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SEL thread: Teachers, how did your school year go? (Optional sentence stems in the comments)
Optional sentence stems in the comments- feel free to add your own.
I will know if you cheat or use AI because I know how you write. Graphic organizers are available but not required. I don't care if you're texting your mom, put it away. Also, my name isn't bruh, but lately I find myself responding to it anyway.
It was a tough school year. Lots of wonderful moments, lots of struggle, and ultimately a really rough end to the year.
Last year, we lost a lot of our youngest, brightest, and most passionate teachers, including two of my closest colleagues, one of them a best friend of mine. Coming into the school year, pretty much every teacher was overloaded or given way more preps than usual. Suffice to say, morale was pretty low.
I was excited to be teaching two Honors classes (Algebra II and Geometry), but it was a constant struggle throughout the year to stay on top of my lesson planning, grading, etc... I've made it a policy of mine to never work outside my contract hours, but this was the first year - ever - that I had to do work over the weekend in order to just stay float, let alone get meaningfully on top of anything. Many of my students that I'd had in previous years noticed pretty quickly that this year was different, as more typos and mistakes were sneaking into my assignments, tests, and lessons. But they were understanding and patient, which was appreciated...
Then, about a month before the end of the school year, I was informed that I was going to be 'rebalanced' - assigned to a different school. Too many students had signed up for alternative CTE math classes, so there weren't enough math classes, and I was going to be cut as the most junior teacher of my math department. We'd just hired two CTE teachers, but they weren't math, they were CTE... so they didn't get cut, even though they only taught these CTE-math classes.
The deadline to notify me of my re-assignment passed nearly a month ago, at this point... and I still have no idea where I'm going to be placed. Which is extremely annoying, as even though I don't intend on doing any planning over the summer, I'd at least like to know where and what I'm going to be doing. And if they assign me to a middle-school, I'll have to take some self-defense classes over the summer. (The horror stories I've heard... at least two separate incidents of middle-school teachers in our district being choked-out by students.)
It was also very frustrating to have to tell my students I wouldn't be back next year, and not even be able to reassure them with where I was going to end up. Worse, I'm a club advisor, and the head of multiple committees at my school, so I had to juggle preparing for finals with scrambling to find a replacement advisor for my club and pass the reins for the committees as well.
My students took the news hard. Many of them were still reeling from having lost a lot of their favorite teachers last year, and they were made even more upset that I was going to be leaving as well. Some of my students I've had before, and who were in my club, put together a wonderful going-away present for me: a massive, custom-order donut with my face on it. (They know I love donuts.) It was - literally - the sweetest gift that students have ever gotten for me.
It was a really hard year, but I did love what I taught this year. I've been working hard to improve my Honors Geometry curriculum and sequence, and it paid off this year wonderfully. And while my Honors Algebra II class was shaky - I hadn't taught it before - I had a lot of fun teaching it, and my students seemed to really enjoy it by the end. I've also taught only freshmen for years, so it was really great to get to teach upperclassmen, many of which I'd had before as freshmen, and be able to connect more with the students.
It was so exhausting, though, knowing that all of the work I put into these courses, under the expectation I'd be teaching it again next year, may have gone to waste. It also made the end of the year incredibly emotionally draining, even more so than usual. Normally, you get these nice, bright spots in between the struggles of ending the year... but my rebalancing cast a bittersweet light on everything, and it made any work I was putting into lesson-planning or designing assignments feel absolutely futile.
My colleagues at my current school are also wonderful. Many of them are good friends, and compared to any other school I've taught at, the math department at my school is absolutely the best. Not only do we work well together professionally, but they're just kind, honest, open people, and there's a real sense of community and camaraderie amongst all the staff that you don't often see. I'm nervous and anxious about having to move to a new school again, get to know new colleagues, and so on...
Here's hoping my district can't find somewhere else to put me, and just gives up and sends me right back to my current school. And thanks for the post, it's nice to be able to vent about this... now I'm curious how many other teachers we have on Tildes.
I spent the beginning years of my career teaching the same subject. I loved how I got better at it over time -- each new year was a chance to hone my skills and curriculum, fixing what didn't work, improving on what did, etc. I loved that iterative process.
I then got moved. Same school, entirely different grade level and curriculum.
It hurt.
I felt blindsided by it. I felt like I was starting from scratch again. It felt like all that hard work I'd done to get to build expertise in my previous position was getting discarded.
Furthermore, it was difficult. I underestimated the difference in needs and behaviors between different age groups. A lot of the stuff I'd honed with my first class simply didn't work after I'd been moved because I was dealing with kids who were at a different place in their development.
