You Are a Question Mark |
 You seek knowledge and insight in every form possible. You love learning. And while you know a lot, you don't act like a know it all. You're open to learning you're wrong. You ask a lot of questions, collect a lot of data, and always dig deep to find out more. You're naturally curious and inquisitive. You jump to ask a question when the opportunity arises. Your friends see you as interesting, insightful, and thought provoking. (But they're not always up for the intense inquisitions that you love!) You excel in: Higher education You get along best with: The Comma |
Monday, August 11, 2008
I'm back.
I think.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Will Teach for Food
[alternate title: "A Teacher With No Class"]
School starts next Tuesday, and we have spent the last few weeks hitting all the sales and loading up on school supplies (is it just me, or do the lists get longer every year?). The kids have been to their open houses and orientations; they've met their teachers and walked their schedules. There is excitement mixed with anxiety over the start of a new school year and the inevitable melancholy over the end of another summer.
This year, however, there is an entirely new back-to-school emotion in our home: sorrow.
You see, this will be the first time in three years that I will not be going back to school. There were no boxes of shiny number two pencils and soft pink erasers for me; no pristine glue sticks, yet to be besmirched by sweaty hands; no reams of spotless notebook paper, awaiting the creative spark of young minds unleashed.
For the first time in three years, I find myself jobless, and I am vacillating between emotions at such a dizzying speed that my head is spinning. First and foremost, I am sad. I love teaching. I love the kids, I love the curriculum, and I love the challenge of creating a lesson and teaching it in such a way that the students finally have that "aha!" moment. By the time they reach middle school, students with learning disabilities have often given up on themselves. They believe they are "stupid" and, since so many of their challenges are reading-based, they are particularly frustrated in my class. Seeing their excitement and pride when they experience success is one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever known.
I am also angry. I'm angry with myself for quitting my job, even though I know it was the right thing to do. My school, my administrator, and my department were toxic. Everyone was so focused on self-preservation (and, in some cases, "protecting the building") that the kids became an afterthought. Sure, they had their favorites, and those kids were looked after well, but the vast majority were simply lost in the shuffle. I tried to pick up some of the slack, and I made myself so ill that I had to take emergency medical leave. When I realized that IEPs were being all but ignored, and everyone who had the ability to fix this was playing pass-the-buck, I knew it was time for me to go.
But I'm also angry with my district. I'm angry because I'm a highly qualified, licensed special education teacher. I have excellent performance reviews, and I have a resume that makes overachievers look lazy. I have had 10 interviews in the past three months, all of which have been very positive. In fact, I had one interview that was set up by one of my professors, and she told me they loved me. And yet...not only have there been no offers - I haven't even received any "thanks, but no thanks" phone calls. Whatever happened to etiquette?
Finally, I am frightened. I cannot fathom what has happened that is preventing me from finding a job. I am a good teacher - truly. My students learn in my class, their test scores improve, their parents appreciate my responsiveness and dedication to their kids. I make my lessons engaging and interesting. I have parents come back to me, three years later, and tell me I'm still their child's favorite teacher, and they wish I'd move up to high school. My colleagues (with very few exceptions) enjoy working with me. I'm a hard worker; I take on projects and tasks that no one else is willing to do, and I get them done. And, as I said, my performance reviews are spotless. Why, then, can't I get a job?
For now, I will concentrate on my own children and make sure they have a good September. As for me, I guess I will worry about that later.
School starts next Tuesday, and we have spent the last few weeks hitting all the sales and loading up on school supplies (is it just me, or do the lists get longer every year?). The kids have been to their open houses and orientations; they've met their teachers and walked their schedules. There is excitement mixed with anxiety over the start of a new school year and the inevitable melancholy over the end of another summer.
This year, however, there is an entirely new back-to-school emotion in our home: sorrow.
You see, this will be the first time in three years that I will not be going back to school. There were no boxes of shiny number two pencils and soft pink erasers for me; no pristine glue sticks, yet to be besmirched by sweaty hands; no reams of spotless notebook paper, awaiting the creative spark of young minds unleashed.
For the first time in three years, I find myself jobless, and I am vacillating between emotions at such a dizzying speed that my head is spinning. First and foremost, I am sad. I love teaching. I love the kids, I love the curriculum, and I love the challenge of creating a lesson and teaching it in such a way that the students finally have that "aha!" moment. By the time they reach middle school, students with learning disabilities have often given up on themselves. They believe they are "stupid" and, since so many of their challenges are reading-based, they are particularly frustrated in my class. Seeing their excitement and pride when they experience success is one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever known.
