mouth, doesn’t give a da#$ about education and has single-handedly destroyed education in the state of Pennsylvania. Cuts were made to funding that were so deep that, in a nutshell, in the last four years, over 20,000 teachers have lost their jobs in our state, a few hundred of them in our district alone. As a teacher of a “related art” I never knew if I was still going to have a job from year to year or how many of my colleagues were going to be let go. That was a rollercoaster ride that none of us wanted to get on. (This year was the first time in four years that there were no furloughs.) Now, keep in mind that I am a Business Education/Technology teacher, so lets couple that, with a former superintendent … HOLD !! … DISCLAIMER: When I began this page/blog there were several things I committed to not doing. One of which is that I will not directly criticize anyone I work with, nor work for. That is not the point of this page. The individual I’m going to mention now, no longer works for our district…so he’s fair game… CONTINUE… a former superintendent who convinced everyone that kids no longer needed to be taught basic technology skills because they “had technology all around them and already knew how to use it.” This lead to the abolishment of the K-6 technology program, and the loss of the required foundational course for technology on the 9-12 level. I’ll just let that soak in for a bit…(while that’s soaking in, I’ll say that he retired from our district at the end of that school year…I’ve often said that was his parting gift to us…) So with a combination of outside forces, inside forces, politicians telling us how to do our jobs, mandated testing, preparation and remediation for mandated testing, a very high special education population, kids who have no basic technology skills, whatsoever, extreme behavioral issues, not enough kids to take electives because they have to prepare for state mandated testing (take a deep breath…continue….) large class sizes because of all the teacher furloughs, going from block to standard schedule, shortened prep periods because of said new schedule, a general public that hates us and thinks we’re greedy money grabbers suckling off the teet of the taxpayer, (aka…overpaid babysitters), parents who constantly battle us with, “Not My Kid..What did the Teacher do?” (ok…I’m tired now)…here’s where I’ve landed… (My English teacher friends…I am not even going to ATTEMPT to fix that last sentence, so you will have to just accept it…lol) Being an elective teacher of what “used to be” an advanced computer course…pretty much SUCKS !! … The big one ! … Over the course of the last 15 years, I’ve taught most of the classes in our department and I’ve taught every level of student from life skills to emotional support, to gifted (often in the same classroom). I’ve taught every student that has crossed my classroom threshold to the best of my abilities. And as an elective teacher, we don’t get help. We don’t get co-teachers and aides. I’ve had classes of 29 students and 20 of them have had IEP’s…with no help…and I’ve done it (and so have my colleagues). For the last 5 years, I’ve been teaching Graphic Design and Video Production, which, like I said, USED to be advanced classes. I would have IEP students but only a few and I had enough regular ed. students that I could work with those kids one on one. And here’s the kicker, when we went to full-year schedule (and left block scheduling), we had the option of making Graphic Design either a half year or full-year elective. So (being the amazing, idealistic educators that we were…) we decided, since it was an “advanced” course, that we could make it a better class by doing it for the full 180 days instead of just 90! ………………………………………………….. Sure…right…um….right…hmmm….. And then came last year. I hit my limit. I found myself teaching kids how to Print... how to Save... how to Bold and Underline...(remember…those skills that the kids supposedly already “KNOW” how to do !!) BEFORE I could teach my curriculum of Photoshop, Illustrator and Final Cut Pro ! (not the world’s easiest programs to learn.) See, they can text…they can play games…they can use social media…but they have no idea whatsoever how to create a word processing document. And don’t even THINK of trying to get them to create a Spreadsheet. (You’re just asking for rocket science (and a headache) on that one…) Also…(and please don’t be mad at me for this one, but…) I did not go to school to be a special education teacher. (And God Bless those of you who have been called to be special education teachers. I have so much respect for you, you could not imagine.) I am not trained to be a special education teacher and I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but I don’t want to BE a special education teacher. And due to all those circumstances I rambled about in that earlier paragraph, that’s what I became. I also had behavioral issues that pushed me to my limits. I’ve always had pretty decent classroom management skills but I had one class that I would pray every day just to get through because I didn’t know if a fight was going to break out if I turned my back or diverted my attention to another task. (I actually cried on the last day when that class left…not because I was glad to see them go, but because I had made it !) Students who would battle and battle because they didn’t care and just wanted to do whatever they needed to “get by” and “pass” and “get a D.” (And did I mention the NEVER-ENDING school year !!! With 12 snow days to make up !!) Now…I don’t want you to think I teach in a bad school…I don’t…I’ve had the occasional bad student…the occasional bad class…the occasional bad semester… But last year...pretty much, all the planets aligned and anything that could possibly go wrong during a school year, all hit at the same time (oh…and let me remind you that I no longer have these kids for only 90 days…I now have them for 180 days !!). And it burned me out… So there it is…(there are a few more things that happened on the personal front, but they are beyond the scope of this blog) For the first time in 15 years, I am not just, not looking forward to going back, I’m afraid to go back. I’m afraid that I’m burned out to the point that I’ve lost my idealism and my belief that I am good at what I do and that no matter what, the kids are going to learn. I just don’t want to fight anymore…I just want to do my job…I just want to teach…and I feel like I can’t do that anymore. I am battered and bruised from the last few years and all I can do is pray that I can find that spark again. I’m sure I will…(oh wait…is that a bit of … “idealism”? ☺ ) but theres that fear that I wont... Well, thanks for coming along on this journey with me. I like to think that I’m not alone and maybe someone who feels the same way I do will see this and realize that they are not alone. And for those of you out there who are just starting out, good for you. Take that idealism and make a difference. And if there’s ever a time where you worry, or question yourself or what you’re doing? Realize that it’s ok to do that and it’s not a failure. And don’t be afraid to speak your mind. We’re the ones who are in the trenches and need to be changing the education system and ours have become the quietest voices. Two weeks…Deep breath… Cheers ! T’nT
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 20:38:59 +0000
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