In hindsight, I can appreciate that this helped me build my teaching skill and experience more broadly, but at the time, I was aggravated and felt shortchanged. It also meant that a lot of what I tried didn't work, and I put that more on the students and less on myself, because I was trying to do what had worked in the past (not realizing that I needed different methods).
Reading your post took me back to that time and the way that I felt then. I hate that you're going through something similar. I also admire the time and effort you took to lay it out so clearly. Your words capture the situation and feeling in a way that's both explicative and resonant.
I wish I could offer you some sage wisdom or a salve, but I honestly think it's completely justified to feel what you're feeling right now and it's okay to sit in that.
One thing I will say is that, as I've taught over the years, I've gotten a lot better about letting go. You have to, as you connect with student after student and class after class, only to then send them on into the future and start over again with a new batch. Teaching is built on transience, and it can be very difficult, but it can also be very healthy. In my early years, I held onto things way too much, grew too attached to people, colleagues, rooms, ways of doing things. It took me a long time to get good at having what I believe to be a healthier detachment about things.
It doesn't mean that I don't connect or care; it simply means that I don't center myself on those things.
I say this not to override your current feelings or situation in the slightest, but just to note that this might be an unfortunate and difficult exercise for you in building that valuable "letting go" skill. I know it was for me when I had to go through it.
Thank you for the kind words and advice.
Yeah, I've gotten used to having to adjust to different classes, curriculums, etc... over the years. I like to think I'm pretty good about not being too attached to my job, or any particular subject. Honors was different though, but you're right, it's good to learn to let go. It was a great opportunity while I had it.
On the note of 'letting go', ironically, earlier this year I had actually began to consider moving schools. Our school's previous principal was... not great, and the culture and discipline were on an extremely bad negative trend. And my best friend's new school was great, comparatively, and she was really hoping we'd get a chance to work together again. But we'd just gotten a new principal, who was immediately addressing all of our concerns, and it was literally the week that I told myself, "You know what, I want to stay here!" that I was told "You're not staying here". Which sucked. I can manage change, but I'd like to have managed it on my terms, you know?
The really annoying thing about all this isn't that I'm being moved: it's that the district has been flagrantly violating the contract. I was supposed to be informed weeks before the June 1st deadline about my rebalancing, and by June 1st they're legally required to tell me my new position, at which school, and what I'm teaching... and they didn't do any of that. The union seems to be pretty toothless in actually doing anything about it. They've told me they're doing negotiations, escalating a grievance, etc... but what does that actually do for me, you know? The most recent update I got from them was basically just "Well, it sucks but what can you do? You'll hopefully find out your new position before August." So it sounds like there's no consequences for the district failing to meet their deadlines and whatnot? Like, I'm ready to roll with whatever, but it'd just be reassuring to know what that whatever is.
Anyway... I've been leaning towards venting in these posts, but just to reassure anyone else reading: I'm doing alright. Unlike a lot of my friends, I'm guaranteed a full-time job next year, which is great. My best friend has taught at 4 districts in 4 years, and it's been an uphill battle to get hired each time, even though she's literally the best teacher I've ever seen. My other closest colleague was screwed over by the district and is working part-time at three jobs now. Compared to those circumstances, I know I'm very lucky, and that really helps. I've got a great summer to look forward to, I love teaching, and the rest of the past year was wonderful. My classes this year were filled with some of my favorite students I've ever had, and while potentially leaving is hard, the outpouring of appreciation from my students and colleagues was really touching. And wherever I end up, I'm excited to experience a new school, potentially teach new subjects, and keep expanding my horizons and learn from new perspectives.
But gosh, does it feel good to let loose and rage about it a little, lol!
It was the toughest year, personally and professionally. This is going to make me sound like a jaded piece of shit, but I swear to you, I am not exaggerating. Sorry if it's hard to follow. Like everything else I post on this site, I'm writing this out in on a busted phone screen while I'm busy with other stuff.
When I got my site assignment (I'm in early childhood education), I saw that I was placed with an infamously bad head teacher. I had seen her firsthand when I joined the agency in May of 2022, and I always joked that I would walk if they put me with her. I considered quitting right then, but I wanted to give it a try because I was at a new site in a different part of town that had a much better reputation. When I showed up for training/orientation, I learned that my coworker had already been fired. They didn't have a replacement lined up, so they offered me her position. I spent the first two full years at my agency as a sort of tweener between head teacher and assistant, and had all the qualifications on paper. I worked with first-time head teachers both years and took on additional responsibilities, plus I had pretty good CLASS scores and they were always hounding me to apply for it. I figured it would be nice to be in control for once, so I decided to take it and go all in.