I am also angry. I'm angry with myself for quitting my job, even though I know it was the right thing to do. My school, my administrator, and my department were toxic. Everyone was so focused on self-preservation (and, in some cases, "protecting the building") that the kids became an afterthought. Sure, they had their favorites, and those kids were looked after well, but the vast majority were simply lost in the shuffle. I tried to pick up some of the slack, and I made myself so ill that I had to take emergency medical leave. When I realized that IEPs were being all but ignored, and everyone who had the ability to fix this was playing pass-the-buck, I knew it was time for me to go.
But I'm also angry with my district. I'm angry because I'm a highly qualified, licensed special education teacher. I have excellent performance reviews, and I have a resume that makes overachievers look lazy. I have had 10 interviews in the past three months, all of which have been very positive. In fact, I had one interview that was set up by one of my professors, and she told me they loved me. And yet...not only have there been no offers - I haven't even received any "thanks, but no thanks" phone calls. Whatever happened to etiquette?
Finally, I am frightened. I cannot fathom what has happened that is preventing me from finding a job. I am a good teacher - truly. My students learn in my class, their test scores improve, their parents appreciate my responsiveness and dedication to their kids. I make my lessons engaging and interesting. I have parents come back to me, three years later, and tell me I'm still their child's favorite teacher, and they wish I'd move up to high school. My colleagues (with very few exceptions) enjoy working with me. I'm a hard worker; I take on projects and tasks that no one else is willing to do, and I get them done. And, as I said, my performance reviews are spotless. Why, then, can't I get a job?
For now, I will concentrate on my own children and make sure they have a good September. As for me, I guess I will worry about that later.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Teacher Profiling...
I found this link on another teacher's blog (thank you, Ramblin' Educat). Since we pedagogues are always talking about Multiple Intelligences, I thought I'd get an updated profile on mine. Big shock - I'm verbal/linguistic. I guess it's a good thing I'm an English teacher! I was surprised to see that I'm so musical, however. Apparently, those piano lessons weren't wasted after all. ;-)
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Just because I'm paranoid...
...doesn't mean they're not out to get me. Isn't that how the saying goes? I stopped posting way back in October because I was convinced someone from my school would find this blog, and it would torpedo my teaching career. My paranoia was so palpable, in fact, that it caught the attention of the NEA (thanks go to CaliforniaTeacherGuy for pointing out that link).
Well, a great deal has transpired in the past 10 months - none of it terribly good - and I have come to the sad realization that I can no longer be effective in that building. There is a pervasive culture of secrecy, self-protection, and CYA that places the needs of the building over the needs of the students, and I simply cannot support that. It's one thing to not "tell tales out of school" in order to protect individual's reputations. After all, everyone has a bad day now and then, and we've all said and done things we shouldn't have occasionally. It's quite another thing, however, to knowingly and willingly participate in an ongoing cover-up of unprofessional, unethical, and occasionally illegal practices.
Allow me to share a hypothetical situation with you - a "what would you do," if you will:
What if it came to your attention, a few days before your high-stakes state testing, that several of your special ed students were not going to get their necessary testing accommodations? In some instances, their case managers had written their IEPs incorrectly, but in others, the testing coordinators misread the accommodations pages. What if you pointed this out to the testing coordinators, and they did nothing? What if you pointed this out to the administration, and they did nothing? What if you had to physically remove certain students from the testing rooms and refuse to test them without their accommodations in order to ensure they would be tested correctly? What if, when all was said and done, your administration and testing coordinators put the blame for all of this back on the case managers? What if they were able to get away with this because the students involved were mostly from poor, uneducated and/or non-English speaking homes, and their parents wouldn't know enough to complain?
Of course, this is all hypothetical.
As for me, I left my school, and I did so in such a way that enabled me to remain in the good graces of my district in the long run. Unfortunately, this has left me unemployed in the short run. I have been interviewing and sending my resume around, but I am not having a great deal of luck. I can't help but wonder if someone has put out the word that I'm a bit zealous in my advocacy for my students. And with that statement, I've brought us full-circle back around to the paranoia that caused me to stop blogging in the first place.
