The English Teacher

I often wondered what that phrase meant.  Even though I’m still not clear about the etymology of the phrase, I’m inclined to believe that at the end of the rope, is a noose. 

It’s only October, but I’m already tired.  I don’t mean physically tired, though staying up late to grade papers hasn’t really helped, but I’ve been feeling emotionally and spiritually tired lately. 

This year has definitely been pretty disappointing.  I thought that things would get better since I was moving from a school in a lower SES area to a school in a higher SES area.  It’s not an understatement to say that that was a stupid assumption. 

Last year was not easy for me.  It had its share of trials, but I think I had some freedoms, as well.  This year, I feel so trapped.  I have classes of entitled kids who obviously have never heard the word, “No,” and who feel the need to argue about everything.  I’m seriously inclined to let them fail their classes.  The unfortunate consequence that I would have to face is the onslaught of phone calls and emails from parents demanding to know how it is possible their precious children could fail.  In my ideal world, I would be able to tell them that their kids are stupid assholes who should be put out to work because there’s no chance in hell they would get into college.   I would also tell the parents to grow up and start acting like parents.  They need to stop letting their kids get away with stupid shit.  They need to teach their kids to respect authority, not fight it.

If it was only the kids, then that would be an infinitesimally understandable issue.  However, I’ve been having difficulties with an adult classroom aide and now, I’m having some issues with a co-teacher.  I think my problems with the former actually stems from the fact that he was an ignorant jackass–I’m actually being kind.  My issues with my co-teacher, though, arises from the fact that I feel as if I’m doing all of the work for the class.  Even though I’m the lead teacher, it was my understanding that the duties were suppposed to be shared between the two of us.  And yet, I am the one who is doing all of the lesson planning, teaching, grading, and creating of quizzes and tests.  When I ask her to help me out, she almost looks affronted.  I understand that she is very busy with her students and with her family, but do your damn job already. 

I need a break; otherwise, I’m going to be the one to break up.

I had a pretty demoralizing debriefing after being observed by my supervisor.  In short, I was asked if I enjoyed being a teacher or if I liked my students.  When I heard those questions, I was taken aback.  I didn’t think I hated the kids, but something in my demeanor must have made it seem like it.  Quite frankly, I was a bit upset.  When my supervisor observed me, I thought I was doing a pretty good job and that the lesson was rather entertaining.  However, I was told that I jumped from a really high-level of thought, to a very low-level activity.  Upon reflection, I can see that she is correct.  This doesn’t mean that I feel better about myself.  I’m not particularly upset about the fact that my lesson was criticized.  After all, I’m pretty new at teaching.  I am, however, rather agitated at the thought that I look as if I don’t want to be in my classroom with my students.  I won’t lie.  Even if I dislike the students, I can’t show it.  Despite everything, I need to be encouraging and kind.  But, and you knew there was a but, it’s SO HARD.  Even when I come in with good expectations, these students destroy them with their behavior.  I remember being told to always be positive or think optimistically, “This day, this class will do well,” but I’m not an optimist by nature.  It’s only September.  There’s no way I can survive the rest of the school year if I can’t think of some way to get around these kids.  Unfortunately, this is a team-taught class so there’s another teacher in the class with me.  While this is usually a pretty good thing, the other teacher (OT) has taken a strict disciplinarian (authoritarian, rather than authoritative) route with the kids.  Because of the kids’ horrible behavior at the very beginning of school, I initally didn’t mind, but now, I wonder if the OT isn’t being too persnickety about some of the things that are being punished.  Because we’re both teachers, I know the students can’t help but group us together as one unit, but I’m a bit worried that this is actually hindering us from building relationships with one another.  By relationships, I don’t mean friendships, but some sort of a connection which causes the students to want to succeed, if only for my sake and goodwill.  I must admit, this whole situation is very worrisome.

I won’t lie.  This really was a difficult week for me.  Part of the problem is due to the fact that I am at a new school this year.  In a way, I feel as if this my first year all over again.  Another problem is that I am coming from a school with block scheduling to a school that is on a regular bell schedule.   Now I understand what my instructors and lecturers meant when they said that it was more difficult to adjust from planning for a block period to a regular period than vice versa.  Thirdly, the student climate and population is very different from what I experienced last year.  The socio-economic status of most of the students in my school last year was relatively low.  The students mostly came from working-class families (and yet, they still managed to afford the latest game systems and Air Jordans).  This year, my students are mostly from the upper-class.  One look at the student parking lot immediately reveals the disparity between their lives and the lives of the teachers.  Whereas the students drive BMW’s and Hummers, we drive Corollas and Civics.  One of the assignments I gave out to my students was to plan a short introductory speech, just so I could learn a bit more about them.  Well, I learned that they are much more cosmopolitan than I can ever hope to be.  During my summer vacations in high school, I just lolled around at home or worked.  These kids travel, and they travel well.  Those who did not travel went to sleepaway camps.  In Colorado.  Is it strange to be jealous of kids who are 11 years younger than I am?