Unfortunately, were doomed from the start.
I didn't have an assistant, my classroom aide had two months of experience, and the classroom was in shambles. For those who are unfamiliar with ECE, the environment is one of the most important factors. In California, we have very specific standards about the environment: materials, accessibility, safety, labeling, etc. Nothing was ready, the furniture setup was a feng shui nightmare, and we had boxes of unnecessary materials to put away in storage that was already full of junk. To make matters worse, we had one day to prepare everything before parent orientation, and my classroom aide had to work on the kitchen.
For the first six weeks, we had a revolving door of substitutes. It's pretty normal at my agency, but I kept getting stuck with people who were unqualified for the job. There was one woman in particular who showed up about 75% of the time. She was a very nice individual, but she had autism and had a very difficult time grasping the policies and techniques we rely on. In order to be somewhat productive, she needed constant micromanaging, which basically made her another child in my class. The language she used was inappropriate, and if left to her own devices, she would sit and draw by herself. I sent email after email saying I needed someone else, and every visitor we had (mental health, management, family services) said she should not be in the classroom, yet somehow she kept coming back.
On top of all that, we had some really unfortunate luck when it came to the distribution of students. Out of the 14 enrolled on day one, 7 received referrals before our first round of parent-teacher conferences (a rare occurrence). Our mental health specialists said that five of them needed constant one-on-one attention, and two should have never been enrolled in the first place. When it came to behaviors, we had everything. Full-blown meltdowns, constant attention seeking, hitting/scratching/biting, multiple kids with little to no language, a couple of climbers with major adhd - you name it, we had it. On top of that, we also had 10 children in diapers. It was a fucking circus. Whenever we got lucky enough to have a good sub, they went home and told their agency that they weren't coming back. I don't blame them.
I can't even begin to explain what a regular day was like. We completely punted on small group activities, simply because we didn't have the manpower to keep track of the kids who couldn't sit still long enough to participate. Our large group was trying to get everyone to make it through a welcome song before reviewing the rules and going straight outside. Choice time was a game of whack-a-mole, and trying to follow though was borderline impossible as new problems would emerge in the process. Naptime was like a scene from a M.A.S.H. unit that had been placed inside Arkham Asylum - just screams and shadowy little figures moving about. Meanwhile, the classroom next to us had one referral, three experienced staff members, and was very peaceful.
My 10 minute break was a bathroom break, and my lunch break was five minutes of me shoveling food in my face as I walked to my car for a nicotine lozenge. The hour of preparation after school was mostly spent trying to put things back in the right spot, but I still had observations, paperwork, and needed to get the classroom in order. Since my aide had other responsibilities and I couldn't reliably delegate tasks to my subs, I would come in an hour early, stay an hour late, and work on the weekends. All just to stay above water.
After six excruciating weeks, I finally managed to secure an assistant. A badass granny who had been a stalwart at the agency for 25 years. When she showed up on her first day, she strutted in like she was about make everything look easy. Seven hours later, she said she had never seen anything like it, and "I'm surprised you are still here. This is unacceptable." We still had a tough time staying on top of paperwork and classroom prep, but I was finally able to do simple things, like take breaks and engage with the students during choice time. In practice, what we were doing was against the law. We shouldn't have that many special needs in a classroom with our student-teacher ratio. However, thanks to the glacial pace of the referral process and a couple of parents in denial, it was all technically above board. Eventually, we lobbied to have a mental health specialist spend two full days a week in the classroom, which helped tremendously.
By the end of October, we started to find a little groove. Don't get me wrong, it was still a mess, but light was starting to emerge from the tunnel. Then my stepdad had emergency brain surgery. When he woke up, he couldn't walk, could barely talk, and had very little short-term memory. I spent the next few months flying across the country to help my mom take care of him, coming back for a few days so I could qualify for the paid time off for Thanksgiving/winter break and extend my family medical leave. Just when my students were starting to get some consistency in the classroom, they got another wave of subs.