Still, I am not ready to accept defeat quite yet. I continue to hold out hope that there is a teaching position for me in a school that values its students above its reputation (or, perhaps, that bases its reputation on that value). Stay tuned...this story isn't over.
Well, a great deal has transpired in the past 10 months - none of it terribly good - and I have come to the sad realization that I can no longer be effective in that building. There is a pervasive culture of secrecy, self-protection, and CYA that places the needs of the building over the needs of the students, and I simply cannot support that. It's one thing to not "tell tales out of school" in order to protect individual's reputations. After all, everyone has a bad day now and then, and we've all said and done things we shouldn't have occasionally. It's quite another thing, however, to knowingly and willingly participate in an ongoing cover-up of unprofessional, unethical, and occasionally illegal practices.
Allow me to share a hypothetical situation with you - a "what would you do," if you will:
What if it came to your attention, a few days before your high-stakes state testing, that several of your special ed students were not going to get their necessary testing accommodations? In some instances, their case managers had written their IEPs incorrectly, but in others, the testing coordinators misread the accommodations pages. What if you pointed this out to the testing coordinators, and they did nothing? What if you pointed this out to the administration, and they did nothing? What if you had to physically remove certain students from the testing rooms and refuse to test them without their accommodations in order to ensure they would be tested correctly? What if, when all was said and done, your administration and testing coordinators put the blame for all of this back on the case managers? What if they were able to get away with this because the students involved were mostly from poor, uneducated and/or non-English speaking homes, and their parents wouldn't know enough to complain?
Of course, this is all hypothetical.
As for me, I left my school, and I did so in such a way that enabled me to remain in the good graces of my district in the long run. Unfortunately, this has left me unemployed in the short run. I have been interviewing and sending my resume around, but I am not having a great deal of luck. I can't help but wonder if someone has put out the word that I'm a bit zealous in my advocacy for my students. And with that statement, I've brought us full-circle back around to the paranoia that caused me to stop blogging in the first place.
Still, I am not ready to accept defeat quite yet. I continue to hold out hope that there is a teaching position for me in a school that values its students above its reputation (or, perhaps, that bases its reputation on that value). Stay tuned...this story isn't over.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Not dead yet...
I have been avoiding my blog as of late because this school year has been doing its level best to kill me. I've become so increasingly paranoid, that I'm afraid the mere mention of the ridiculous goings-on at my place of employment will somehow alert my administrators to the fact that I'm, quite literally, telling tales out of school, they will track me down, and I'll be fired on the spot. This is, of course, completely insane, as the administrator to whom I report cannot even run a PowerPoint presentation - a fact she recently demonstrated to all of us during yet another pointless staff development. Still, I worry. However, I just saw that the amazing Ms. Cornelius who is a daily read for me, has added me to her blogroll. Surely I can risk a little career hara-kiri in light of that, can I not?
What has been going on at my school that has my knickers in such a twist? We have failed to meet AYP for two years in a row. Should we fail again this year, in even one of our sub-categories, the county will come in and take us over. This would be bad (at least, in the eyes of those administrators who would, in all likelihood, lose their jobs). If you or I were handling this type of crisis, we might establish a rigorous after-school tutoring program (with a monetary incentive for those teachers who agreed to tutor; something my county currently has available). We might contact our feeder schools who are not meeting their AYP to determine how we can implement interventions before those students come to us. We might crack down on classroom behavior disruptions and actually enforce our rules so that students who consistently and deliberately prevent others from learning are removed from the school before they can do irreparable damage. Finally, should we choose to be punitive with our staff, we might consider the fact that over three-quarters of our teachers are in an evaluation cycle, and we might target only those whose students performed incredibly poorly.
What I would not do, and what, I am guessing, you wouldn't do either, is assign reams of paperwork whose sole purpose for existence seems to be to cover the administration team's collective posteriors if and when we do not meet AYP. We have spent more time during the past four weeks analyzing data, filling out tables (because no one seems to know how to create a simple spreadsheet), and reviewing assessments than we have planning lessons and teaching students. Several of us have threatened to design and purchase t-shirts that say, "Paperwork doesn't raise test scores; TEACHING raises test scores!"