Aside from this feeling of insecurity, I have a rather difficult prep.  This year, I have three sections of 9th grade and two sections of Honors 10.  The latter classes are a nice group, if rather chatty.  I’m anticipating very little problem from them this year.  However, the 9th graders are already problematic.  Two of the sections are actually not bad, except for the fact that they are also a little chatty.  However, the third section is chatty and rather arrogant.  I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing or if they’re just trying to hide their own insecurities, but I have never come across a group as obnoxious and disrespectful as this before.  They feel the need to quibble over everything.  When I told them that I expected all of them in class on time, one student, who obviously has a great sense of entitlement, decided that that was unacceptable and proceeded to argue about it.  This is just absolutely ridiculous. 

I’m hoping that they will get all of that arrogance out of their system quickly.  I haven’t been here long so I don’t know how much involvement the upperclassmen have with their younger peers, but I hope that the older students will be able to straighten out the younger ones.

Even though it has been almost a month since school was let out for summer vacation, I really couldn’t sit down and write about this past year until now.  It’s not that I was incredibly busy, but it was more that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about.   Since I was so unsure, it would have been easier to not write anything at all, but, despite my writer’s block, I really wanted to put my reflections down on paper-so to speak-in order to make this past year more real.

To be honest, the school wasn’t quite what I had expected.  When I accepted the job, I had one idea of what the school was like but later on, I learned that the caliber was a bit lower than I expected.  Maybe I’m being harsh, but this school’s climate was pretty bad.  The level of respect the students had for their teachers was -10.  Most of the students weren’t even expected to graduate.  In the beginning of the year, I had to fight with a couple of students in each class just to get them to turn their work in.  Though I had mostly freshmen, about one or two of the students in each class were already planning on dropping out of school.  Needless to say, this was a pretty discouraging start.

As the year progressed, however, I felt that my students and I developed a tolerant relationship.  Some relationships were better than others, though.

The end of the year, unfortunately, had more low points than high points.  That’s when I learned that I would have to transfer to another school (this actually worked out to my advantage) and I had a pretty bad review from an adminstrator which I felt was unfair.  Basically, this adminstrator had never spent an entire class period observing me and when we met, I was told that I needed to develop more of a rapport with one class.  At the same time, the high failure rate in this class was attributed solely to me, which I felt was incredibly unfair considering that this was a class for students who had failed the very same class the previous semester.  It was, and still is, my opinion that this adminstrator, who had been offered an administrative position at another school, was out to settle old grievances (which most likely happened to a colleague of mine) and/or hurriedly finish doing the things that were supposed to have been completed months ago.  I think my incident fits in the latter category.  The last time my administrator had visited my classroom for that particular class was around February, March at the latest.  The last time this adminstrator visited another classroom was in the first semester.  Somehow, these 10-15 minutes of observation gave the adminstrator enough fodder to accuse me, in June, of contributing to the high failure rate of my one class.  I voiced my discontent with the review to the adminstrator and my direct supervisor and I signed the form.  I just wish that my supervisor, who I believe is a fantastic teacher, had enough backbone to stick up for the teachers who get lambasted unfairly.

My experience with the other teachers was, on the whole, excellent.  I definitely relied greatly on my House leader who provided me with a lot of guidance and assignment ideas even though it wasn’t really his job to do so.  At the same time, as a first year teacher, I was fortunate enough to have a Consulting Teacher who also came in an observed me at least once a month.  Her observations and debriefings were much more informative and much more valued than my adminstrator’s since my CT actually stayed for the entire class lessons and she saw me progress through the school year.  I think I was incredibly lucky since I know that there were other teachers who had horrible CT’s who did not provide any guidance or help.

Though this past year was spent in an unfamiliar environment, I think I am the better for it.  In this profession, it’s necessary to gain as much experience as possible.  For a person like me, who tends to get very comfortable in one place, there couldn’t have been a better place for me to start my career than in this school.  On my own, in my home state, I would never have knowingly applied for a job in a similar school.  However, because I was forced to apply outside of my state, I got the job in a completely new environment with a student population I have never worked with before.

This is not to say that I am not looking forward to my new school next year.  My new school is completely different from my old one.  The students are very motivated learners and were even the subject of a book about overachievers.  So, rather than forcing kids to do their homework and bring their grades up, I’ll have to force kids to back off.  I’ll be looking forward to these new set of challenges and experiences next year.