Category Archives: teaching

May31

Three More Days…

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Three More Days…

Three more days. Three more days. Three more days…

This has been the craziest year.  I know I have said that before, but it’s so true. For example, today we were told what our rooms for next year would be. And several people found out that they might be a different grade level by where they were placed in the layout (since we have a separate hall for 6th, 7th, 8th grade and electives). Several of my coworkers came into work today thinking they were teaching, lets say, 7th grade math, and found out by email that they might be a 6th/8th split.  Yeah. And the best part is that we found out placements today, and by Monday June 6, we have to have everything moved from old rooms to new ones… while still teaching. Awesome! I’m actually one of the lucky ones who gets to stay in my room, so that’s nice at least.

But, that’s just an example of craziness. And I may have 60 creative writing stories to grade (varying from 2-13 pages, depending on the student) and 68 The Lightning Thief tests. By Thursday, ideally. And here I am typing a blog post because it requires less energy than grading. oy.  🙂

I truly hope I never have a year like this one again. This year has just been horrible and problematic and energy-consuming and depressing with all the budget cuts, responsibilities, and expectations. Fortunately, my kids this year have been the best bunch I’ve ever had in Texas, and that in itself has been a lifesaver. You’ll always have battery-drainer students, but I have had more awesome students added up this year than ever before, and they are the only reason that I am still able to push through.  There are many, many, that I will miss. And that’s a nice, but bittersweet feeling; I would be surprised if next year kids will be able to be as great as these kids have been overall.

Anyway, enough reminiscing.  Even though my “to-do” list before the school-year ends is pages long, it’s not going anywhere if I don’t get started now. 🙂

May8

Reflections…

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Reflections…

This year has been one of the most difficult years of my life. I don’t say this to be dramatic, but looking back, I have never felt so low and hopeless. I know there are several things that have contributed to why I’ve been so busy and constantly stressed.

The foremost, largest stressor has been my job. Teaching hasn’t been what I thought it would be. This year in particular has emphasized everything wrong with teaching. The financial situation in Texas right now is absolutely ridiculous. Examples:

* What place would expect that if you cut millions of dollars in education, it would benefit the students? Districts all over the state have had to forgo renewing some of their best, brightest teachers. The girl that I have been mentoring all year received an email from the person being forced to take her place. The email essentially stated that she didn’t want to teach but she was only doing it for insurance, and that it sucks to be jobless for this particular girl. How could you be so inconsiderate to say that to somebody who’s job you are taking, when that person would love to remain there when you couldn’t care less?

* They will be shortening the time spent in math and language arts at the middle school level, giving teachers half the time they previously had with students and giving them twice the students to teach.

* TEA is still going forward with rolling out their new, more strenuous state testing to hold teachers accountable. But we now have LESS TEACHERS teaching MORE STUDENTS with LESS RESOURCES. How can we stay remotely close to the same standards?

* It’s possible we won’t know the official cuts until August 12th, if the senate and house refuse to compromise and have to go to a special session during the summer. More firing or hiring could happen literally the week or two before the doors are supposed to open for the school year.

How are we supposed to recover from that?

I’ve also been disappointed on a smaller scale. I have done everything possible to show that I am invested in being a good teacher, yet again I have been held back from moving up to a high school position. I’ve been part of the leadership teams on campus, helped with special side committees, been the 7th grade ELA department head and worked on developing curriculum. I’ve been a mentor to a first year teacher. I’ve been accepted to the Central Texas Writing Project (CTWP) for this summer. I don’t know what else I could do to show that I could be an asset, but yet, I’m held back in a position that I do not love, for the fourth time. I overheard a conversation with another teacher saying that  she’s been stuck in 8th grade ELA for 8 years, despite applying for transfers for high school time and time again.

Pros of middle school and teaching in general have been:

-7th graders have their funny moments;

-The curriculum is “easier”, and I have it mostly down, just tweaking from year to year;

-Up to this year we’ve had 90 min a day with the students;

-I like most of the people I work with.

Cons:

-I struggle with the maturity level of the students;

-“Helicopter parents” are worse at this age;

-I miss the challenge of the more strenuous and deeper curriculum I could get with high school;

-The ridiculous “rubric” system or “Standards-based grading” and no accountability crap;

-Paperwork is ridiculous;

-There are more meetings with admin and other teachers to “support student academic success”.

