ARRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!
HOW CAN HUMANS BE SO CRAPPY TO EACH OTHER???
You would think, as educators, dealing with hormonal and crazed adolescents would make it all the more important for us to be considerate and respectful of each other. But NO!!!! It's as if we take all the frustration our profession and the kids can sling at us and then dump it all over each other! I was treated with more consideration and respect by my co-workers when I was waiting tables! So now, when I put on my flack jacket to go to work in the morning (cause you never know if the kids will be firing bullets or verbal abuse.... even if just in the form of oblivious disrespect) I guess I better add hip-waders to the "uniform" requirements because I'm up to my ass in....
well, IN A RIVER OF IT!!!!
So forgive me all my fellow teachers. Because I didn't do: my job, the job of the teacher I was replacing and the job of the teacher who came in after me. If someone had told me I had to be 3 people and then include a 500 page "How-To" manual for the entire department maybe you could actually have gotten blood out of this stone! I forgot that it's not how you do the job that matters; it's how much you can be blamed for that really counts! All this time I've been under the misguided impression that, as substitutes, one facet of the job is that you can't always expect things to be perfectly predictable. The reality is that the whole profession is built on an underlying foundation of eternal change and evolution. So if you really need all your ducks color coordinated, in descending height, cross-filed by date-of-birth, age grouped and in a row then WHAT ARE YOU DOING WORKING HERE??????? Children, teen-agers, their parents and the education system just can't be packaged in a neat little box.............
So then, after being told that I was supremely inadequet, utterly ineffective and completely useless.........
I went back to the classroom I teach my IEP (special needs- Individualized Education Plan) kids in to find that EVERYTHING I had written on the board (today's agenda, Wed work, homework for the week-end, form and format for setting up problems with a variable and the required elements to solve and then answer appropriately) had been ERASED! It took me 20-30min to set-up that board. These kids can't just listen to me talk and take notes. Their brains aren't wired that way. They need to see the information, hear the information, have it demonstrated for them and then get individual support to help process the information. EVERYTHING WAS GONE! Except for our 2hr delayed start snow-schedule. That was on the board. He even went to the outer edge of the white board (just the other side of the snow schedule I had posted) to erase today's date, MY NAME, and my thought for the day quote.......... which, interestingly enough was: "The great secret of success is to go through life as a person who never gets used up." -Albert Schweitzer
So this other teacher had to think about what was on the board in order to decide what to erase and what to keep! It threw off my entire class, me the kids, all of us. And you know what the icing on my little cake was? HE DIDN'T NEED THE SPACE FOR ANYTHING!!!!! HE WROTE NOTHING ON THE BOARD. He KNEW he wasn't going to need the space and erased everything I'd written just because. I ran into him in the hall after class and said "You know, if you're going to clean the board could you at least leave my name and the date? He knew the class was IB and said he just "spaced" that he didn't need the board. Really? Because it seems to me you had to have read what was up there because you actually chose to leave some of the information there............
ARRRRRGGGGG!!!!!!!
I'm sorry. It all seems a bit of an over-reaction on my part now that I look back on this huge rant. I'm just tired and frustrated and I miss Molly everyday and everywhere and it shouldn't be the adults I work with who make my job so impossible to do.
Tomorrow is another day.........
Maybe tonight Molly will visit and then none of this will matter anymore.
HOW CAN HUMANS BE SO CRAPPY TO EACH OTHER???
You would think, as educators, dealing with hormonal and crazed adolescents would make it all the more important for us to be considerate and respectful of each other. But NO!!!! It's as if we take all the frustration our profession and the kids can sling at us and then dump it all over each other! I was treated with more consideration and respect by my co-workers when I was waiting tables! So now, when I put on my flack jacket to go to work in the morning (cause you never know if the kids will be firing bullets or verbal abuse.... even if just in the form of oblivious disrespect) I guess I better add hip-waders to the "uniform" requirements because I'm up to my ass in....
well, IN A RIVER OF IT!!!!