Today, I had to turn in a curriculum map for the entire school year (which included MYP assessments and areas of interaction) and a form identifying my students who may be "at risk" for not passing their high stakes tests. I teach Special Ed; ALL of my students are at risk. I spent approximately 25-30 hours completing this form over the past week including gathering the data (none of which was provided by any of our departments), putting it into a spreadsheet (I converted their Word document into Excel), administering a pre-assessment as required, analyzing the two pieces of pre-assessment data, determining the students' areas of need, and planning for intervention. I did this for 47 students. That time estimate does not include the hours I spent in the computer lab assisting four of my colleagues who were not given their data and who had no idea how to complete this document.
Did I mention that our department chair (who gave us no help whatsoever) took the week off to go on a cruise in celebration of her divorce being finalized?
Did I mention my review conference was just scheduled for this week (I am postponing it)?
Did I mention that my luddite administrator is requiring me to PRINT OUT two pages from my Blackboard site to bring to my conference in order to prove I use it (this despite the fact that she has full administrative access to my site)?
Good grief! When do I get to teach?
What has been going on at my school that has my knickers in such a twist? We have failed to meet AYP for two years in a row. Should we fail again this year, in even one of our sub-categories, the county will come in and take us over. This would be bad (at least, in the eyes of those administrators who would, in all likelihood, lose their jobs). If you or I were handling this type of crisis, we might establish a rigorous after-school tutoring program (with a monetary incentive for those teachers who agreed to tutor; something my county currently has available). We might contact our feeder schools who are not meeting their AYP to determine how we can implement interventions before those students come to us. We might crack down on classroom behavior disruptions and actually enforce our rules so that students who consistently and deliberately prevent others from learning are removed from the school before they can do irreparable damage. Finally, should we choose to be punitive with our staff, we might consider the fact that over three-quarters of our teachers are in an evaluation cycle, and we might target only those whose students performed incredibly poorly.
What I would not do, and what, I am guessing, you wouldn't do either, is assign reams of paperwork whose sole purpose for existence seems to be to cover the administration team's collective posteriors if and when we do not meet AYP. We have spent more time during the past four weeks analyzing data, filling out tables (because no one seems to know how to create a simple spreadsheet), and reviewing assessments than we have planning lessons and teaching students. Several of us have threatened to design and purchase t-shirts that say, "Paperwork doesn't raise test scores; TEACHING raises test scores!"
Today, I had to turn in a curriculum map for the entire school year (which included MYP assessments and areas of interaction) and a form identifying my students who may be "at risk" for not passing their high stakes tests. I teach Special Ed; ALL of my students are at risk. I spent approximately 25-30 hours completing this form over the past week including gathering the data (none of which was provided by any of our departments), putting it into a spreadsheet (I converted their Word document into Excel), administering a pre-assessment as required, analyzing the two pieces of pre-assessment data, determining the students' areas of need, and planning for intervention. I did this for 47 students. That time estimate does not include the hours I spent in the computer lab assisting four of my colleagues who were not given their data and who had no idea how to complete this document.
Did I mention that our department chair (who gave us no help whatsoever) took the week off to go on a cruise in celebration of her divorce being finalized?
Did I mention my review conference was just scheduled for this week (I am postponing it)?
Did I mention that my luddite administrator is requiring me to PRINT OUT two pages from my Blackboard site to bring to my conference in order to prove I use it (this despite the fact that she has full administrative access to my site)?
Good grief! When do I get to teach?
Not dead yet...
I have been avoiding my blog as of late because this school year has been doing its level best to kill me. I've become so increasingly paranoid, that I'm afraid the mere mention of the ridiculous goings-on at my place of employment will somehow alert my administrators to the fact that I'm, quite literally, telling tales out of school, they will track me down, and I'll be fired on the spot. This is, of course, completely insane, as the administrator to whom I report cannot even run a PowerPoint presentation - a fact she recently demonstrated to all of us during yet another pointless staff development. Still, I worry. However, I just saw that the amazing Ms. Cornelius who is a daily read for me, has added me to her blogroll. Surely I can risk a little career hara-kiri in light of that, can I not?
What has been going on at my school that has my knickers in such a twist? We have failed to meet AYP for two years in a row. Should we fail again this year, in even one of our sub-categories, the county will come in and take us over. This would be bad (at least, in the eyes of those administrators who would, in all likelihood, lose their jobs). If you or I were handling this type of crisis, we might establish a rigorous after-school tutoring program (with a monetary incentive for those teachers who agreed to tutor; something my county currently has available). We might contact our feeder schools who are not meeting their AYP to determine how we can implement interventions before those students come to us. We might crack down on classroom behavior disruptions and actually enforce our rules so that students who consistently and deliberately prevent others from learning are removed from the school before they can do irreparable damage. Finally, should we choose to be punitive with our staff, we might consider the fact that over three-quarters of our teachers are in an evaluation cycle, and we might target only those whose students performed incredibly poorly.