Frankly, I’m losing hope. I truly do not know if I can last another year, and that thought frightens me. I have invested 7 years of my life to this profession, and I don’t love it. It has its good moments of course, but those good moments are not sustaining me like they used to.

And the fear of the unknown: If I don’t continue on, I don’t know what other profession I could do.

These are fears and thoughts that have been building for months. In the past month, the more I’ve learned, these thoughts been more and more prevalent. It’s been a difficult, exhausting year, and I’m like a car just pushing to the finish line on fumes.

I’ll end with a positive thought. The bright side of my life: my husband.  This past month we celebrated four years of marriage. He’s definitely been my rock and strength during this difficult and lonely time in my life, and I am forever grateful for all he does to make my struggles easier. I consider him my biggest blessing in life, and am so grateful for him every single day.

Jared, thanks for making my burden lighter by being in my life. No matter what happens, I love you.

Mar18

Spring Break…

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Spring Break…

…couldn’t have come at a better time. I am feeling incredibly burned out. I know I took on too much this year, and with my various roles-teacher, StuCo, mentor, AVID, etc- it’s really hurting me. On top of it all is the stress about the public education system and budget cuts throughout Texas. Rumors are flying, and each one just goes from bad to worse. So I know if I am still in the same place next year, I will need to be cutting back significantly for my own sanity. Even if my kids are as great as most of them are this year. 🙂

Saturday and Monday I did a lot of yardwork. We have two enormous live oak trees that apparently like to shed their leaves in the spring, not fall. Awesome. Allergies are going to start soon because now the new buds are coming out and with them, a fine dusting of pollen. Everywhere.

I had the opportunity to learn how to start a quilt this week. One of my co-workers has tried to get me to sew with her for over a year now. So, Tuesday, I finally took her up on her offer and spent the day starting a quilt. To all you out there who have done this several times… wow. I bow down to you. The process can be intimidating! Picking fabrics, cutting them so precisely, sewing them together just as precisely… it’s scary. But I’m excited. I think the overall quilt will look great.

Quilt Overall

This is how it will look basically overall… Essentially 8×10 squares

Quilt pt 1       Quilt Pt 2        Quilt pt 3

And here are some of the smaller parts- close-ups.

My “Theme” fabric that I used to tie in the remaining colors with was the one with the white-ish background and colorful circle/abstract flowers on it. All the colors are supposed to tie it with that.

Overall, I have really been enjoying the process.  At this point, I’ve managed to sew all the smaller squares into the foursomes, and the first 5 rows have been sewed into their strips. Eeek! I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how much I’ve liked it and how well it’s been going!!!

Yesterday was probably the worst day of the break. Stevie had his first dental. Italian Greyhounds tend to have peridental disease due to the shape of their mouth, and to help with it, we’ve taken to brushing the pup’s teeth around 1x a week. However, we’re not always as good as we should be, so Stevie’s mouth wasn’t looking that great. I knew that we needed to get his teeth cleaned, but it was a disaster.

We were told to bring him in at 7:00-7:30am, and he should be good to go by 4:00. So I brought him in at the appointed time, but then the vets didn’t get to him until 2:00 or 3:00 pm! What is the point of that? Really? Anyway, so I was on edge all day and didn’t even get an update call until they put him under and started the work around 3:30pm. I was furious. They ended up pulling three of his cute little teeth in the front. 🙁

I called them at 5:30 PM, because they still hadn’t called me to let me know if he was ready for pickup. They closed at 6:00, so they said I probably should come in. So I come in, get instructions on care for him and medications, etc, and I pay the expensive bill. Finally, I see my poor, pathetic Stevie, groggy still from the medication and smelling of the anesthetic. I start to carry him out the door to the car, and he starts to bleed profusely all over my hand. Apparently they hadn’t thought to bandage the arm that they stuck the IV in, and so once he started moving a little, he was bleeding. I had to take him back in and ask for them to help clean him up and take care of his poor arm.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, anybody?

I didn’t sleep very well last night; any time Stevie moved, I woke up to make sure he was okay. He’s still not himself today, but at least he’s eating and looking a little better.

