Well, this has been a HELL of a week. And surprisingly - before you ask - no, it was not the kids. My students have actually been really awesome the past couple weeks (....now that I'm think on this, I should be suspicious.) What has NOT been awesome is communication between my schools and me. Surprise, surprise.
Actually that might be a surprise for you - turns out I never shared my super special winter concert fun with you. SO. Let's share!
Things my schools have note communicated with me in the past months:
1. That we were having an in school concert. I found out an hour before the in school concert that we were having an in school concert. Did I mention that I am the instrumental music teacher?
2. I am supposed to be on the math action team. You know what a math action team is? Me either! You know when the action teams were put together and started meeting? At the very latest early October. You know when I found out that I had been missing these meetings? Two weeks ago.
3. Teachers have to submit SLO's in February. SLO stands for Student Learning Outcome, and it basically proves that you are an effective teacher. In October you submit an SLO to get approved by the administration and you spend the following months collecting data and making sure you meet the standards you laid out in your SLO. This ends up being 50% of your end of year evaluation, which is obviously really important when it comes to being rehired in the county or if you are looking to transfer to other counties.
Guess who found out that we were supposed to submit TWO SLOs a mere day before the due date?
We're going to manage my irritation with cute gifs. Look here's an adorable baby bunny!
To say that I am frustrated would be an extremely mild statement. I understand that my administrators have a whole building of people they are working with on top of county concerns, parent concerns - they have a ton of stuff going on. In fact, I'm absolutely certain that I don't even know 50% of all of the crazy things they have to deal with.
But you know what? So do I. I am teaching between three different schools, which means three times as many rules and events as most teachers. In one week I'll have to remember that Berkshire has a "red carpet event" that takes place during two classes I will now have to reschedule somehow, that at Seneca they have MAPP testing that will affect half my students but not the other half and that is going to change what I'm able to teach, and that I need to take one specific class to the cafeteria instead of teaching them because it's their cupcake social. Except that at least two of these three events I have not heard about because no one has told me until I'm actually supposed to be doing these things.
I have to remember that when Glenmar has a fire drill we go to the baseball diamond and the fire drills at Berkshire go to the tennis courts, that at Berkshire I have to text the principal during a lockdown and at Glenmar I turn all the devices off, and that at one of these schools I am not allowed to give any physical rewards but at the other two we do give incentives and that apparently I don't remember any of the safety procedures at Seneca and I need to review them. This is of course is on top of all of the instruction going on in my class. So I get that my administration has a lot going on in my schools, but at the end of the day when things fall through the cracks I'm usually the one who ends up with egg on their face.
Adorable cops and robber dachsunds are the best way to manage frustration!
You know what happened when I found out about the winter concert day of? I had originally planned my dress rehearsals during the concert time (we had an after school concert I was preparing for that I DID know about). That was going to be the first time the students had EVER performed together. Usually my students meet with me in small groups for 25 minutes - i.e. my trumpets don't play at the same time as my flutes (but would during the concert) and had never heard each other play together before. When I approached my principal to let her know that I would figure it out and it would all be fine, but that I might be missing from an e-mail list because I was only just now finding out about the concert?
"Well I would have
thought the music department would have communicated with each other."
I mean, she's not wrong about that. That wasn't on her, but I didn't know that at the time and it seemed logical to go to the principal with a school event concern and this must have been communicated to the rest of the school
somehow. But are you
really REALLY going to put that on me?
During my mid year evaluation they discussed their disappointment that I hadn't had more music prepared for the concert. Well guess what happens when you have to have your students perform for the first time together ever...during the concert? YOU CUT PIECES. They also marked me down for not have any vocabulary word walls or rules posted in my room. Oh wait...did I say my room? I should have said the Rec Room. In which I am not allowed to leave a single object. Or post anything on the walls. I'm not saying that everything else they had to say on improving my teaching wasn't valid - it totally was, and it's helped me with my classroom teaching which really is the whole point of the meeting. It's also frustrating when you are held accountable for things that aren't on you.
My school that assigned me to an action team without telling me? I had e-mailed the principal at the beginning of the year asking if I was supposed to be on any teams since I am only at the school one day a week. He had said no. To be fair, he didn't put it on me when he said that I had been missing all of the math action team meetings - he said he wasn't sure if anyone had told me. But it's going to be hella awkward for me to show up to a committee I'm supposed to be on 5 months after the fact, especially as I don't know a single teacher on it.
