It's 11:52 on Saturday morning and I'm still in bed. :) Because I can be. I don't have any obligations until practice this evening. I hope to God that the rink is not nearly as hot today as it was last night, or there is a good chance that some people may puke.
I realized today that I haven't said much about teaching since starting this blog, despite its title. The main reason for that is that I am currently on summer break, so there isn't much to say. Once August hits, there will be no stopping the onslaught of complaints, musings, and bragging that I do, I'm sure.
I will leave you with a little bit about my teaching background (I'm not sure if background is the right word. Situation? Hmm...) This year will be my 4th year teaching (if you count student teaching, which I do--because my master teacher is someone I'd known and worked with for a couple of years before I started student teaching, so she kinda threw me into it and let me do my thing. Plus, she was gone A LOT due to being in charge of putting together the accreditation binders as the school was brand new and going through accreditation. That was more information than you needed). Anyway, like I said, this will be my 4th year teaching and the 4th school I've been at. There were no English positions at the school I student taught at, so when interviewing for my first teaching job, I was offered a position at one of the other high schools in the area--the "ghetto" school. I'm sure I'll post on this more later, but just know that I was really sad and depressed about having to teach there at first and ended up absolutely falling in love with the school and students--not that both weren't without their (extreme) difficulties. Then, they cut the budget (surprise, surprise) and I was transferred to a middle school--the lowest performing one in the district. 10 times more "ghetto" than the high school I just left. Talk about a challenging year (this was just this last school year)! Now, our district and many of its schools had been in Performance Improvement for many years and the state had intervened (yay, California). The schools who made the Worst Schools in CA list (both the middle school and high school made the list, in addition to two others) had to take some action as mandated by the state. The middle school I was teaching at was closing and merging with another middle school to create a new, bigger, restructured middle school.
What did that mean? Oh, only that I was going to be transferred AGAIN--along with all of the other teachers in my middle school, 50% of the teachers in the other middle school, and 50% of the teachers at the high school. In sum, over 100 teachers were being shuffled around the district in order to meet these state requirements. I was actually stoked about the transfer. Last year was one of the most stressful years of my life and I had no desire to teach middle school ever again. I was almost certain I'd be back at my beloved high school. After all, the kids loved me, the assistant principals loved me, the staff loved me. Case closed. Right?
Not exactly. They brought in a new principal halfway through the year (who is rad. The last principal was the devil) and then got rid of the two assistant principals at the end of the year--there goes my foot in the door. Then they brought in a new assistant principal from within the district who doesn't know me. So, it all cams down to who you know in the end, and I didn't know her.
I waited and waited for the district to call me with a placement. I accepted the fact that I may not be at my beloved high school, but would have settled for either of the others. Some of my colleagues had been placed in May. We were up against the end of June and I hadn't heard a peep. Finally, I got the call and they offered me two middle schools. I chose the lesser of the two evils (hopefully. We'll see) and so I'm stuck teaching middle school once again. :(
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