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.