ElectricPaladin
05-05-2014, 10:41 PM
Hey all, I just thought I'd give you the update on how things are going with me. We seem to be a sort of a community here, and it makes me very happy, and I want to foster that, and... well, be the change, as they say.
This year has really sucked for me. You may have noticed that I've been uncharacteristically unreliable lately. I still haven't completed my commitment for the swap that I organized (ugh), I tried to start a play-by-post RPG which just... evaporated, and my posts sometimes seem, in retrospect, a bit desperate. "Amuse me please!" sort of stuff.
Anyway, the situation has finally reached its natural and inevitable conclusion. My principal has asked me not to come back next year, though he was quite nice about it. He went out of his way to make sure that I understood that he knew that my heart was in the right place, that I could probably prosper at another school, and recommended that I try out high schools. He even said that he would be willing to write a recommendation based on my positive qualities if I needed it, which was nice of him.
And honestly, I can't argue with it. This site and I are a bad match. They are much more into discipline and rigid structure, whereas I like to try to build my classroom towards independence (though I admit that it's a process that's still a work in progress for me). They have extremely limited work time at school - lots of meetings - and often with after school programs in the room, and as an adult with ADHD, I have a different relationship with time than normal people (that is to say that everything takes me longer - something I can work around, but have had to acknowledge is just true). I like the idea of scaffolding my students towards decreased intervention from the teacher, whereas this site seems to prefer scaffolding forever. I don't actually judge my site - I know that there are many approaches to education - (except for the work time thing; it's just nuts how little time they leave us) but it's obvious that for whatever reason I haven't done my best work this year.
Still, it's also the first time that I've been asked to leave a site, and only my first time trying to work outside the first site, where I cut my teeth (I was reassigned for budgetary reasons), and it's a bit rattling.
Anyway, that's why I bit off more than I could chew at the start of the year. I started a swap. I started a play-by-post. Heck, I took on a record number of freelance contracts from my buddies at Onyx Path. I thought "oh, my 5th year... that's got to be better than my 4th year, right? And my 4th year was challenging, but ultimately the science got taught and the kids had fun (except for when they didn't) and managing my self care was easy."
Boy, was I wrong.
Well, it's over now. I've got five more weeks of school, during which I've got to look for a new site (otherwise I'll end up teaching Throne knows what Throne knows where...), and then... we'll see. I've got anxieties about a new site - you know, the usual "what if something really is wrong with me and for some reason I could only survive at my first crappy site" - but I'm not letting them dominate me.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled wargaming talk.
This year has really sucked for me. You may have noticed that I've been uncharacteristically unreliable lately. I still haven't completed my commitment for the swap that I organized (ugh), I tried to start a play-by-post RPG which just... evaporated, and my posts sometimes seem, in retrospect, a bit desperate. "Amuse me please!" sort of stuff.
Anyway, the situation has finally reached its natural and inevitable conclusion. My principal has asked me not to come back next year, though he was quite nice about it. He went out of his way to make sure that I understood that he knew that my heart was in the right place, that I could probably prosper at another school, and recommended that I try out high schools. He even said that he would be willing to write a recommendation based on my positive qualities if I needed it, which was nice of him.
And honestly, I can't argue with it. This site and I are a bad match. They are much more into discipline and rigid structure, whereas I like to try to build my classroom towards independence (though I admit that it's a process that's still a work in progress for me). They have extremely limited work time at school - lots of meetings - and often with after school programs in the room, and as an adult with ADHD, I have a different relationship with time than normal people (that is to say that everything takes me longer - something I can work around, but have had to acknowledge is just true). I like the idea of scaffolding my students towards decreased intervention from the teacher, whereas this site seems to prefer scaffolding forever. I don't actually judge my site - I know that there are many approaches to education - (except for the work time thing; it's just nuts how little time they leave us) but it's obvious that for whatever reason I haven't done my best work this year.
Still, it's also the first time that I've been asked to leave a site, and only my first time trying to work outside the first site, where I cut my teeth (I was reassigned for budgetary reasons), and it's a bit rattling.
Anyway, that's why I bit off more than I could chew at the start of the year. I started a swap. I started a play-by-post. Heck, I took on a record number of freelance contracts from my buddies at Onyx Path. I thought "oh, my 5th year... that's got to be better than my 4th year, right? And my 4th year was challenging, but ultimately the science got taught and the kids had fun (except for when they didn't) and managing my self care was easy."
Boy, was I wrong.
Well, it's over now. I've got five more weeks of school, during which I've got to look for a new site (otherwise I'll end up teaching Throne knows what Throne knows where...), and then... we'll see. I've got anxieties about a new site - you know, the usual "what if something really is wrong with me and for some reason I could only survive at my first crappy site" - but I'm not letting them dominate me.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled wargaming talk.