by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.
In writing a comment for Mr Gonzalez’s post about his plans to use iPads in Science, I did a little google search on iPad’s wifi issues because, to be honest, I don’t trust iPad’s network connection enough yet to use it in a classroom.
I was surprised to see, at the bottom of the first search page a link written by someone from my professional learning community – Chris Parsons.
At first I thought, Cool! Look, it’s Chris! Then I noticed the fine print by the article title:
Beta – My Social Circle – My Social Content.
connected via twitter.com
Has anyone else noticed this in their google searches?
I’m going back and forth from this is cool, to this is creepy.
On the same note, Google street view has a view of the front of my parents’ house, with my mom in it. She’s standing in their garage. Again, cool? creepy?
So now it’s July 1. The paperwork is over and all I have left to do is empty my classroom at the old school tomorrow – today is a holiday in Canada – Canada Day.
Time for brightness and light (and warmth. It’s July 1st and I have a fire going to ward off the chill that 12 degrees celsius brings to this old house) so welcome to my site redesign :) I need something cheery to look at right now. I’ll let this post explain some of the why.
Yesterday was supposed to be my first day of holiday until I was called in to do ‘a bit’ of paperwork that people forgot to tell me about. In Ontario, students are awarded a certificate of Bilingualism depending on the number of hours of French they were exposed to from Kindergarten through Grade 12. The system for figuring this out is rather…tedious. Each year the French teacher has to figure out how many hours each child received and add it to previous years. Not all students are equal though, some with IEPs receive less French instruction than their peers and so we need to figure out the percentage of instruction over the year. There is a form to write all of this in (by hand) in each student’s folder though, sadly, there isn’t a uniform location for the form in each folder. I taught 7 classes of 20 to 34 students per classroom. 5 hours later I was on my way back home. But the stress of this end of year got to me and I spent much of my paperwork time in tears. Uncontrollably so. Every once in a while I’d wipe my eyes and say, ok. It’s over. And it was, until someone came by to ask how I was doing and they’d start right up again.
So I definitely learned that when I’m not at my top form I default to old behaviours. I used to keep my emotions to myself until they finally exploded out of me in the form of tears that just couldn’t stop. And there I was again.
Smack in the middle of my new teaching assignment my boyfriend left. We had a difficult weekend about 2 weeks ago and really needed to talk. Instead I came home from work that Monday to find all of his things gone and I haven’t heard from him since.
I was in the middle of getting to know a new school in a new province, transitioning from high school to elementary school teaching, and writing report cards at the new school all the while correcting, evaluating, and reporting on student work from my old school. I already had a few emotions coursing through my system – fears of incompetence related to both teaching elementary school after an 8 year hiatus from that level and teaching in French, guilt associated with leaving my students and colleagues at the old school, and overwhelmedom from all of that :) Needless to say I packed whatever I felt about this relationship into the back of my mind (heart) in order to continue juggling the balls.
I’m looking forward to this summer to rest and recuperate! Gardening, spending time with friends and family, exercise (I have not exercised in I don’t know how long), reading, painting, and whatever else comes up are how I am going to do that.
This blog post has been in the works for a couple of weeks now and was coaxed out by Dan Callahan’s post One for the Record Books over at Geek.Teacher. His post reflects on the mixed feelings he has around changing schools, changing positions.
My own recent job change has had me thinking along the same lines.
I’ll admit to being very conflicted that I’m abandoning a lot of the core elements that have defined my first eight years as an educator. My new position is going to be so drastically different from what I’ve been doing on so many different levels, and it will differ in a lot of ways from what I set out to do when I got my first job.
* I’m going to be moving from a semi-urban district to a much more suburban environment.
* I’m going to be moving from middle school to elementary school.
* I’m going to be leaving special education to work with a much wider portion of the student body.
In my darker moments, I’ll admit, it feels like I’m selling out. While I know that my new position will have its own challenges, I have to admit that those areas highlighted above feel important, and it feels like I’m abandoning them.
As many of you know, I loved my last job. It was infused with ideals of teaching I believe in strongly – working with students who have been marginalized much of their lives and showing them it doesn’t have to always be that way, putting the student before curriculum, the necessity of relationship, the heightened sense of making a difference in students’ lives.
