Getting it off my chest and preparing for more brain damage

I teach in a middle school, and for the most part I enjoy it immensely. It takes a certain kind of personality to work with adolescents who are overwhelmed with growing up and trying to figure out how they fit in socially. I know that I’ve got what it takes, because I have an excellent track record with kids and academic achievement. Perhaps that is why my boss has scheduled me with five preps this year, because she is confident that I can handle it. However, it’s proving to be overwhelming and making me a less effective educator.

Two of my preps are new classes for me. One of them is Exploratory Spanish, a subject with which I am familiar only in smatterings and have never formally studied. Learning Spanish as I wing it takes a great of my time. However, I look at it as opening a new door of opportunity for me, and I know this group of students is learning because I am constantly asking for feedback and finding ways to assess their knowledge. Nevertheless, I feel awful because they so bright, and I am limited in what I can offer them.

The other new prep is level two French, which is difficult partly because I am unsure of the pacing, partly because I do not yet have a cache of teaching strategies to take my students to the next level in their second language development, and partly because I am the only French teacher in the building with no easily accessible mentor. Teaching a new course is always like charting new territory when you are alone. Of all my classes, however, these kiddos are my favorite because they are so gifted and so eager to learn. My fear lies in the impending district-wide speaking assessment they will take in May and in the fact that the high schools have already expressed reluctance in allowing freshmen to take third year foreign language. They will have to prove themselves to be ready for the next level, but I am ultimately their gatekeeper.

The three classes I have experience teaching in the past are exploratory French, level one French, and reading. Over the course of the years, my level one French students have consistently performed above the area and district averages on common comprehension and listening assessments. The district has, however, chosen to include my school in a pilot program in which the area teachers in the high schools and middle schools must negotiate what to teach in order to maintain seamless alignment. This total alignment is not just over the course of the semester, but week by week, and this is making me crazy, because I feel like I am reinventing the wheel in order to justify somebody else’s job. Fixing a subject area that for me is not broken is translating into lengthy, redundant meetings. My time would be better spent articulating about the level two French or exploratory Spanish classes, but no. The level one world language teachers have been forced to bicker over when to teach subject pronouns and adjective agreement. It’s micromanagement at its finest.

Another subject area I teach is reading for below-grade level readers. This is my third year to teach reading, and for the most part, I enjoy working with these poor kiddos. I would mostly describe them as coming from homes where academic literacy and learning are either non-existent or misunderstood (some parents never even return phone calls or come to conferences), so part of my job is to help bring them up to pace. I have good days and bad days with this group. One thing that makes it harder for me this year is that my schedule doesn't allow me the luxury of talking with the teacher who has really supported my teaching reading in the past, and that makes me feel bad. In any case, no bad day is as burdensome as the legal accountability paperwork that comes with teaching reading. Don’t get me wrong, I totally believe that teachers and schools should be held accountable when Johnny can’t read, but the law has turned Johnny into cumbersome paperwork mill. The end-of-year paperwork I look forward to requires more hours to complete than the time for which I am paid AND the legal burden rests on me, the teacher. Should Johnny’s deadbeat parents choose to sue me a couple of years down the road, well, I’m screwed.

Now, if I didn’t have a family or if I weren’t in graduate school trying to improve myself professionally I might take all of the aforementioned whining with a better attitude. But now I also have a parent of a level one French child who has already fabricated lies about my classroom policies and me. The child comes late to class and doesn’t turn in homework, and the mother, la vache, lays the blame on me! Last week was e-mail hell. La vache also has a well-known reputation for terrorizing other teachers, secretaries, and assistant principals, and kissing ass with the only person she perceives as her equal: the head principal. Tomorrow her little darling will receive a school mid-term progress report with a less than acceptable grade in French, because the child was absent last Monday for a test she never came in to make up. I'm going to be fucking crucified! Thank god my principal sees the mother for what she really is and supports me in this headache that I will probably have to deal with all year.