during the past week, i set up my classroom, i planned my lessons for the first week, i tried to figure out what co-teaching is slash what it will look like in practice, i got additional special ed. training, i received my special ed. caseload, i studied the curriculum for all my (3) classes, i received lots of help from colleagues, i was set up on the crazy computer network and grading system, i found out the names of all of my students, i met parents at open house, i volunteered to help with the extended day program for english II to gain more teaching experience... in addition to all that, i was told i looked too young to be a teacher, my experience was questioned (by myself as well as other people), i was told that being an EC teacher isn't being a real teacher and it's easy compared to "real teaching," i had a mini-mental breakdown and i may or may not have been sexually harassed a few times. what a week.
before i go any further, i have to comment on the whole "being told that EC teachers aren't real teachers and it's going to be easy compared to real teaching" ordeal. it really sucks being told this by my colleagues, people who are also teaching children. first of all, this is mean and hurtful and one educator should never say that to another. and i'll tell you why.. every single child we teach has a special need, whether it's documented and official or not. as teachers, we are all required to address those needs to the best of our abilities to help the child succeed academically. the students that i will be working with already have a stigma associated with their name and lable because of their learning disabilities and behavioral disorders, things entirely out of their control. we're not going to discriminate against kids based on the color of their skin or what their parents do for a living or other things that they can't control. so when a teacher says that they think they're being a punished for having EC students in their classes this year, that's so wrong. and when one teacher says to another that their job is a joke because they're working with EC students, they are so wrong. not only do special ed. teachers have the moral responsibility to push kids to achieve academically alongside their "regular" peers, they have a legal responsibility as well. each student has an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) that denotes what the student's specific academic goals are and a deadline by when they need to be met. as a case manager, which i automatically became when i became a special ed. teacher, i am legally responsible for ensuring each student on my caseload (right now i have about 25) meets those goals. i will have hours upon hours of legal paperwork to keep up with in order to keep myself and my school in compliance with meeting those goals. i can and will be sued otherwise.i will not have all of those students in class. i will have to find time to meet with them outside of my regular class schedule. in addition i will have to run meetings in order to create and re-create IEPs and explain their significance to parents, teachers and adminstrators. on top of that, i will be responsible for planning lessons for multiple and completely different classes, leading instruction, managing student behavior, differentiating lessons for different ability levels, investing the students first and foremost in themselves and then the content and school in general, and building relationships with my students. so to all of you who think that i'm not a real teacher, screw yourselves. as if i didn't already feel scared and confused enough, i don't need people making it worse. even more, our students deserve better than that. shame on you.
i spent a while this week feeling scared to death. as i said earlier, i had a mini-mental breakdown mostly because i feel underqualified and overstressed. when i get uber-stressed, which never really happened all that often until the last year or so, i just need to vent and talk and be told that everything is going to be ok. that's it. just tell me it's going to be ok. please take note of this in case i ever need to cry on your shoulder. i don't want suggestions and advice or to be scolded. i just want to be told it's ok. right. moving on.. so i try to talk to TFA higher-ups and i definitely don't get that. it's not the TFA way, they can't support that mentality. they tell me "you can't let your kids see that. you can't be like that." um, that makes me feel like there's something wrong with me, thanks. i can kind of understand the mentality they want us to have. we have to at least believe we're untouchable so that our students just see a confident and prepared teacher so that they follow our instruction towards academic success and don't mess with us, blah blah blah. but as it turns out, i've taught for a cumulative 4 weeks, i have never been trained specifically for special ed., (*please note: any of you TFA naysayers, that is not to be used in your arguments against the organization, this is just me we're talking about), i'm in a new place with new responsibilities and these kids lives are so important to me and i don't even know them yet. give me a break, please. i will do my job to the best of my ability because that's who i am but it HAS TO be normal to feel scared right now, it just has to be, so be honest with me and tell me that. do it.
so yeah, this is going to be really hard. the rumors are true, this will be the most insane thing i've ever done. and i'm getting so nervous and excited that i feel like throwing up. ugh. the thing about teaching, i'm realizing, is that there is ALWAYS something else you could be doing. there is another worksheet or organization technique or poster i could create. i could always improve upon my lessons or my approach to teaching. i was scared of that concept at first, but i'm thinking i might thrive off of it. i think i'll have to, actually, because i'm going to suck at this at first. so believing that i'm going to get better and my situation will improve and that i am ultimately in control of the whole ordeal might be good for me. or it might drive me crazy. we shall see.
monday, folks, is d-day. school starts and the adventure truly begins. good luck and godspeed to all the new teachers out there.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
"it's not about you, it's about them."
on friday i went and visited the school i will be teaching at: phillip o. berry academy of technology. google it. it's the most amazing facility of all time. i'll give you the basic breakdown... the school is a magnet school for technology, specifically IT, medicine and architecture/construction/engineering type stuff. there are practicum classes specifically for things like computer programming or networking, emt and nursing training, cad design, woodworking, etc. there are over 900 computers at the school. it is connected to a large public library. i will have my own classroom (which is almost unheard of as a special ed. teacher teaching inclusion), access to an unlimited number of photocopies and my own laptop and LCD projector issued by the school. let the guilt trip begin! i definitely feel at least a little ashamed because my fellow TFAers will not be so lucky, especially the special ed. corps members. i have a million resources at my finger tips, an excellent administration and i will have a fairly easy caseload. my students are all at the school because they want to be there.. which makes investing them in the coursework that much easier. when i left that building, all i was thinking was WOW.