I used to teach students in grades 10 and 11 at an alternative program, kids who were at risk to not graduate high school but were identified as bright, needing a different environment. Close to half of my students were Native students (Mohawk from Kahnawake). I now teach French in an elementary school in a rural area of Eastern Ontario and at first I, like Dan, thought that I was abandoning those ideals I held close by leaving that job.
Those feelings are also entangled with the sense of real abandonment I fear I’ve left my students. You see, I took the new position with 4 days of teaching plus an exam period left in the year at the old school. The decision wasn’t easy but necessary to gain experience in the Ontario school system. I was able to take it because of the tight teaching team that exists in that program. I didn’t leave my students to flap in the wind with a random substitute teacher. I left them with some of the most caring people I know. That is another fear I have, attached to another one of my ideals, that I have left a teaching team that embodies collaboration, caring, and raising the bar for ourselves and our students.
So, while I was excited to be starting something new and to be on the track to better work/life balance by working at a school in my area of the world, I was also thinking about everything I just wrote about. Not to mention the fact that all of this was happening in June, not usually my most energetic month!
Soon into my new job, however, I began to make connections with my colleagues and with my students. The first time a student came to me on the playground, “Madame Tracy, please help,” I thought, “All is good”. I realized that I am still excited about helping kids to learn, though in different ways. And I remembered, it is not my job that defines me but me that defines my job.
I find inspiration when I need it and at the end of my 2nd week at the new school was intrigued by a tweet in my twitter feed from Elona Hartjes:
The link led to a talk on TED by Srikumar Rao called Plug into your hard-wired happiness. The line, “passion exists inside you, not inside a job,” seemed louder than the other lines that were spoken in the video. And I realize that everything is going to be ok because I love and am passionate about working with kids and teachers, about being part of a caring community dedicated to the children within it, about creating hope for the future within community. My job helps me to live out my passions but it isn’t the sum of them.
Just so you know, as I typed that title I was singing, ‘where in the world is Carmen Sandiago’ in my head. Just so you know.
A week ago, last Tuesday, June 1st to be precise, I changed jobs. Of course I still teach. Though the context and audience has changed significantly!
I am now teaching French as a 2nd language to students from Kindergarten to Grade 6 at a public school 15 minutes from my home. Oui, c’est vrai.
The decision to change jobs had me torn in a few different pieces. As you know, if you’ve read previous posts of mine, I loved working in the alternative program. I love each and every one of my students – no matter the hard time they may have a given me! There is something special and unique about students between the ages of 15 and 18, those students who have a drive to succeed and need kind, caring adults to help them get there. But I was breaking away bit by bit, traveling up to 3 hours a day tired me OUT and I felt so much less of what I am from the constant exhaustion. My original plan was to find a position for next year. I figured that if I jumped, by giving my principal my notice even before I found a position, that the net would come. Well, I wasn’t quite expecting it to come swooping in so quickly!
I was offered this position to finish the year and potentially continue in the same one next year. I was offered it on a Friday to begin the following Tuesday. That weekend was spent in hibernation mode. I finally decided that since there were 4 class days left and then the exam period at the old school, I could make the break by leaving plans for a substitute teacher for those 4 days and continuing to evaluate the students’ work in order to write their final report cards. It is so difficult to find a teaching position in my area and I finally decided that I needed to get my foot in the door, so to speak, by accepting this position.
I’ve registered for a Teaching French as a 2nd Language (FSL 1) course over the summer. The Ontario College of Teachers is very specific about the qualifications they require for a teacher to teach a specific subject. After this summer I will have the FSL qualification on my teaching certificate and so will be officially qualified to teach French. Apparently that is one of the easiest ways to begin teaching in my school board. Of 35 or so new teaching positions posted last week, 30 were for French positions.
So here I am, starting a new chapter in my professional life. Have you ever been the new teacher in June? Imagine it for a moment….
So far 10 of our 25 grade 11 students have received acceptance letters from their CEGEPs of choice. Most of the others have plans for trade schools. I’m absolutely tickled pink for all of them!
This coming 4 day weekend is expected to have sunny days with temperatures in the low to mid 20s. Nice.
