Autumn approaches

Ahhh, what a relaxing summer (at least after the statistics course I was taking mercifully finished on July 15th -- I passed!). The first day of school for kids around here is this Tuesday or Wednesday for most schools, and I'm so relieved not to have to worry about it. As my sister said, "Just think, the next time you're preparing for the first day of school, it will be as the school psychologist!" Yep, I started my graduate school courses in school psychology last week! One week down, 155 to go. But who's counting? ;)

In my old school's typical lack of attention to detail, my old work e-mail account was never shut down. I've been logging in from time to time over the summer just to see if anything interesting is going on. That's how I found out my supervisor (the special ed director) quit. My co-workers and I had a feeling in the spring that she was interviewing for another job. She kept being out for part of the day at very specific times, and once she couldn't even go with me to a professional development workshop we had signed up for. Now that she's left, they've literally had a complete turnover of all administrators since last year's first day of school: the principal, both the middle school and lower school vice principals, the special ed director, and the person who was the equivalent of the dean are all gone.

A few minutes ago I logged in for the first time in a few weeks, and found these reactions to the new schedule which was just shared with teachers a few days ago:

"It is difficult to integrate English/history with the arts every single week. It should be less frequently and for a single period instead of a double period.
We have been told for the last two weeks to write 45-minute lessons. Now our schedules are double-blocks every day. We were also never told about the constant integration periods we would need to plan for.
Some teachers have class all day without prep time.
It is completely unnecessary to have 80-minute blocks with each class almost every day.
160 - 240 minutes straight through makes us ineffective teachers. Students are completely unable to sit through 160 minutes of intense instruction in core classes.
Each core class should have single periods every day with only one double period a week.
I am double-booked with two classes for the same period on Thursdays.
This schedule is a complete disaster for all. We need to completely re-work it."

Yikes! I cannot imagine having the same sixth, seventh, or eighth grade class for 240 minutes straight. That's four hours! I wouldn't have liked that as a student, let alone as a middle school teacher.

Is it bad to admit that after reading all those comments, I promptly sprang up and did the dance of joy because I DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH ANY OF IT!?!? ;)

LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!!

Today was the last day of school! It's over! I still can't quite believe I made it through this school year without quitting or getting fired, but somehow it happened. What a relief. I think it still hasn't completely hit me yet.

Not very many kids showed up today, since it was a Monday and only a half day. I spent much of my morning trying to ignore the fact that report cards were frantically being prepared even as the principal was pressuring teachers to change students' grades to make them higher. No, I am not kidding. The place is so corrupt, it makes me sick. Completely unethical. I am so glad to be out of there. I never have to do recess duty again! Or stairwell duty, or listen to the students curse, or be insulted and disrespected on a daily basis, or worry about getting pushed around (literally). There are students I will miss, and I feel sorry for them, because they're trapped in that place. I'm so grateful I'm free!!!

:-D

Come to me, unemployment checks!

I GOT FIRED!

Well, technically not fired, fortunately -- I'm finishing out the schoolyear -- but I was not asked back for next year. Can you see me doing the happy dance from all the way over there? :)

I never got an appointment to meet with my principal and the special ed supervisor about next year, so I finally had to e-mail the principal's administrative assistant and ask. She gave me an appointment for June 2nd. I wasn't nervous that morning -- I *wanted* to get fired, so I can collect unemployment when I start grad school full-time this fall -- but then 20 minutes before the meeting, I suddenly got anxious, the stress hormones coursing through me, and I kept having to go to the bathroom.

But it turned out to be anticlimactic. The special ed supervisor opened by saying, "As you know we've had many conversations over the course of the year of challenges you've had with various students and classes and your advisory class."

I nodded.

The principal continued, "I think we've had enough conversations and documentation to be able to say it's just not a good fit."

"Okay," I said.

"So we won't be renewing your contract for the 2010 - 2011 school year," she said.

"Okay," I said again.

"We're not saying you're a bad teacher! Nothing like that!" she added hastily. "It's just not a good fit."

"Okay," I said for the third time.

Then we sat and looked at each other. They asked if I had any questions, I said no, and that was that. I'll be collecting unemployment as of August 16th, which will really reduce the number of hours I'll need to tutor. Life is good! :)
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My job was posted on-line!