What I would not do, and what, I am guessing, you wouldn't do either, is assign reams of paperwork whose sole purpose for existence seems to be to cover the administration team's collective posteriors if and when we do not meet AYP. We have spent more time during the past four weeks analyzing data, filling out tables (because no one seems to know how to create a simple spreadsheet), and reviewing assessments than we have planning lessons and teaching students. Several of us have threatened to design and purchase t-shirts that say, "Paperwork doesn't raise test scores; TEACHING raises test scores!"
Today, I had to turn in a curriculum map for the entire school year (which included MYP assessments and areas of interaction) and a form identifying my students who may be "at risk" for not passing their high stakes tests. I teach Special Ed; ALL of my students are at risk. I spent approximately 25-30 hours completing this form over the past week including gathering the data (none of which was provided by any of our departments), putting it into a spreadsheet (I converted their Word document into Excel), administering a pre-assessment as required, analyzing the two pieces of pre-assessment data, determining the students' areas of need, and planning for intervention. I did this for 47 students. That time estimate does not include the hours I spent in the computer lab assisting four of my colleagues who were not given their data and who had no idea how to complete this document.
Did I mention that our department chair (who gave us no help whatsoever) took the week off to go on a cruise in celebration of her divorce being finalized?
Did I mention my review conference was just scheduled for this week (I am postponing it)?
Did I mention that my luddite administrator is requiring me to PRINT OUT two pages from my Blackboard site to bring to my conference in order to prove I use it (this despite the fact that she has full administrative access to my site)?
Good grief! When do I get to teach?
What has been going on at my school that has my knickers in such a twist? We have failed to meet AYP for two years in a row. Should we fail again this year, in even one of our sub-categories, the county will come in and take us over. This would be bad (at least, in the eyes of those administrators who would, in all likelihood, lose their jobs). If you or I were handling this type of crisis, we might establish a rigorous after-school tutoring program (with a monetary incentive for those teachers who agreed to tutor; something my county currently has available). We might contact our feeder schools who are not meeting their AYP to determine how we can implement interventions before those students come to us. We might crack down on classroom behavior disruptions and actually enforce our rules so that students who consistently and deliberately prevent others from learning are removed from the school before they can do irreparable damage. Finally, should we choose to be punitive with our staff, we might consider the fact that over three-quarters of our teachers are in an evaluation cycle, and we might target only those whose students performed incredibly poorly.
What I would not do, and what, I am guessing, you wouldn't do either, is assign reams of paperwork whose sole purpose for existence seems to be to cover the administration team's collective posteriors if and when we do not meet AYP. We have spent more time during the past four weeks analyzing data, filling out tables (because no one seems to know how to create a simple spreadsheet), and reviewing assessments than we have planning lessons and teaching students. Several of us have threatened to design and purchase t-shirts that say, "Paperwork doesn't raise test scores; TEACHING raises test scores!"
Today, I had to turn in a curriculum map for the entire school year (which included MYP assessments and areas of interaction) and a form identifying my students who may be "at risk" for not passing their high stakes tests. I teach Special Ed; ALL of my students are at risk. I spent approximately 25-30 hours completing this form over the past week including gathering the data (none of which was provided by any of our departments), putting it into a spreadsheet (I converted their Word document into Excel), administering a pre-assessment as required, analyzing the two pieces of pre-assessment data, determining the students' areas of need, and planning for intervention. I did this for 47 students. That time estimate does not include the hours I spent in the computer lab assisting four of my colleagues who were not given their data and who had no idea how to complete this document.
Did I mention that our department chair (who gave us no help whatsoever) took the week off to go on a cruise in celebration of her divorce being finalized?
Did I mention my review conference was just scheduled for this week (I am postponing it)?
Did I mention that my luddite administrator is requiring me to PRINT OUT two pages from my Blackboard site to bring to my conference in order to prove I use it (this despite the fact that she has full administrative access to my site)?
Good grief! When do I get to teach?
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Identity Crisis
So...what do you teach?