So forgive me all my fellow teachers. Because I didn't do: my job, the job of the teacher I was replacing and the job of the teacher who came in after me. If someone had told me I had to be 3 people and then include a 500 page "How-To" manual for the entire department maybe you could actually have gotten blood out of this stone! I forgot that it's not how you do the job that matters; it's how much you can be blamed for that really counts! All this time I've been under the misguided impression that, as substitutes, one facet of the job is that you can't always expect things to be perfectly predictable. The reality is that the whole profession is built on an underlying foundation of eternal change and evolution. So if you really need all your ducks color coordinated, in descending height, cross-filed by date-of-birth, age grouped and in a row then WHAT ARE YOU DOING WORKING HERE??????? Children, teen-agers, their parents and the education system just can't be packaged in a neat little box.............
So then, after being told that I was supremely inadequet, utterly ineffective and completely useless.........
I went back to the classroom I teach my IEP (special needs- Individualized Education Plan) kids in to find that EVERYTHING I had written on the board (today's agenda, Wed work, homework for the week-end, form and format for setting up problems with a variable and the required elements to solve and then answer appropriately) had been ERASED! It took me 20-30min to set-up that board. These kids can't just listen to me talk and take notes. Their brains aren't wired that way. They need to see the information, hear the information, have it demonstrated for them and then get individual support to help process the information. EVERYTHING WAS GONE! Except for our 2hr delayed start snow-schedule. That was on the board. He even went to the outer edge of the white board (just the other side of the snow schedule I had posted) to erase today's date, MY NAME, and my thought for the day quote.......... which, interestingly enough was: "The great secret of success is to go through life as a person who never gets used up." -Albert Schweitzer
So this other teacher had to think about what was on the board in order to decide what to erase and what to keep! It threw off my entire class, me the kids, all of us. And you know what the icing on my little cake was? HE DIDN'T NEED THE SPACE FOR ANYTHING!!!!! HE WROTE NOTHING ON THE BOARD. He KNEW he wasn't going to need the space and erased everything I'd written just because. I ran into him in the hall after class and said "You know, if you're going to clean the board could you at least leave my name and the date? He knew the class was IB and said he just "spaced" that he didn't need the board. Really? Because it seems to me you had to have read what was up there because you actually chose to leave some of the information there............
ARRRRRGGGGG!!!!!!!
I'm sorry. It all seems a bit of an over-reaction on my part now that I look back on this huge rant. I'm just tired and frustrated and I miss Molly everyday and everywhere and it shouldn't be the adults I work with who make my job so impossible to do.
Tomorrow is another day.........
Maybe tonight Molly will visit and then none of this will matter anymore.
Replies
Ah... that actually felt good... Oh the games people play... I don\'t know if I mentioned it... but I actually taught for a short while... I taught Occupational Preparation... special ed... and... I honestly believe that the vast majority of my students were there not because they were unable to learn... but because of behavioral problems... the dumping place of the school system... special ed... its truly truly sad... and unfortunately we see the results of what was dumped every single day...
the support system for new teachers and actually for everyone is about as much bs as everything... I\'m sorry I couldn\'t teach... I\'m just simply not emotionally strong enough to deal with \"coworkers\". I did well with the children... I\'m proud to say that a lady who was in charge of observations told me she stood outside my classroom for a full 15 minutes... too surprised and pleased to move on... she had to wait till class ended to meet me... she didn\'t want to just jot down her notes and go on to another class... she said that in the 5 years she had been in charge of observations for a 3 parish area it was the first time she had ever heard teaching going on in that classroom... so I\'m proud of that anyway... No I wasn\'t crushed by my students... I was crushed by department head... lies, lies and more lies... and other coworkers... just call it ignorance...
I was just reading the discussion topic about things people say... ouch... I\'ve been guilty of saying things that I meant to help... like at least you know she isn\'t hurting anymore... etc... people say that to me about Cara and although I know I still hurt... I am glad she doesn\'t hurt... I just wonder why she couldn\'t have gotten the help she needed here... I can\'t say she\'d never have hurt... but at least she could have survived... We go on and we should... but no I don\'t see it ever being easy...