Don't we wish more of them did this?

I ran across the blog of a tenured college professor who spent the last year teaching high school. I have not read the entire blog (I will), just the first and last, but I am intrigued to see how it went.

I wish the administrators in my school would commit to teaching one class a year. I think it might change the way they do things. But they will tell you they are too busy.

They divide the discipline up among the APs - each one gets a grade level. One is ineffective - she gives the bad kids candy, tells them the teachers are awful (probably tells then we are racist, but we wouldn't hear that back), pats the kids on the head, and sends them back to class. Do you think they mind at all at that point?

Then, when she decides to get serious and act like an adult, she yells at the kids - they think she has gone batshit and they STILL do not behave.

Oh, well. I have found another teacher in my school teaching the same thing with the same goals I have (not all teachers have the same goals, go figure). He is willing to split up the work and share so this should go better.

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.