When you live in the DC area, the first question people tend to ask you is the ubiquitous, "What do you do?" When you are a teacher, the first question people ask is, of course, "What do you teach?"
Today, a mere five weeks before our students will once again fill the halls of my school, I cannot honestly answer that question. I find that deeply troubling.
I know, you see, that I will be teaching one or more periods of 7th grade self-contained LD English...but...but...BUT...
(there's always a "But," and with me, sadly, it's usually a big "But")
...but, I do not know whether or not I will be teaching any teamed English classes or, if I am, how many there will be. I also do not know, at this time, whether my request to teach one or more special ed reading classes (for which I am taking several trainings on my "vacation" time this summer) will be honored. THEN, I just found out there is a slight possibility that I may be "asked" to teach one or more of the 8th grade self-contained LD English classes (with my darling students from last year).
It is this last "but" that has me truly concerned for so very many reasons. Forgetting, for a moment, that the soonest this decision will be made is next week, which would leave me FOUR weeks to begin to familiarize myself with an entirely new curriculum and start planning for September, I cannot forget that at all because I will actually be out of town with my children on vacation for eight days next week which means I will only have THREE weeks to prepare. In addition, there are two high-stakes tests given in English in the 8th grade in my state: reading and writing. This means that I would have to take the same motley crew I had last year (most of whom were reading on a 2nd - 4th grade level) and not only continue to bring them up to grade level on reading but get them to write a coherent and legible five-paragraph essay to a prompt as well, all the while dealing with the severe behavior issues which spurred the decision to loop in the first place.
I consider myself an intelligent woman, but I must admit I am confused. Currently, I am required to be Highly Qualified in English in order to teach in a self-contained classroom (I am). I am provisionally licensed to teach students with learning and emotional disabilities until I complete my Master's program later this year (in which, I might boast, I currently have a 4.0 GPA). I report to no fewer than five administrators and department chairs because I represent two separate departments, which means I also attend twice as many meetings (not including IEP meetings). In my teamed classes, I plan at least half the lessons and teach at least half of the time. I take equal responsibility for all of the students in all of my classes, regardless of whether or not they are "my" students on paper. Last year, I had 14 students on my Case Load, two of whom required multiple meetings with representation from multiple organizations due to the severity of their needs (one of these also had legal representation present and threatened to sue). Regardless of the number of meetings I am required to attend, the number of students I service, or the number of preps I have, I am allotted no additional planning time nor am I excused from any meetings for any reason (many of my colleagues in special ed simply do not show up for department and team meetings and it is a non-issue; because I choose to be responsible, I am now expected to attend all the time...or else).
I have no problem with any of this. Believe me – there are worse things in life than being known as the exception to the rule. Sadly, when one of my colleagues in general education says, “Oh, Ms. White, I don’t think of you as a Special Ed teacher!” I know it is meant as a compliment, and I understand why. As a parent of a child with special needs and as a special educator, I am all too familiar with those for whom the bar is set so low it might as well be a limbo stick. And I’m not here to point fingers, because there is plenty of blame to go around. Rather, I want to ask one, simple question: If YOU were an administrator, and YOU had a special education teacher on your staff who was highly qualified, highly educated, highly motivated, well-liked and well-respected (by your staff, your parents, and your students), and who was willing to take on the less-glamorous jobs if it meant helping the neediest kids, wouldn’t you do whatever was in your power to keep that person happy and ensure she would STAY on your staff?
Memo to my administration: TELL ME WHAT I’M TEACHING, PLEASE! It would make me so very happy. ☺
When you live in the DC area, the first question people tend to ask you is the ubiquitous, "What do you do?" When you are a teacher, the first question people ask is, of course, "What do you teach?"
Today, a mere five weeks before our students will once again fill the halls of my school, I cannot honestly answer that question. I find that deeply troubling.
I know, you see, that I will be teaching one or more periods of 7th grade self-contained LD English...but...but...BUT...
(there's always a "But," and with me, sadly, it's usually a big "But")
...but, I do not know whether or not I will be teaching any teamed English classes or, if I am, how many there will be. I also do not know, at this time, whether my request to teach one or more special ed reading classes (for which I am taking several trainings on my "vacation" time this summer) will be honored. THEN, I just found out there is a slight possibility that I may be "asked" to teach one or more of the 8th grade self-contained LD English classes (with my darling students from last year).