When I accepted the head teacher position, it was on an interim basis. A few weeks into my family leave, they hired someone to fill the position. I had the opportunity to officially apply, but I wasn't sure if I would return. I wasn't sure I wanted it anyway. The woman they hired was smart, educated, and passionate, but she didn't have classroom experience, and she had never worked in an agency like ours. When I got back in January (my sister and I were rotating to help my mom), she was fully checked out. To make matters worse, The Wolf (the badass granny) went back to her original site. It was like we were back at square one. Three weeks into the new year, my head teacher put in her resignation. Now we were officially back at square one. I went back to being the head teacher, tried to explain to the parents what the hell just happened, and did my best to stay above water for a month while management begged The Wolf to come back. The kids were definitely getting better, but it was still the toughest class I had ever been in and our classroom still needed a lot of work.
Eventually, The Wolf came back, this time as the head teacher. I was due for another trip across the country and I told them that I wasn't certain I would be able to come back. I ended up using all of my family medical leave, and in that time, my stepdad mostly recovered (the brain is crazy). When I got back, I asked my agency what would happen if I needed to take off again (we had experienced ups and downs). It was a hypothetical, but they took two days then got back to me with a choice to quit or take a position as a substitute. I took the substitute position, which was on-call for the same pay but no benefits, but it took them three weeks to process. On top of that, my first day back was the Friday before spring break, so I had to wait another week before I could go back to work. Unfortunately, the sub position didn't pan out. Somehow, in an agency that relies on subs every day, they didn't call me very often. For some reason, they only wanted me to sub for a handful of locations, even though there were plenty more that could use the help. I ultimately quit because I was only getting called in 2-3 times/week.
There are a lot of things I hated about this year, but the worst thing BY FAR is the fact that, throughout the whole experience, they made me feel like shit about myself. It's a very common complaint in my agency. A lot of classes have a lot of problems (we serve some of the poorest kids in the city) and they always make the teachers feel at fault. I busted my ass and implemented every tip and technique that they suggested, but it wasn't good enough. My students and (most of) their families loved me, but it wasn't good enough. When my original replacement left, she said one of the main reasons was the lack of support. I couldn't agree more.
The craziest thing about it is none of it was my fault! I didn't fire my colleague. I didn't give myself one day to prepare. I didn't push back ASQs and allow an illegal and unmanageable level of high-needs students in the same class. I didn't bring in the same shitty subs every day. I didn't put in the golf ball-sized scar tissue where my stepdad's brain tumor used to be. I didn't ignore every complaint and concern from staff and allow an impossible situation to go on for months on end. All I did was try to keep my shit together as best I could, and collected a handful of very sweet notes and drawings from my students and their families in the process. And because of how everything went down with the position change and me eventually stepping down, I never got to say goodbye to any of them.
Thankfully, I just accepted a position in China where I can make more money in a city with lower cost of living and never have to put up with any of this shit again.
(sorry for the rant, hope you all had a great year)
Holy shit.
Have a massive, bigtime internet hug from me, AnthonyB. That sounds like hell.
You definitely were not the issue, and you should feel proud about the incredible perseverance and dedication you showed those kids. I've worked for good administrations and bad administrations before, and the key difference is that good administrations support teachers so we can best help our students, while bad administrations blame teachers and, by proxy, harm the kids through inaction.
You were clearly working for a bad administration.
Congrats on the new position in China though! That's something to look forward to, and I hope it goes well for you. I have a friend who teaches over there and when we talk shop, we're always AMAZED at the differences between our experiences. I have to spend inordinate amounts of effort trying to get my kids to take even a little bit of school seriously, whereas he gets excited when his students relax a little bit and don't make school the sole focus of their lives.
I appreciate the kind words. Plus, an internet hug from the legend might be the best thing to come out of this mess.
The sad thing about the administration is that I genuinely think they are trying to do their best. The top two people in the organization are extremely dedicated and passionate about serving as many people as possible, but there is a disconnect between their goals and what happens in the classrooms. The shocking this is
wethey are highly ranked in the area. Every year for orientation, we would see breakdowns of incident reports and quality scores from our regulatory agency and we were always at the top 😱My experience in China the first time around is what got me to stick with early childhood in the first place. The differences are just as you described. Out there, my biggest concern was getting everyone to embrace more play time. Every time I brought it up over here, I could tell my colleagues didn't really believe me. It's still a tradeoff though. It's nice being able to see your students excel, but nothing matches the feeling of seeing small breakthroughs in your toughest kids. Oh well. Life is short and at the end of the day, you gotta look out for #1. If nothing else, I'll get to hang on to my hair a little bit longer.
That's rough, congrats on getting through it. Your story, this whole thread... education is a mess when it should be one of our top collective priorities.
Thanks for the lol
Here's to China being everything you're hoping for.
Tough year for me too, y'all. Sounds like a lot of us had a hard time. I'm glad we get to commiserate here.