another thing that makes me feel extremely lucky is the chair for the EC (EC=exceptional children=term for students receiving special ed. services in north carolina) department at phillip o. berry is incredibly awesome. i mean, i only met her briefly on friday but she seems like she'll be so helpful and she knows that i'm coming in almost completely clueless.. and she's ok w/ that! she asked me what i would prefer to teach before she started making the students' schedules. her and i are the entire special ed. department.. which is nerve-wracking because that's A LOT of responsibility but it will also allow us to develop a really strong working relationship and have complete accountability to the students.
the school is almost anti-the teach for america mindset in some ways. they started by allowing any students from the entire district to attend the school, and they found that they were experiencing the same difficulties as the rest of the schools in the district: behavior problems, low achievement, poverty. this was hard to deal with, obviously. turns out that's how teaching in urban schools works. but phillip o. berry decided to start implementing entrance requirements, and is now phasing out the lowest achieving students.. namely the lower functioning students receiving special education services. now, this makes my job easier. i can't lie. but does it benefit students in the long run? not so sure.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
so i've been in charlotte for almost 2 weeks at this point. my dad and i drove down on july 31st in my tiny little honda stuffed to the brim with stuff, and then i moved said stuff into my new apt. on aug. 1st when my lease started. there starts the stress of life in charlotte. the apt. wasn't ready when we got here - it needed new carpet, new wall fixtures, the interior doors needed to be fixed or replaced, the lighting needed to be fixed... WOW! i was upset, to say the least, because that was supposed to be done and relocating my life was already hard enough. my dad was able to take it in stride and was just like, "ok lin, we'll go do our errands and by the time we get back it will all be done." within the next few days, we drove all over charlotte and got all the errands i could possibly need done.. done. i don't know what i would have done without my dad for traveling, construction and sanity purposes. he was invaluable. i was sad that my mom wasn't around to see what i was doing and just to be able to spend time with her, but her and i are close to the point that it would have been soooo emotionally-charged that i wouldn't have got as much done. we'd have been crying and screaming at each other the whole time.
speaking of my mom not being here.. i have almost NO ONE here. so lindsey, tell me why you chose to move 12 hours away from home to do the hardest thing in the whole world? to make my life a living hell of course! ok, so that's a little (or a lot!) extreme. but this is hard. it's lonely. i don't have cry-on-your-shoulder type friends yet, really. i have friends, i have things to do and i have a great job. but this whole real world/real life thing is crazy. i think i'm realizing for the first time that i'm NOT going back to syracuse this fall, and i won't be surrounded by people and places i'm completely comfortable with. but moving on is all about finding myself in new ways and figuring out new places.. so eventually i'll get used to that.. maybe. sometimes i find myself fantasizing about what it would be like to have a real job: 9-5, no work to take home, semi-mindless.. and i think that would be an easier transition to make. but then i think about what i need to be doing right now and i remember that exactly where i am and what i'm doing is what i'm all about, and i feel very secure and content with that.
so that's starting-my-life-type-stressors. as for teaching for america stressors, they have been present in tenfold. i'm teaching special education, which is extremely important but not taught as an actual subject. as an inclusion teacher, i support the actual subject teachers whose regular ed. classes children receiving special ed. services are receiving their instruction from. (note: it's all about placing children in the least restrictive environment, so some students with special needs are mainstreamed because they will benefit the most from receiving regular instruction and spending as much time as possible with "regular" students their own age). as it turns out, i don't know what specific subjects i will support at my school. so all the individual work time and explanations on how to backwards plan for our classes' coursework or subject area specific sessions on resources or best practices that were available during orientation this past week.. AHHHH! i basically stared at walls during those times. that sucks! i was so incredibly frustrated and upset to not have any direction, and basically to be getting the shaft as far as training and orientation went. that's not ok. it does not serve my students well to have me go to my school and not know anything about what i'm doing! i kept reminding myself that my frustration should not be about me and my comfort level, it should be about my students and how much they will benefit from what i know and do. and i know nothing and have done nothing. GREAT.
on wednesday that week i actually spoke w/ my assistant principal and found out, for sure!, that i'd be teaching a study skills class on my own. i finally had a little bit of direction, so i ran with it. i wrote down any idea i came up with for what do do with my students during that time and i have become so excited about working with students in that capacity. when i taught summer school during institute, i found that my students were lacking basic note-taking and test-taking strategies. it's almost impossible to learn and succeed without those abilities! most of us are lucky to have developed them naturally or learned them without even knowing it, but these students are definitely not that lucky. so that's all i know, along with the fact i'll have my own classroom, so i'm trying to come up with high expectations, investment and classroom managment techniques and ways to set up my classroom. suggestions welcome. i just want to meet my students and get started.. but there's a lot more to it than that.