It is this last "but" that has me truly concerned for so very many reasons. Forgetting, for a moment, that the soonest this decision will be made is next week, which would leave me FOUR weeks to begin to familiarize myself with an entirely new curriculum and start planning for September, I cannot forget that at all because I will actually be out of town with my children on vacation for eight days next week which means I will only have THREE weeks to prepare. In addition, there are two high-stakes tests given in English in the 8th grade in my state: reading and writing. This means that I would have to take the same motley crew I had last year (most of whom were reading on a 2nd - 4th grade level) and not only continue to bring them up to grade level on reading but get them to write a coherent and legible five-paragraph essay to a prompt as well, all the while dealing with the severe behavior issues which spurred the decision to loop in the first place.
I consider myself an intelligent woman, but I must admit I am confused. Currently, I am required to be Highly Qualified in English in order to teach in a self-contained classroom (I am). I am provisionally licensed to teach students with learning and emotional disabilities until I complete my Master's program later this year (in which, I might boast, I currently have a 4.0 GPA). I report to no fewer than five administrators and department chairs because I represent two separate departments, which means I also attend twice as many meetings (not including IEP meetings). In my teamed classes, I plan at least half the lessons and teach at least half of the time. I take equal responsibility for all of the students in all of my classes, regardless of whether or not they are "my" students on paper. Last year, I had 14 students on my Case Load, two of whom required multiple meetings with representation from multiple organizations due to the severity of their needs (one of these also had legal representation present and threatened to sue). Regardless of the number of meetings I am required to attend, the number of students I service, or the number of preps I have, I am allotted no additional planning time nor am I excused from any meetings for any reason (many of my colleagues in special ed simply do not show up for department and team meetings and it is a non-issue; because I choose to be responsible, I am now expected to attend all the time...or else).
I have no problem with any of this. Believe me – there are worse things in life than being known as the exception to the rule. Sadly, when one of my colleagues in general education says, “Oh, Ms. White, I don’t think of you as a Special Ed teacher!” I know it is meant as a compliment, and I understand why. As a parent of a child with special needs and as a special educator, I am all too familiar with those for whom the bar is set so low it might as well be a limbo stick. And I’m not here to point fingers, because there is plenty of blame to go around. Rather, I want to ask one, simple question: If YOU were an administrator, and YOU had a special education teacher on your staff who was highly qualified, highly educated, highly motivated, well-liked and well-respected (by your staff, your parents, and your students), and who was willing to take on the less-glamorous jobs if it meant helping the neediest kids, wouldn’t you do whatever was in your power to keep that person happy and ensure she would STAY on your staff?
Memo to my administration: TELL ME WHAT I’M TEACHING, PLEASE! It would make me so very happy. ☺
Friday, July 28, 2006
The results are in...
This was the first year the students in my grade took this particular test, so there is really no basis for comparison. I suppose I will need to go back and see how they performed on their 5th grade reading test to truly measure their success, but, truth be told, I am pleased. There were a few students who, in my opinion, could have done better (and should have done better). One boy, who was in the group to whom I administered the test orally, was clearly not engaged during the test. I watched him zone out, and I could tell he wasn't paying attention to me as I read the passages and questions.
Several of my students who did not pass the test were placed in a reading class this year with a brand new teacher who had no teaching experience at all, nor did she have or receive any formal training. While she had the best of intentions, she was improperly mentored and supervised, and these students did not receive correct reading instruction. I mentioned my concerns about this to a few individuals in my department who gave me the standard, "Whaddyawantmetadoaboudit?" response. Thankfully, I also mentioned my concern to my administrator, both in person and in writing. Thus, when I am questioned as to why these students did not pass, I can point to that conversation and remind her that they did not receive proper reading support.
Of course, there were many students who came to me reading five grades below grade level. "How did they make it to middle school?" you ask. We are not supposed to question. The past is the past; ours is to deal with the present. We are told that our job is to get these students up to grade level so that they will pass the assessment. To paraphrase Yoda, "Ask not...DO." The fact that many of these students barely failed, is, to me, a success. Progress was made; learning took place.
I am using part of my summer off to take some reading training in the great hope that they will allow me to teach some reading classes. As an HQ teacher, it makes more sense for me to teach reading and English to my self-contained kids then it does for me to teach in the teamed classes. We've tried it the other way, and we've seen the results; it doesn't work. I truly couldn't care less about those test scores, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let those kids leave middle school without being able to read!
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