Okay, so let's get this out of the way... I'm a terrible person who's bad at scheduling and keeping up with my own personal life (or lack there of) and this blog got pushed to the back burner... for 8 months. I've been a little disenchanted with teaching for awhile and I've been avoiding thinking about it while I'm off the clock.
So basically this school year I've just been going home and scrolling Pinterest on my phone (because the mobile app is so much better than their browser version), and I have developed an addiction to Cool Math games (who really needs to get more thinking outside the box games). But recently I've found a reason to dive back in (thanks Ms. Barber)!
I'm not going to share this post on my other social media accounts, so if you're reading this that means that you either are really into my blog (hey Shirley!) or are just one of the random traffic. Either way I'm cool with it and I'm going to start my rant now.
This year my district is dissolving the Intermediate School system. They are moving 5th grade back down to Elementary School and moving 6th grade up to Middle School. In order to fit the new grades coming in, and to keep up with community growth they decided to open 3 new Middle Schools. Then their plan was to pick 1 person per subject per grade level from every campus and reassign them to the new schools. For the most part it seems like they went with the "last in, first out" rule. EXCEPT FOR MY CASE! I'm not the last 8th grade Math teacher hired, but the other teacher is also the Algebra teacher so they don't want to move her *pout face* (plus the old Algebra teacher is trying to move back here also...)
I have been assigned to a school that is twice as far from my house, and is two stories. A two-story Middle School. It looks like the grabbed the plans for a high school and then changed their minds last minute. It's massive, and I'm scared. On top of that the administrative staff is all coming from an Intermediate School. That means that they're used to dealing with 5th and 6th graders, and I'm not sure if they're going to be able to handle all the fun and games that comes with 7th and 8th graders. I'm sure they behavior isn't going to be all that different; the kids are still going to fight and cuss and throw things, but in 7th and 8th grade they're stronger so they can punch harder and throw heavier stuff! And other people are worried about the 8th grade boys preying on the 6th grade girls. I had my first pregnant student this year and I have no idea how this 14 year old is going to get through High school. I can't even imagine an 11 or 12 year old trying to survive that.
Obviously I'm not the only person who isn't happy with the way that things are turning out, so my district decided to have a special job fair for the people who got reconfigured. And I went because I want to stay at my current school, plus I interviewed at a couple other schools. And I never heard back from any of them. Schools are only allowed to fill positions once the current teacher has vacated the position. This means that most of the schools that were at the job fair had no open positions, or they were holding some in hopes that they could keep some of the teachers that were taken from their school (which is what my principal is trying to do for me).
After that job fair we were supposed to have to district wide transfer fair, but because of the earlier job fair disaster they decided to cancel the fair and told people to just contact the school you want to transfer to and set up an interview outside of school hours. To top it all off, the district how now implemented a hiring freeze. Turns out that not everyone who was pulled from a school was given a new placement. Everyone is under contract so they have to put them somewhere, where they are certified to to teach. So until they place all of those new people my current principal won't know if she will have an opening for me next year.
Oh my God it feels good to get that all off my chest! Now I remember why I used to post so often, because this is waaaaaaaay cheaper than going therapy lol. Thank you to all the 12 people who are going to read this, and if you're a teacher out there who's frustrated and feels like you're struggling, you can leave a ranting comment, it feels amazing to vent. See you guys next time!
