If it worked, we wouldn't be here: What you need to know before you arrive
If it worked, we wouldn't be here.
So said a second-year MTC-er when I stormed into his classroom irate that the district had given me a nine-weeks exam to replace the one I had been promising to my students on the novel we had actually been WORKING ON ALL TERM. According to the syllabus I received from the other English I teacher there were actually supposed to be two novels, so I set a breakneck pace for the first and had it complete by parent-teacher conferences, during which I also handed out a reading/presentation schedule for the remainder of the term (second novel). The next day during professional development I was told that the first novel was coming along slower than the other teacher had anticipated so we would postpone novel number two to the fourth nine weeks. So I had four weeks to kill with a novel we'd finished reading. Surprisingly it worked out well and we spent the time productively, but parents were confused, students were annoyed, and by the time we took the exam at the end of the nine weeks (testing has to be uniform across a prep) my students had read the book a good 4 weeks earlier. Add in to the mix a district exam that I got the morning I was to give my nine weeks exam (25 pages long, handed to you the morning of with five minutes till the bell and a line six people long for the copier and you are expected to run thirty copies for your class ...) and the exam on the novel had to be postponed until AFTER spring break. make that a six-week gap between reading and testing.
And I'm the one who will take the heat if the scores are low, in our weekly data inquiry meetings in which we talk about who and how we are all failing.
If it worked, we wouldn't be here.
The sooner you are able to INTERNALIZE this, the easier your life will be. Because it really sucks when the schools does things that screw you over. Lack of notification for required documents. EEF supplies that arrive in April (I still don't have all of mine, got the first bit a week before spring break). Lack of support/communication/consistency in general. But where it's really going to get frustrating is when THEY do things that screw over YOUR kids and YOU have no control over it. none. That's when you have be furious, think how awful the system is, take a breath, and remember ... if it worked, we wouldn't be here.
The fact that it doesn't work is why most of us won't be here two years from now. The fact that it doesn't work is why they need us so badly, why it's so frustrating, and probably the single most important thing to know before you get here. You will learn all summer long how to teach, what types of problems you will be facing, and how to deal with them. What they can't prepare you for is going through it every day.
The very second year who provided me with such an apt and oddly comforting explanation was ready to tear his own hair out yesterday due to a completely different but similarly idiotic situation. That part doesn't go away, that part doesn't get better. That part is why we're here, in schools with no support, in crazy no-name towns in the mississippi delta, in dysfunctional environments.
If it worked ... we wouldn't be here.
So said a second-year MTC-er when I stormed into his classroom irate that the district had given me a nine-weeks exam to replace the one I had been promising to my students on the novel we had actually been WORKING ON ALL TERM. According to the syllabus I received from the other English I teacher there were actually supposed to be two novels, so I set a breakneck pace for the first and had it complete by parent-teacher conferences, during which I also handed out a reading/presentation schedule for the remainder of the term (second novel). The next day during professional development I was told that the first novel was coming along slower than the other teacher had anticipated so we would postpone novel number two to the fourth nine weeks. So I had four weeks to kill with a novel we'd finished reading. Surprisingly it worked out well and we spent the time productively, but parents were confused, students were annoyed, and by the time we took the exam at the end of the nine weeks (testing has to be uniform across a prep) my students had read the book a good 4 weeks earlier. Add in to the mix a district exam that I got the morning I was to give my nine weeks exam (25 pages long, handed to you the morning of with five minutes till the bell and a line six people long for the copier and you are expected to run thirty copies for your class ...) and the exam on the novel had to be postponed until AFTER spring break. make that a six-week gap between reading and testing.
And I'm the one who will take the heat if the scores are low, in our weekly data inquiry meetings in which we talk about who and how we are all failing.
If it worked, we wouldn't be here.
The sooner you are able to INTERNALIZE this, the easier your life will be. Because it really sucks when the schools does things that screw you over. Lack of notification for required documents. EEF supplies that arrive in April (I still don't have all of mine, got the first bit a week before spring break). Lack of support/communication/consistency in general. But where it's really going to get frustrating is when THEY do things that screw over YOUR kids and YOU have no control over it. none. That's when you have be furious, think how awful the system is, take a breath, and remember ... if it worked, we wouldn't be here.
The fact that it doesn't work is why most of us won't be here two years from now. The fact that it doesn't work is why they need us so badly, why it's so frustrating, and probably the single most important thing to know before you get here. You will learn all summer long how to teach, what types of problems you will be facing, and how to deal with them. What they can't prepare you for is going through it every day.
The very second year who provided me with such an apt and oddly comforting explanation was ready to tear his own hair out yesterday due to a completely different but similarly idiotic situation. That part doesn't go away, that part doesn't get better. That part is why we're here, in schools with no support, in crazy no-name towns in the mississippi delta, in dysfunctional environments.
If it worked ... we wouldn't be here.
posted by Miss Marshwater at 5:43 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home