First Year of Teaching is over
Posted by mrwaddell on 9 June, 2008
I was kind of quiet over the last two weeks. I drastically underestimated how much time was required for the last two weeks of school. Who knew creating review packets, grading huge projects, and getting all of the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed would take up so much freaking time!
Not me.
My first official year of teaching is over. Wow. It was a terrific year. I have a great department, a great school, and I think I fit in very well with my peers. What more could a person ask for, right? I mean really. The complaints I read about from other teachers center around “that so and so is such a jerk” or “I hate my school they don’t support me in X”.
Me, I love my school. My school is fighting to do new things and constantly improve. My district is constantly trying to figure out ways to take what my school does and move it to other schools. My school was just nominated as a Model School for my State! What more could a new teacher (at the ripe old age of 38) want?
That is not to say that my first year was all roses. It was tough learning classroom management with freshmen. I think I sucked in several different ways, and I had way too many F’s. I made it so difficult to fail, but so many learners still just gave up and refused to do anything.
What more can be done? Well, we (my department) are going to re-write our Alg 1 curriculum to radically change it to a more flexible and more focused on the assessment and teaching alignment.