My difficult year was tripartite:
Part 1
This had nothing to do with school, but with, you know, the current world we live in and, in particular, the country I live in. It's hard to be positive and upbeat and find joy, but I also feel like my students deserve that in their lives, so sometimes I have to dig really deep within my mostly empty reserves to find it.
Part 2
I'm genuinely tiring of some of my coworkers.
They're not bad people. Honestly. They aren't. I'm close with them -- enough that we veer a little beyond coworker territory and into friend territory.
The problem is that I feel like some of them are, well, headed in the direction of becoming bad people. They are less patient. Less caring. Less enthusiastic about teaching. More selfish. More judgmental. At times outright unfair to kids.
I remind myself that this is the behavioral pattern that any burnout career follows (and teaching is definitely a burnout career), so I shouldn't hold it against them particularly. But also I see them cross lines I would never cross, particularly with regards to the aforementioned fairness, and I find myself having to fight a very deep-seated frustration with them, particularly when it affects students that we share and that I care about.
I think this is also magnified by the fact that their selfishness has been affecting me professionally for a while, and it really accelerated this past year. I've always been someone who goes out of their way to help other people. It's what I do; it's what I like doing; it's what I'm good at.
Increasingly, however, I'm seeing that my support is one-sided. It's all give and no take. Some are even deliberately foisting responsibilities off on me to the point that I'm honestly feeling taken advantage of. One of my toxic traits is that I'm a people-pleaser and deeply conflict avoidant, so for a long time I've just sort of put up with these things. Of course, anyone who's been in this position knows that it just builds resentment, and well, that resentment rose a LOT this year.
The obvious solution is to set some boundaries, and I will admit that I have done that somewhat successfully on a few things. Unfortunately, for some others, this is seen as "not being a team player." I get viewed as the one rocking the boat and therefore the one who's considered the problem. I had a very frank discussion with an administrator one year where I had to flat out say "I am not the issue. I am seen as the issue because I'm not solving someone else's problem. Their problem is NOT mine to solve."
I got my message through, but it's also the kind of thing that nearly any superior is likely to hold against a subordinate, so doing stuff like that burns through social capital that I have to be careful about spending.
Part 3
I've always been on the fringe of burnout in my career. It sort of comes and goes in waves. Sometimes it gets so strong that I actively look at leaving, but then once I start to look into the logistics of that, I'm reminded of all the reasons why it's not as bad as I think it is to stay.
Three years ago I had a decent year that put a lot of gas back in my tank. That year I recovered from the extreme stresses that COVID put on me and this career and the world. It helped that I had a great group of kids. I connected with them well, and we were able to build a great year together.
Unfortunately, this year and the previous year I had two back-to-back difficult groups of kids. The kind where teachers in the grade below you warn you, through their beleaguered exhaustion, that these kids have tried every last ounce of patience and that this has been one of the most difficult years of their career.
Part 3A
Two years ago it was almost entirely behaviors. The kids were rude. Mean. Just all around awful to each other. To me. To everyone.
The hard part about that is that once behavior like that gets "in the water" it becomes normalized even for the nice kids.
There was a kind student I really liked working with in one of my classes filled with mean kids. Sometime in the spring, I asked him a question and he clapped back at me with an incredibly rude response (I don't remember specifically what it was). I told him "that was very rude" and the poor kid genuinely went "it was?" He honestly had no idea. He then immediately apologized and was flustered for having accidentally crossed a line.
I didn't care that he'd been snippy with me. It literally happened all day every day from everybody else. I did care that he was in an environment that led him to believe that something like that was normal. That's why he did it in the first place -- everyone else was already doing it all the time. He, and the kids like him, deserved better.
Part 3B
This year, the balance shifted. The bulk of my students were well-behaved, with only a select handful being aggravating.
But, oh boy, were they like, the 99th percentile of aggravating.
The bigger problem, however, was that the rest of the students were the most checked-out group of students I've had in my entire career. They. Did. Not. Care.
I tried to break through that apathy wall. A lot. It didn't matter how fun, interesting, humorous, or active I made anything. They would always just opt-out of their own learning.
Active participation in anything was at an all time low. Horrendous work completion. Complete and utter inattention during any sort of whole-group direct instruction. Seemingly every student would zone out the moment I introduced anything new, then expect me to teach it to them individually when it came time to practice it. We did what's normally a fun field trip at the end of the year, and the students didn't care. Many whined about having to go on the field trip in the first place.
