Sometimes you're the dog, sometimes you're the hydrant.

We live in an environment where you read in the paper this teacher resigned following a drug arrest or that teacher resigned under suspicion of child abuse. If you teach in a school, you see incompetence (a teacher who is out sick, with regularity, one day a month or a teacher who shows movies unrelated to the curriculum rather than teach) or worse - the male teacher who gropes student teachers or the teacher who parties too hard every weekend with a different partner each time.

So, when your principal doesn't like you and labels you unsatisfactory, this is a hard hurdle to overcome. The teachers who taught with me don't see it this way (that I am incompetent) and my students' test scores were comparable. But, as I apply for job after job after job, I see the principals' eyes glaze over: what must be wrong with me that I was let go? And the funny thing is, I believe he just wanted me gone. Had he ever told me that, I'd be at a different school. Instead, he kept acting as if he liked me and if I just changed this one little thing or that one little thing, all would be well.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a new teacher. Only taught one year. I prepared for one environment (high school) and landed in another (middle school). Do I have much to learn? Oh, yes. Am I a good teacher? That is why I am writing this blog: to reflect on what I've learned over the past year and what I learn during this enforced vacation.

Because I want to be honest and blunt, I am doing this anonymously. I teach, or did, in a moderate sized Southern city. I have applications out in several school districts as well as at private schools. I will go back to subbing until I land another teaching position, but feel confident that I will teach again.

I feel blindsided.

Oh, the other teachers I mentioned are still in the school.