Now that my week is almost over, I just wish it could have gone on a little longer. There is always so much I want to do, ad never enough time to get done with everything! I haven’t even looked at anything work related. (Should I really admit that?) I just couldn’t bear the thought. I guess I should do some of it over the weekend before school starts again!

Farewell, Spring Break. Our parting comes all too soon.

Nov20

School reflection

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School reflection

 I’m sorry for not posting often. This year has possibly been my best, but also my most difficult, year of teaching to date. I expected it to be easier, more like last year, but I haven’t really put a lot of things into consideration.

 Things that are overall better this year:

1. School spirit is awesome- everyone’s excited to be at a new school.

2. Administration spirit: My principal this year is probably the best principal I’ve ever had the opportunity to have, and that includes in my own secondary education experience.

3. Staff that I am working with overall are awesome. Almost all the teachers actually want to be there and try to have a positive attitude despite the issues that come up in teaching. It’s a positive environment.

4. The kids are the sweetest bunch I’ve had to date. I have been able to find something I like about every single student I have this year, and I haven’t even had to try too hard. 🙂 (Those of you who are teachers can probably get the significance of that statement!) They are a fun, bright bunch of kiddos.

I am trying to look more and more on the positive side of the school to balance out the negative. So with that said:

Things that are more difficult

1. Supplies aren’t on campus- There’s just not the stuff on campus that there was on my previous campus; technology software and hardware, books, testing supplies… things that we just don’t get to have, or things that are supposed to arrive but haven’t

2. Other LA people haven’t ever taught at their grade level before- I’m pretty much the only one. Meaning that I am helping others out a lot more and getting them the supplies they need. It’s getting a lot better, but I am missing the people I worked with before- we shared a lot more equally and had a system figured out.

3. Many different responsibilities. And I like most of them, but now that I’m into the year, it’s starting to wear on me. I attend several meetings a week (“team 7” meetings twice a week, AVID every other week, Mentor once a week, CLT every other week or so) and am the Student Council sponsor.

4. The system the LA facilitators are still pushing onto middle school LA teachers stinks. This is my third year of letting students do assignments late, to the last minute, and redos over and over. It’s just not true to life. There are times when you have the opportunities to redo, like cooking or learning an instrument. But there are times when you have deadlines, have to do it right the first time, or else you just miss out. We’re teaching the kids bad habits at an early age, and I hate it.

So, that’s where I’m at right now. A balance of good and bad, but that’s life. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be here at this school, and it’s just another affirmation to me that I’m where I should be for now and that I can take the bad and grow from it.

I’m also just plain grateful for a 9 day break from school all together. 🙂

Aug28

The Third First Week of School

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The Third First Week of School

I think that the first week of school is always kind of awkward.

Teachers don’t really know their students yet, so in order to get to know the new kids, the teachers don’t get a chance to teach the new students much. And it’s the time to start team-building in classes, set the tone for the year, set the expectations of the year, etc.

This year feels more like my first, maybe even a little more complex and difficult, because the school is so new, everyone, teachers AND students, are new. We are all trying to figure out the expectations of the administration, of each other, etc. It’s not bad, but it’s just different. Established schools have established teachers, admin, supplies, expectations, etc. We are missing several supplies (which isn’t good when you ordered 120 copies of The Outsiders and only 40 are in, and 4 different teachers need to use it in the next 4 weeks). We didn’t even get copy codes until a couple of days before school started, so that was kind of crazy to try and get copies started up for the first couple of days.

Despite all the stress of the newness of everything, it was a good first week. The students are awesome, and I love how the demographics of the classroom have changed, become more diverse. That always leads to deeper, more thoughtful, classroom discussions of topics and helps the kids help each other. Truly, most of my kids are going to be fantastic, and I’m excited to see what the year will bring!

All the staff is happy to be there, and despite initial confusion of what Admin wants, we really enjoy our new principal and admin team. Everyone is making a bigger effort to make this school be a better place, a happier place. Many of us came from my last school, and everyone I know that was there previously seems so much happier here. It’s a fascinating thing to watch the transition of some of these people I’ve known for the past two years in this new environment.

To conclude, what it it all boils down to is this: This year has the potential of being the most incredible year yet.