For the non-teachers reading this, I cannot stress this enough: students usually never whine about field trips. They whine about not having enough field trips.
These kids were uniquely checked out.
Another thing I always try to build in my students is independence. I try to help them get themselves unstuck, rather than being dependent on me or a peer doing that lifting for them. I'd make my students a convenient reference sheet for a unit with all the key information on it they needed to know. I'd encourage them to have it out while working. When they asked me questions about items that were explicitly on the reference sheet, I'd ask them to pull it out and refer to it.
You can probably guess where this is going. They didn't get out the sheet. Most of them couldn't even locate it, having lost it right after I passed it out. No matter, they can get an extra copy right over there! "I don't want to." Okay, how about we try searching the answer on your Chromebook. "I already did." I don't think so -- your Chromebook isn't even open! "Why won't you help me?"
It was like this all the time. Eventually they stopped trying to even volley with me and just, you know, didn't work.
Day in and day out, so many of them did nothing. It was horrendously demotivating not just for me, but for the kids who did want to learn and do work. In the same way that bad behaviors got "in the water" two years ago, inaction got in the water for my students this year.
A Bright Spot
In the interest of keeping this
shortnot as long as it could be, I left out so many other things: like the parent filing suit against my district (which... sigh... I'm so tired...).But here's the good news: as difficult as this year was, I did have one bright, shining spot.
A student enrolled in my school towards the end of the year. She was on the autism spectrum and unfortunately had been pretty severely bullied at her previous school, so her mother had pulled her from there and put her in ours.
I already have a gigantic soft spot for atypical students, and I also know first hand how difficult it is to change schools late in the year. It's tough for anyone to be the new kid, but it's especially tough being new when social groups have already developed and calcified and everybody's already winding down for the year.
Also, there's a good chance I might have autism myself, and one of the things that makes me think that is that, when I work with kids with autism, I go "oh, hey, they're just like me at that age!"
Regardless of my own identity, however, I took this student under my wing just as I would any student in her situation. I made sure she was okay. Put her in groups with nice kids to make sure she could make some friends. Talked with her a lot. Taught her a lot. Coached her on how best to interact with other kids. Coached other kids on how to interact well with her. Was constantly vigilant for her, on the lookout for the slightest hint of any bullying. I wanted to make sure that she felt safe and supported in her new school. I wanted her short time with us to be a positive one.
At the end of the year, the mother wrote me the single nicest email I've ever gotten in my entire career. I outright cried. She described how grateful she was to me for helping her daughter adjust. She told me about how her daughter was no longer crying every morning, begging to not go to school. Instead, she was excited! Every day when she picked her daughter up from our school, her daughter would eagerly start rattling off all the things she had done that day and what she had learned.
She also said some incredibly nice things about me personally. Like, soul-enriching stuff.
I showed the email to one of my friends who's also a teacher, and he said "It's amazing how many years a letter like that can add to your career."
So, yeah. That was a bright spot. It still shines in my heart and likely will for a long time. To any parents reading this, please don't underestimate how much a single positive email means to your kids' teachers. It probably took her a few minutes to type her email, but I will carry it with me for years.
Also, remember how I said that the teachers of the grade below me would warn me about the incoming group of kids? Well, it was the opposite this year. They all have made mention of how next year's students are kind and motivated. I heard a lot of "you're going to love them."
I'm excited. I need another recharge year.
But first, I need my recharge summer. I'm actually glad I typed all this out because I can get it out of my head and start, you know, actually relaxing.
May I ask what SEL means? Should I write my answer with its definition in mind?
Social Emotional Learning.
Some true believers think it's a magic bullet to fix everything wrong in education. Others are miserable cynics. Most reasonable teachers see it as a buzzword to legitimize doing things outside of the common core standards. If you want to start class with a fun warm-up that has nothing to do with your lesson, if you want to talk life lessons or talk about emotions, or if you want to spruce up your 20-year-old lesson plan by pointing out that it includes a collaborative groupwork component, you can label it SEL and the principal has to pretend to be impressed during your observation.
The joke I was making by putting it in the title is that you're free to express yourself in a judgement free zone and speak your truth. This is an SEL thread for teachers!
For the genuinely curious, SEL teaches 5 core competencies:
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social Awareness
Relationship Skills
Responsible Decision-Making
You can fit a lot of different things under this umbrella if you're good with words.
Love the SEL joke and the sentence starters. Speaking of which, is this a grade? Also can I go to the bathroom?
If you don't ask much, "Absolutely."
If you ask me every single day, "Sit down.'