what it all comes down to is that i have to prepare and organize my classes and classroom and get my life together. buena suerte, lindsey quick.
another thing that makes me feel extremely lucky is the chair for the EC (EC=exceptional children=term for students receiving special ed. services in north carolina) department at phillip o. berry is incredibly awesome. i mean, i only met her briefly on friday but she seems like she'll be so helpful and she knows that i'm coming in almost completely clueless.. and she's ok w/ that! she asked me what i would prefer to teach before she started making the students' schedules. her and i are the entire special ed. department.. which is nerve-wracking because that's A LOT of responsibility but it will also allow us to develop a really strong working relationship and have complete accountability to the students.
the school is almost anti-the teach for america mindset in some ways. they started by allowing any students from the entire district to attend the school, and they found that they were experiencing the same difficulties as the rest of the schools in the district: behavior problems, low achievement, poverty. this was hard to deal with, obviously. turns out that's how teaching in urban schools works. but phillip o. berry decided to start implementing entrance requirements, and is now phasing out the lowest achieving students.. namely the lower functioning students receiving special education services. now, this makes my job easier. i can't lie. but does it benefit students in the long run? not so sure.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
so i've been in charlotte for almost 2 weeks at this point. my dad and i drove down on july 31st in my tiny little honda stuffed to the brim with stuff, and then i moved said stuff into my new apt. on aug. 1st when my lease started. there starts the stress of life in charlotte. the apt. wasn't ready when we got here - it needed new carpet, new wall fixtures, the interior doors needed to be fixed or replaced, the lighting needed to be fixed... WOW! i was upset, to say the least, because that was supposed to be done and relocating my life was already hard enough. my dad was able to take it in stride and was just like, "ok lin, we'll go do our errands and by the time we get back it will all be done." within the next few days, we drove all over charlotte and got all the errands i could possibly need done.. done. i don't know what i would have done without my dad for traveling, construction and sanity purposes. he was invaluable. i was sad that my mom wasn't around to see what i was doing and just to be able to spend time with her, but her and i are close to the point that it would have been soooo emotionally-charged that i wouldn't have got as much done. we'd have been crying and screaming at each other the whole time.
speaking of my mom not being here.. i have almost NO ONE here. so lindsey, tell me why you chose to move 12 hours away from home to do the hardest thing in the whole world? to make my life a living hell of course! ok, so that's a little (or a lot!) extreme. but this is hard. it's lonely. i don't have cry-on-your-shoulder type friends yet, really. i have friends, i have things to do and i have a great job. but this whole real world/real life thing is crazy. i think i'm realizing for the first time that i'm NOT going back to syracuse this fall, and i won't be surrounded by people and places i'm completely comfortable with. but moving on is all about finding myself in new ways and figuring out new places.. so eventually i'll get used to that.. maybe. sometimes i find myself fantasizing about what it would be like to have a real job: 9-5, no work to take home, semi-mindless.. and i think that would be an easier transition to make. but then i think about what i need to be doing right now and i remember that exactly where i am and what i'm doing is what i'm all about, and i feel very secure and content with that.
so that's starting-my-life-type-stressors. as for teaching for america stressors, they have been present in tenfold. i'm teaching special education, which is extremely important but not taught as an actual subject. as an inclusion teacher, i support the actual subject teachers whose regular ed. classes children receiving special ed. services are receiving their instruction from. (note: it's all about placing children in the least restrictive environment, so some students with special needs are mainstreamed because they will benefit the most from receiving regular instruction and spending as much time as possible with "regular" students their own age). as it turns out, i don't know what specific subjects i will support at my school. so all the individual work time and explanations on how to backwards plan for our classes' coursework or subject area specific sessions on resources or best practices that were available during orientation this past week.. AHHHH! i basically stared at walls during those times. that sucks! i was so incredibly frustrated and upset to not have any direction, and basically to be getting the shaft as far as training and orientation went. that's not ok. it does not serve my students well to have me go to my school and not know anything about what i'm doing! i kept reminding myself that my frustration should not be about me and my comfort level, it should be about my students and how much they will benefit from what i know and do. and i know nothing and have done nothing. GREAT.
on wednesday that week i actually spoke w/ my assistant principal and found out, for sure!, that i'd be teaching a study skills class on my own. i finally had a little bit of direction, so i ran with it. i wrote down any idea i came up with for what do do with my students during that time and i have become so excited about working with students in that capacity. when i taught summer school during institute, i found that my students were lacking basic note-taking and test-taking strategies. it's almost impossible to learn and succeed without those abilities! most of us are lucky to have developed them naturally or learned them without even knowing it, but these students are definitely not that lucky. so that's all i know, along with the fact i'll have my own classroom, so i'm trying to come up with high expectations, investment and classroom managment techniques and ways to set up my classroom. suggestions welcome. i just want to meet my students and get started.. but there's a lot more to it than that.
what it all comes down to is that i have to prepare and organize my classes and classroom and get my life together. buena suerte, lindsey quick.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)