And then there's the SLO drama which has brought all the rest of this boiling up to the surface. It's really the topper here. I even worked on the SLO with the STAT teacher there. You have to submit the SLO in October. I mean even if I somehow misunderstood the STAT teacher, I had her check my ONE SLO, and I submitted ONE SLO. I feel like somewhere along the line someone should have reached out and checked why I only submitted one SLO, seeing as I am a first year teacher. I mean, otherwise what is the point in having them submitted in October in the first place? Luckily my STAT teachers at one of my other schools ended up saving me and I did have documentation of a pre and post assessment I could use to complete a second SLO. But I shouldn't have ever been put in that position in the first place. And I'm still not sure everything is going to be ok, and I judging by every experience I've had at that particular school I have every expectation of the fault being placed on me.
Puppy pile!
I just....I feel like my frustration has been building and building into what is turning into this deep set ever present sensation of
rage. And I don't like that! I am not an
angry person. A dramatic person, certainly, but not an angry one. I don't like being a person who puts blame on other people. Sure, I don't like hearing negative qualities about myself (who does?) but I feel like I'm honest about myself and I take time to really think about what is being said and then making changes (at least when it comes to my professional life). It's one of the things I think I excel at. Fore example, I didn't have cohesive classroom procedures and was marked down for that in the mid-year evaluation, and they were 100% right. So I took their suggestions, talked to some other teachers, made some changes, and asked my principal at my next evaluation to focus on letting me know if there were any classroom procedure issues I should address.
It's just that each of these situations make me look and feel
bad and I went through all the proper channels in all three cases. I took all the proper steps. It makes me doubt myself! I mean I
am a really forgetful person, and balancing three schools has certainly been a struggle. But no matter how I look at it, even if I HAD known the date of the in school concert, someone should have been in touch to discuss what time it was being held, whether the band or orchestra was playing first - I mean there's just no possible way I'm at fault. And let's say someone had said something about me being on an action team (except that I'd sent that e-mail asking about teams) - it certainly shouldn't have taken until FEBRUARY to be informed that I'd been missing the meetings. And let's say I had misunderstood my STAT teacher - I have literally lost sleep every night this week wracking my brain, trying to remember exactly what she said to me. Let's say she did say something and I forgot (again, it seems incredibly unlikely for me to have forgotten something so important. I literally went and wrote my SLO immediately after meeting with her) how is it that there was not a SINGLE e-mail or written document mentioning TWO SLO's? Trust me. I went through my entire e-mail. What if I hadn't decided to get help from my STAT teacher making my SLO? How would I have known then?
So I wrote all this up a few days ago, but didn't post anything because for the most part I like to stay positive (or at least entertaining if it's negative) on the blog and wasn't sure I wanted to post it. Writing this has been very cathartic and I'm feeling much calmer now. At the end of the day, all of this is out of my control. Even if something comes down on me about the SLOs, it's done and over. I've landed on my feet before and I'll figure things out as I have to handle them. I've got to make sure I'm focused on helping my kids and being weighed down or distracted by past events isn't going to help them (or me).
SO. I hope you've had a better week than me and that none of you were too affected by the winter storms this week! And if you had great news, then absolutely share it with me! I could use a little positivity in my life :)
Bookish News
- Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira Will Adapt Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah
- In case you missed all the news in reference to sexual harassment in children's publishing:
-
Anne Ursu's essay, where it all started
- Names are named in the
comments section
- Tanita Davis on
Daniel Handler's behavior
- David M. Perry on
how the publishing industry plans to handle this
- Spencer Ellsworth argues for
Five Threequels That Really Make the Series
- In his fight against female author erasure in SFF, James Davis Nicholl has
more authors from the 1970's you should check out
-
Pride and Prejudice as told in a series of texts. (Guys this is HILARIOUS)
In Tori Lex has some more
awesome bookish links you should check out, including famous author's
love letters,
novels that subvert gender roles, and famous people's
library borrowing history.
If you like booksih links, you should also check out
Buckling Bookshelves'
list! My favourite was the list of authors on
children's books that still make them weepy.