One of the things my nightmare parent did this year was _________________.
I wrote a student a referral for his horrendous behavior. Send the obligatory email to let dad know. Dad's reply was:
"How do I submit a referral for teachers who waste my time making me read this garbage?"
Send the dad back a note via his kid that says
Dear Student's Dad
Attached is an email that I recieved on [date]. I feel that you should be aware that some jerkface is signing your name to stupid emails.
Very truly yours
Mr Wolf
Oh that's diabolical and I love it.
...file suit against the district.
Yes, I wish I were kidding.
Yes, I wish I could tell you more but can't.
It hasn't really been a year for me, but my school year is also never ending so I'll write anyway.
I'm a part-time private teacher. I work with students teaching them programming. So unlike the rest of you, I have a great deal of freedom. But I don't get enough hours to actually live off of, so it's not exactly a great trade-off.
This has been a time of great personal growth for me. It wasn't too many years ago that I hated dealing with kids. I didn't know how to talk to them and actively avoided them. Obviously I changed my tune before I took the job, but after taking the job and spending a lot of time interacting with them I feel like I'm more of a person, you know? I just with I was better at engaging them personally outside of school talk because I think my lessons would be more effective.
Even private education has it's share of counterproductive bullshit. Classes are set up in blocks that give them an effective term, and everyone "matriculates" to the next level regardless of how well they performed. I have a student who is now in the third level of their subject but they were actually absent for the majority of their time I had them for their second level. This is a kid who shouldn't have gone forward because it's clear they aren't learning anything at this point, and I'm actually trying to make a custom curriculum for them because they don't seem to have a good grasp of the stuff that is in the first level either. But kids are a mixed bag. I just got back from a class with a kid who is incredibly bright and able to get just about everything with very little explaination.
I think the biggest problem I have with the organization is the curriculum. I think that programming needs to be very math-forward. Students universally have difficulty understanding the concept of a function returning data and so I'll constantly see them trying to do a line that's just
int(string_variable)and they'll be lost at that point because their string didn't change. It doesn't help that sometimes the kids are so young they haven't even taken a single algebra class. And then the materials often have issues with the review questions including concepts the text hasn't covered from time to time, and some concepts just kind of get skipped over so students get confused when it's just assumed that they know it.I have to say that I'm also annoyed that all of my students are boys. I want to teach girls too. I've had trial classes with girls and I think they all go well but I haven't had full class loads with any of them. We need to really encourage girls to get into STEM because the current ratio is abysmal and frankly girls seem to get things a lot more intuitively than boys do.
I also wish that I could have more students on weekdays, but I guess boring old regular school gets in the way.
I find the maths thing interesting as someone who learned programming at an early age myself, the point that my introduction to functions was PHP before maths, and I remember translating stuff like the sum operator to for loops to explain it to myself during revision.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get into it? I’m not a teacher but I’ve toyed with the idea of eventually teaching programming in some capacity. I’m not really sure what that path would look like
To be honest this is a career move I fell into more than I jumped into. I don't have your average teaching credentials but I do have a decade of professional experience, and that’s why I’m in the private sector. I’m working on a B. Sc. right now so I can substitute in the public schools; full time is going to be quite a lot more work, probably. Im somewhat fortunate in this regard because I live near a high school in an Asian neighborhood where there is a high concentration of Chinese families, where cultural expectations keep parents pushing their kids into doing a lot of extracurricular studies. I actually just had a kid who ended the class halfway through because they were going back to China.
But if you want to make it into an actually viable career, I would suggest looking into the requirements for your local public schools and ask for what they would require. Public education facilities may sometimes be more flexible in their requirements like my case, but I’d imagine there are more who would like to have at least the same baseline as the public schools.
Personal aside: I really don’t know if I’d actually want to teach in the public schools full time. I have terrible memories of my public school education (unrelated to the staff, generally), and I feel I don’t have a very good record with the few classes I have taught which weren’t one-on-one. People are talking about burnout being common in this field and I’m just thinking about how much burnout was a part of me quitting my old job.
The funniest thing I saw or heard this year was _____________.
A mixed-race student of mine raised his hand in the middle of my math class when I called on him, we had the following exchange:
---minutes later---
I couldn't laugh in that moment because I was teaching. But the second they left my room I was just about doubled over laughing.
💯
It's a full blank for me. It's how I've rapped in my car for DECADES now.
I like to use the word "neighbor."
I wonder if that kid asked all of their teachers that same question.
He's "mine" all day, so probably not.
I co-teach all four core classes for special Ed. Most of my kids are hilarious and devious.
