Mon 13 Aug 2007 @17:05
In a school as large as the one where I teach (over 3100 students and about 200 staff members) there are always people coming and going. But I think we’ve had a much larger than usual exodus over the summer months. And some of them are very experienced and very strong — I’ll miss them. It worries me a little.
On the other hand, even with all the changes our administrative team seems to be better organized and prepared than usual. I may not agree completely with their vision (what else is new) but there is less wishy-washy-ness in our initial meetings. Now they just need to follow through. I’ll believe it when I see it….
One thing I am definitely NOT looking forward to is Wednesday. That is traditionally the day for county-wide meetings but usually those are scheduled by subject area in several locations. So all the history teachers may meet at one school while all the science teachers meet at another…. This year they have all of us meeting at the Convention Center. We can even ride school buses from our schools to the meetings and back. Woo hoo! This is a large district. Over 25,000 employees (I don’t have my reference at hand for how many of those are instructional, but it’s safe to assume that it is the majority.) The last couple times they tried this it was a major MAJOR waste of time (to me). But a lot of teachers would tell you that’s true of most if not all the meetings we have to go to no matter how large or small.
I’m trying (really I am) to stay positive. I am anxious to get back to teaching. There are new opportunities that I’m excited to experience. And we have some new people that (as always) are… let’s see, one of my colleagues described them as, “so enthusiastic it’s adorable.” Or something like that. Some of them will be crushed. I don’t wish that on anyone, but about half of the people that start teaching don’t make it past five years. Some of them won’t make it through one. Sad but true.
I don’t mean to disparage their enthusiasm. Some teachers dismiss the newbies as “naive” (at best) or “perky” or… well “adorable”. (Although the person who said that today wasn’t being dismissive, but lamenting how important classroom management is and how poorly trained most of us are at it when we start.) Their enthusiasm actually helps me to get focused on what I need to do. There is SO much that all has to come together in a very short time to get a school up and running again after a 2-month hiatus. I won’t get it all done. I never do. But I’ll have enough to get through the first day or first couple days. And if I can stay a day or two ahead the whole year I’ll be ecstatic.
The cars have left the platform and begun inching up the long incline. Excitement builds until we reach the top and the roller coaster ride really begins to thrash us around. The thrashing begins next week. Look. No hands!
August 13th, 2007 at 17:52
According to our rep, our contract mandates that we have to be at work on Wednesday, but it does not specify where. If you have the 120 hours necessary to recertify, you can spend your time in your classroom (which is what I plan to do now that I’ve seen the schedule, ganked from a reliable source, for the debacle that will be Wednesday. Lots of schwag, lots of presenters from the district level, lots of presentations FROM PUBLISHING COMPANIES. And if it gets me in trouble–I just really, really don’t want to waste time when I have so much prep to do.)
The REAL job begins Monday. This is just. . .well, whatever it is.
August 14th, 2007 at 11:14
Ahh, I thought the kids started this Monday, but I guess it’s next Monday. We have a few days to go in before they start too, mostly for meetings. We also have big changes, including admin, which should make for a few interesting blog posts to say the least!
August 17th, 2007 at 05:44
wow, i really had a hard time focusing on the rest of this entry after I read those numbers at the beginning. 3100 students? What is the average class size?
With as much respect as I can manage, and aware of the fact that I don’t know you or your school, I have to say that for most of the kids, numbers that large cannot be good. For myself, at a hs of 2k, it was nothing but trouble, being virtually invisible in a sea of other teens…it was easy to skip class, etc., and I wound up quitting…Later I went to a private rural hs that had less than 200 kids in all four grades. Much, much better experience.
Feh, now I feel guilty…hope I did not offend.
No offense taken. There is evidence that smaller schools are better in many ways. But we are a very large district (fourth largest in Florida and 11th largest in the U.S. with something like 180,000 students and growing by a few thousand every year). Even with opening between three and eight new schools each year for the last few years we can’t really keep up with the growth. Big schools are just a fact of life here. ~Tim