Second time around (also a post from July)

I was hired 5 days before the start of the school year. Two of those days I spent in new teacher training for the entire school system. Two of them will be spent doing school-based training. And the one lonely day in the middle was fairly useless because I don't have a lot of the supplies I need and my fellow teachers were not at the school because who works on the last day of summer vacation?

I have no textbooks (the curriculum standards were changed over the summer, with no time to purchase textbooks that correspond to what I'm supposed to be teaching) and I have zero materials. To be honest, I'm a little fuzzy on what I'm even supposed to be teaching because the standards are written in very vague and lofty terms.

During the system-wide training, I was inundated with information. This is not the same profession that I started in twenty years ago. The emphasis now is on incorporating technology and improving test scores, and everything is data-driven. The formatted lesson plans I worked from last year, as a substitute teacher, were abhorrent to me. It looked like a giant, disgusting checklist and you had to make sure all of the boxes were filled with the right criteria. Everybody worked from the same type of lesson plans and there was little (if any) autonomy within your grade and subject area to do your own thing. No room for creativity. No room for fun. Just do what everybody else is doing, and don't go against the flow.

I knew all of this when I accepted the job, and knew that my administrators are very results oriented. Our school looks good on paper, and they want that to continue. I was honest with them about my concerns during my interview, so they can't say they didn't know what they were getting when they hired me.

I can work within their system, because this is my second time around.

I'm not worried.

I'm not worried about earning their approval during observations of my lessons. It's just a job, a job I chose because I want to teach young people, not because I want to be a robot teacher in their system. If they don't like what I'm doing, they will let me know and we will come to an understanding and I will leave. Hopefully it will be my choice and not theirs.

I'm not worried about ensuring that every one of my students masters every item on the syllabus because, you know what? They won't. And I can't make them.

One of the other new teachers I met this week said that her interview for this job was the hardest she'd ever experienced. I was befuddled by this statement; maybe because I was frequently part of the interviewing process in my last job, and maybe because I already knew the interviewers, but mostly because I knew they were pretty desperate to fill the position in less than a week.

My self-worth is not based on what people- even employers- think of me. This is my second time around, and I am confident in who I am and what I know my purpose to be. I don't have to have a Pinterest-worthy classroom, and I don't have to spend hours and money creating new and innovative lessons to impress students.

My purpose is to make these tweens feel loved, and accepted, and worthy. I'll be grateful if they learn some science along the way, but if they end this year believing in themselves, then that's all the validation I need.

A post from the end of July (or, why I haven't written since July)

Upon graduating from college with a degree in middle grades education, I taught in public middle schools for three years. I was young, newly married and had nothing else going on in my life. I mostly enjoyed my job, and probably would have continued teaching if not for the birth of my first child (followed by two others within the next 4 years).

I spent the better part of the next 13 years at home, and for the majority of that time frame I was either homeschooling my own children, tutoring homeschooled students of all ages, or both. A wonderful job opportunity led me to work in student affairs at a local university when my children got older, and I enjoyed that job for 3 years.

Then, we moved across the country.

We moved to a state none of us had ever been to before, where we knew no one and were literally a thousand miles away from our friends and family. I enrolled all of my children in public middle & high schools (one of them for the first time!) to encourage opportunities to make friends and get involved in our new town. But what about me? Where could I enroll myself?

I did think about literally enrolling in classes, either a new course of study at a community college or beginning to work on my master's degree in some education-related field. The knowledge that we would (hopefully) not be stationed in our new state for more than a few years stopped me from committing myself to such a lengthy and potentially very expensive undertaking that I may not be able to complete.

So I feel back into what I knew: teaching. I was hired as a substitute for the local school system, and I spent 2 months hopping from school to school, across all subjects and grades. I finally got an opportunity to work at the middle school my child attended, and after establishing myself as a trustworthy individual, found that I had enough job opportunities to work exclusively at that one school with the occasional day spent at the high school next door. I got to know the teachers and students, and it felt like home.

I found that subbing was an ideal fit for me because I could easily take a day off when I had other things to attend to, I didn't have to deal with parents, and I only had to deal with paperwork on the rarest of occasions. Still, there were weeks when I only had a day or two of work and more so than missing the financial compensation (because, let's be honest- substitute teachers are not in it for the money!), I missed being a part of the school community.

I knew there were some job openings at my school of choice, but for a variety of reasons I chose not to pursue them. My primary deterrent was being complicit in a data-driven system where standardized test scores are more important than actually teaching and mentoring young people.  I had a change of heart less than two weeks before our school year was set to begin, and mentioned to the principal that I was available and interested if a teaching position were to become available. Two days later, I received a call informing me that there was an unexpected vacancy in the 6th grade science department and would I be interested?

I said yes, and now I am days away from welcoming more than a hundred students to middle school. My classroom looks very naked compared to those around me since I long since parted with my humble stash of schoolroom supplies. I am relying on lesson plans and materials provided by my fellow 6th grade science teachers since I have no time to prepare my own.

And you know what? I am just fine.
Hakuna matata.

Campcraft

I've been out of state for 3 glorious weeks:

• 1 week at Boy Scout camp in Mississippi
• 1 week of visiting friends and family in North Carolina
• 1 week of Boy Scout camp in North Carolina

Always needing to have some small craft and not wanting to take a lot of supplies, I opted for working on an old-school friendship bracelet in Mississippi

and taught some staff members in North Carolina how to make lanyards with plastic lace, which I forgot to take pictures of

image snagged from https://wanelo.com/store/keys2please

Before leaving, I also finished my t-shirt rug!