Worst class I've ever had though in terms of behavior. Easily.
One funny thing I overheard that comes to mind:
Some of my repeat-students were talking amongst themselves about what I'd be in a medieval alternate universe. Some of them were arguing I'd be a wizard in a tower; others said I'd be a merchant; then they all compromised and agreed I'd be a scam-artist of some kind, peddling snake oil and the like. That was pretty great.
I feel like I saw/heard funnier this year, but they're not coming back to me at the moment.
The school scandal this year was _____________.
One thing I love about my school is ______________.
AND/OR
One thing I dislike about my school is _______________.
A heartwarming moment this year was when _______________.
I'm just now realizing that I might be stepping on your lesson plan by adding these. Is it okay if I co-teach with you?
kfwyre, we just went over this and it's in the directions. You are encouraged to add your own prompts.
...kidding obviously and I am glad someone added more!
Oh god, the irony of me failing to read directions!
Let's blame it on my summer brain. Yeah, that's the issue.
Parents in my class are absolutely insane. From insisting their 4 year old write their entire 17 letter name on every project, to demanding we not serve them processed food (while allowing cupcakes and rice krispies), to insisting that their child is never wrong and only misunderstood ("They didn't call Johnny a crybaby, they were just saying their password they invented to themselves!") it's been a ride.
This year really takes the cake for "Wildest Parent Comments"
This year, I got better at _______________.
The hardest thing about this year was _______________.
You wish that people who aren't teachers understood that _______________.
It is the most mentally and emotionally tiring job I've ever had.
It took my wife a few years to understand/believe me. And I know she doesn't truly get it because she isn't doing it.
I am an involved parent, a husband who pulls his weight around the house, etc. My wife tells me all the time how grateful she is when she hears her friends talk about their husbands/boyfriends being uninvolved and lazy.
Even still, for years she did not understand why I had to come home and disassociate for 30-60 minutes some days. Obviously I have to power through when things need to get done or when not doing so would leave her in an equally bad position.
But once a month (more often this year), I will just tell her flat out, "No, I can't do [optional task that can wait a bit] right now. I want to sit silently in a hot bathtub or scroll on my phone for a bit. I will be present when I'm recharged."
She understands more now that she has heard the stories and witnessed how my "just-got-home participation levels" fluctuate depending on the cohort I'm teaching, whether it's a school break, etc.
I gave her these two analogies:
Teaching is like having your brain plugged into an electrical outlet all day.
Teaching is like background noise at a crowded restaurant, except you are required to pay attention to every single voice all at once and react at a moments notice while also trying to eat your meal and talk to the people at your own table.
I also think some of the Instagram memes that show what teaching is really like have helped her. I keep telling her, "Yeah, it's funny but it's not an exaggeration AT ALL. Yes, it truly is just like the Instagram memes."
Yeah, my wife was absolutely disbelieving my first two years of teaching when I came home exhausted pretty much every day for the first month of school. But eventually - as she got promoted at her own job, and ended up in teaching-adjacent positions for a while - she realized that I was being 100% serious about how mentally exhausting it was.
I had a colleague who put it very well: You get used to being able to relax and unwind for the summer, and then when you get back to work, you're suddenly required to "always be on". You put it perfectly with those two analogies.
Thank you for the question!
I had made a mental note to respond to this thread, since I was busy earlier this week. I'm hoping more teachers take the time to share their stories.
I had a fabulous year! It was my 4th year teaching (my first true career job ever), but the first time I taught 12-13 years olds (freshmen here). I was used to teaching 16-17 years olds (seniors age here), so it was definitely a change of pace.
I used to tell myself that I preferred older students because "you could talk to them like you could an adult" and while that is true, it's not like you cannot talk to freshmen either.
There were so many moments this year where I was fascinated by the kids, seeing them hopeful, eager to learn, eager to participate. They want to connect with you, they want to talk to you, share their world with you and it was just...wonderful, in the truest sense of the word.
It was tough because yes, they are a handful. They scream, they talk over you, they cannot stay in place, they disturb... but they're just themselves, they're just kids. I learned how to adjust myself to them and let them talk whenever I could.
I received as many gifts this year as I had the last three combined. I received thoughtful and emotional messages, the kind I never received before. Is it better I'm a better teacher now? Is it because the kids don't know any better? Is it because they're just fresh out of elementary school? Honestly, it doesn't matter. I was just truly happy the whole year and I'm glad I made the switch to freshmen.
I decided some time this year that I would be teaching this age group for a long time...