Yes! As of Saturday, my school's very own web site says they are looking for elementary AND MIDDLE SCHOOL special education teachers! Theoretically, this could mean they just want to add a third special ed teacher to the middle school, in addition to me and the other current special ed teacher. But coupled with my rather negative summative evaluation, I think it's a good sign they'll lay me off and I can get unemployment! *fingers crossed*

Accentuate the negative

My boss e-mailed me my "evaluative summary" of my teaching today. It was fairly negative. My favorite part was where she wrote, "Ms. Artichoke has been observed yelling at students, invading their personal space, and persistently confronting students." Yes, I have yelled. That was wrong. I admit that. But I don't see how if I, say, block the doorway with my body so a student can't leave without permission in the middle of class, and that student gets angry and gets as close as they can to me without mowing me down, that *I* am invading *their* personal space -- aren't they invading mine? And I don't like the way she wrote that I "persistently confront students." That makes it sound like I keep harassing students over and over again about some issue, which I never do. Once it's over, it's over, and I still say hello to them and help them with assignments as if they never sexually harassed me or threatened to punch me in the face. If I'm guilty of anything, it's the opposite. There are a couple of students now I just don't even bother going over to in class to see if they need help with their work, because doing so only leads to trouble (for me, not for them).

The principal is setting up meetings with each of us teachers this week to tell us whether or not we are being offered teaching contracts for next school year. I hope I'm not asked back and I can qualify for unemployment. I wouldn't hire a teacher back who got an evaluation like mine, so this could happen. We'll see.

Blogging again

It's been a long time since I blogged. My dad died on March 9th, about six weeks to the day from when he received the diagnosis of lung cancer. I miss him a lot. My job was nice about it, at least -- they even sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers "from your school family," as the card said. But even with the generous bereavement time (5 days), I've had to take a day off here and there since then, especially when my sister and I were going through/cleaning out Dad's apartment, so in my last paycheck I got docked three days' pay. I can't believe there are still 39 long schooldays until the last day of school. It feels like it should've ended months ago.
I'll try to write more later this week.

New assistant principal

Five school days down, 20 to go until spring break! Actually, last week ended up being a four-day week since Friday was a snow day. We got almost two feet of snow here in NYC -- highly unusual -- and we've had TWO snow days in the past two weeks, also highly unusual because NYC schools never close. I remember growing up in northern NJ listening to school closing announcements on the radio in the morning, and no matter how many schools in NJ were closed for snow, it seemed like the DJ always ended with, "But New York City public schools ARE open" -- so Friday was a real gift.

Since playwriting enrichment ended in January (thank you, God), I've been teaching "Arts & Crafts: Collage" to four sixth grade boys and one seventh grade boy. It's been going well, except they got kind of bored with collage, so I decided to order them latch hook kits. They had never done latch hook before, and they LOVE it! It took me about half an hour to re-learn how to do it (embarrassingly enough), and then another boy who picked it up quickly helped me teach the others. Three of them are doing skull & crossbones, and two are doing wolves. They're enjoying it so much! They thanked me profusely for ordering the kits and kept talking about how cool they're going to look when they're done. One of the boys said happily, "I like latch hook. It's relaxing!" :) So that's been a lot of fun.

In other good news, we finally hired a new assistant principal. I haven't actually formally met the man, I've just seen him around, so all I knew about him was that he was a white 30-something guy named -- well, I'll call him Patrick. It was funny because when I was telling the reading specialist about two kids who got into a scuffle during advisory and how I had nowhere to send them, she said, "You could've sent them to Patrick."

"Um, does he WORK here?" I asked. "I thought he was still just being interviewed and observing."

"Well, I guess technically he is," she admitted. "But I heard he officially starts tomorrow."

And sure enough, we got an e-mail from the principal on Wednesday that it was Patrick's first official day as vice principal. Hopefully having him around will be helpful. I checked my e-mail just now and the principal had sent us all an e-mail with a behavior contract we're supposed to discuss with the kids in our advisory group tomorrow and have them all sign. Oh, if only we had done this on the first day of school instead of the 106th day of school! This could have been a very different school year....