The last "news" post discussed my interview in Ferndale and my frustrations with finding bits and pieces of my portfolio. Since then:
I was offered the job, and accepted it. I moved in with DarkAngle and Ninja, who were kind enough to put up with me bringing my cat along. I came in just in time for 3rd quarter Count Period, which is one of the most evil times of the year. For funding reasons, the district superintendent requires that our program keep enrolling right up through Count Day, even when our classrooms are filled to overflowing and our class lists have twice as many students as could ever fit in the room. His theory is that each room holds 30, and "never" do more than half of them show up on a given day, so every class should have 60 people on the list! This because the district gets money for each enrolled student. Not only do we have to enroll them, but we then have to make phone calls and pester them if they had the poor taste not to show up on Count Day - we have 30 days to get them to sit in all their classes and "make good".
Note that I said the district gets money for each enrolled student... they stuff our program dangerously full (come on - 30+ kids in a classroom in a high-risk Alternative School setting?), but we don't see any - or at least precious little - of that funding. But somehow the regular high school has a GREAT band program...
3rd quarter, aside from the craziness of Count, I got myself rather swamped with grading. It was not entirely unmanageable, especially with the help of Superman (and sometimes his family), and it certainly wasn't as bad as last year's grading ocean was, but it was still far more than healthy.
Count period is over, and we've begun 4th quarter. I have a new way of grading things that gets the majority of the workload off me - the students get "points" (daily percents, really) for participating - doing the work, participating in class, reading aloud, etc. Very little of this ever has to get turned in - we correct it in class, and they get credit for doing it, not for the answers. This may sound like iffy teaching techniques, but here's how it works - EVERYTHING in daily work points to a test. Whether it's actually information, or practicing skills, it is all something they will need to know/be able to do for the unit tests or exams. 50% of their grade for the quarter is in these tests. 25% is their daily participation, and 25% is the midterm and final exams. This means that for the most part, all i have to take home and grade are the tests - and many of those I'm able to do at school! That lightens my workload incredibly, and I've actually had time to do some relaxing, read some books, and even go out and do fun things. Huzzah!
I love my classes, and most of my students... and the ones I dont' particularly like are rarely in school anyway for various and sundry reasons. I'm having a lot of fun with my lit classes this quarter: Contemporary American Lit (Coming of Age stories), Women in Lit (currently studying the poetry of Dickensen and Plath), Lit of the 60's (come on, that's just a fun concept!), and American Lit B (meta-fiction; currently Monster by Walter Dean Meyers - if you haven't read it, go do so. Now.) My 4th hour class (Am Lit B) is REALLY into the novel; it's written in the format of a screenplay. I read the "stage directions" (Camera directions, really) and the students are actually fighting over who gets to read what parts out loud! I actually had to tell some of the boys today "You can't have more than FOUR parts!"
And now for the bad news.
Yesterday I got beige-slipped. They call it "preemptive layoffs" or something like that... the State Education budget hasn't been published yet, so the school's claim is that they don't know if they'll be able to afford to have us as teachers next year (4 other new teachers at my site got the same lovely beige letter). In reality, they do this every year, they ALWAYS hire the people back unless for some reason they got a negative performance review or something, and the timing of this is particularly suspicious: the union's supposed to vote on whether to accept the tentative contract agreement, sometime next week. So the school board issues the layoffs, so we'll vote to accept the contract, and then they'll recall everyone. It's dirty politics (is there any other kind?) and I HATE being caught in the middle of it.
Oh well, fair enough - if Superman gets his dream job on the West side of the state, I won't feel bad about sending out resumes over there - and look for a school system that doesn't pull this kind of political BS with people's livelihoods.
Ok, I will feel bad about leaving. But that's because I love teaching here, I love the students, and I love my coworkers. It's quite possible that this school qualifies as my dream job.
But, we'll see. It's all in God's hands anyway.
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