One year ago I was relentlessly applying for teaching jobs and
receiving a constant flow of rejection emails. Yesterday I finished my first
year of teaching. And while I wish I could actually be paid to work for another
few weeks so I could work out some kinks in my instructional scheduling and
prepare for the new curriculum I'll be teaching in the fall, paying teachers to
do so is not as important to everybody, although it certainly should be. (Great
idea note: most experienced teachers, while they will deny actually
needing this, probably need to take time to reflect the past year and make
necessary changes to their instruction just like young teachers. All teachers
should be allotted contract time for this and should be held accountable for
the process of refining their teaching skills, and there is really no better
time to do so than right after the school year.)
What new curriculum? Well, I applied for a district job in the
district and got transferred to the high school where I'll be teaching three
periods math and three language arts. While I feel comfortable teaching the
same math I have been this year, I need quite a bit of prep time for my new
language arts course. Here are some reasons this is more difficult than it
might seem at first:
1. The Common Core Curriculum: Our district began teaching the nationally
accepted Common Core Curriculum this year. I am
up to date on my math, aligned with the junior high courses being taught (the
math department at RJHS helped me out a ton on this) but the high school
English department is not exactly on the same page concerning how to teach this
new curriculum (or whether or not they want to, I think). So it will be
difficult closing the gap when I'm unsure of what mark I'm trying to catch up
to. Speaking of which:
2. IEP Goals: Previously, I had written very specific IEP
goals for the kids at Thompsen, but I was told this week that there are no
specific academic goals for students at the high school, just that they pass
all their classes and are preparing for graduation, and a behavior goal or two
if they need it. This is wrong on so many levels (on a legal level, first of
all, but also on educational, organizational, professional, and
caring-about-the-kids-you-teach levels, to name a few). It's not like I'm
incredibly anal about not being in compliance with special education law (well,
I am, actually), but these goals are there not only for students to work
towards something and the parents to hold the school accountable for trying to
catch their children up to the mainstream curriculum, but also to guide
instruction. So I can't really plan what I teach unless I know what they need
to learn. Urgh. Frustrating.
3. Other Special Education LA teachers: There is another special
ed teacher who teaches 5 periods of language arts. If I had the time to
collaborate with him we could streamline the department's LA curriculum in
order to curb the amount of students who will undoubtedly try to switch classes
when they find out one of us is harder/easier than the other. (Disclaimer: The
district does provide two paid days before the school year to prepare for
things, but that usually includes at least half a day of in-service. Special
education teachers also get a couple of extra paid days to review their new IEP
files.) This likely will happen, but not to the extent that I would like it to
happen.
4. Differentiating Instruction: This means providing challenging
learning opportunities for every student despite what level they’re actually
on. I’ve developed a program to do this in math, but I’m not so sure of how I’ll
do it in English. It’s a vital part of special education instruction because in
my classroom students will have goals on all sorts of different levels (well,
not yet, maybe; see 2. IEP Goals), so to meet all of them I need to give them
all specific instruction towards what they need. This hasn’t been happening in
math, nor has it been happening in language arts, so I need to do that to,
which is a problem because…
5. I don’t do language arts: Or at least I never have before. No
one ever taught me how to teach someone to read or write. Mainly that’s because
I’m still working on my masters in special education and my two undergrad
degrees were political science and health education. So I don’t really know
what I’m doing anyways, but I’m sure I can give it a pretty good shot.
So that’s what I’m doing. I feel fairly confident in half of the
new job I’ll be doing, and a little wary on the other half, but I’m excited to
be a part of some big changes.
