Well, I was lucky enough to get interviews for two different jobs here in town, but got neither one. So I'll be heading out to Rural Charter School five days a week (versus the three a week it was last year) and keeping my spirits up by doing an after school program at Favorite Elementary and possibly adjunct teaching at the community college. I like the charter school OK, but it's 45 minutes away and I don't have my own classroom up there. I've been too adrift for the past few months what with it being summer and all. Even teaching summer school in July didn't anchor me enough. I'm ready to go back to work. I won't get my own beautiful perfect classroom this year, but I might be able to almost pay the bills without leaving the profession. We have a number of folks living with us who will pitch in and help take up the slack on money, so maybe we'll survive this worst year yet of the recession. Worst for us anyway. The states have received their stimulus money, but the districts are holding on to it, so probably no hiring.
Anyway, off to think about intervention plans.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Summer's wrapping up. Time to look forward to September.
I've agreed to return to Rural Charter School and continue my Title 1 interventions. This year the job will be about 20 hours per week (last year it was 14) and the board was going to buy a reading curriculum, so lots of improvements. Frankly, I was looking for full time work, but those positions are few and far between around here.
One of my main hopes is that I can establish myself with a set classroom. This would improve the flow of students through the day's schedule immensely. Last year I sort of camped out in the director's office and then moved around the school, pulling kids out of their classes at the appointed times. This wasted a lot of time and the older ones (7th grade) often put on a big show of resisting coming with me. This is sort of understandable; if you don't feel great about being pulled out for extra help you're likely to try to resist. If you're 12 years old anyway. This year the school is adding 8th grade (so it's now complete as a preK-8 school). I see even more of this silliness unless I change my methods. The school is housed in two converted houses, and space is at a premium. They're working on grants to convert and take possession of a third house on the property, but I don't expect it to be ready by September, or maybe not even this year. However, if I could stake a claim on even a small room, probably in the primary grades building, I could pretty much have the older students show up for our sessions on their own and I could get the younger ones from their classrooms across the hall or whatever without wasting any time. Then my transition time between sessions could be spent on work instead of on walking back and forth across the property.
I'm also hoping my 20 hours a week at the charter school can be condensed into three days, so that I can have two days for other work. This could bring my weekly schedule much closer to 40 hours. I may have an intervention gig at my own kids' Urban Public School, prepping students for their state assessments. If that's two full days a week, I'm in great shape. This scenario is basically how last spring semester went, only with more hours per day. I did about 5 hours at Rural, three days a week, and about 3 hours at Urban, twice a week. That added up to around half time, but spread out in such a way that it was pretty tricky to do any other work. If I do my 20 hours at Rural over 3 days and get two other 8 hour days at Urban, voila! I'm working full time! Still no benefits, but whatever. I'm going to push for this schedule. The Urban job likely won't start in September, but could be lined up to start in October. I think I'll contact the principal at Urban and propose this. It's based on an idea he presented to me back in May or June, and this would be a great solution both to my own income and career needs and, I think, to both schools' intervention needs.
The recession has thrown everything into a tizzy. I started grad school thinking that if I just applied myself and presented myself well to the powers that be, I'd be given at least a couple of job offers and my biggest dilemma would be choosing which grade level I wanted to teach. Then, while I was in school on my way toward my degree and teaching license, everything went south and no one's retiring and the few teachers who do leave aren't being replaced and some are even getting RIF'ed and someone like me who's just entering her second year is pretty low on the totem pole. As a result, this blog has become much more about the job hunt and the economy and ohmygod how am I going to pay the bills than about education. Now that I'm somewhat at peace with the direction I'm headed for 2010-11, I will allow myself the luxury of talking for a minute about Actual Teaching. How novel!
I spent the month of July teaching summer school at Urban Public School. A caveat: I use the word urban rather loosely. I do not live in a big city. I live in a rural county; I'm in the downtown area (really downtown in a loft in a converted commercial building) of the town that is the county seat, and my kids' school (which I'm calling Urban Public School) is a few blocks away in the 'hood of our community. I like this and wouldn't have it any other way, but truly my town has a population of about 40,000 and is not contiguous with any other towns. It's the smallest place I've lived for more than about three months. It's not a big city. But within that context this is the most urban area of the whole county and we have a proportionate amount of the ills of most cities. Heck, I live directly next door to the local Gospel Rescue Mission- basically a soup kitchen and homeless shelter. I hear a lot of sirens. My daughters are familiar with gang graffiti. It's by no means a bad place, and I'm not going to make it out to be truly Inner City or anything.
The rest of the language arts block was spent reading The Lightning Thief to the class, with required brief written responses each day. Then during the second half of the month I brought in a dozen books from the public library on Greek mythology, and the students did a small written description and a portrait in markers and construction paper collage of their favorite character or type of creature from the myths. We had quite a few Medusas. The draw of decapitation was too much to resist. Poseidon also loomed large. It was sort of an abbreviated version of Project Based Learning. We read some literature, did some research on pretty freely chosen subjects (any character they wanted was fine) and created a final presentation that was then put on public display at the district office. If I ever find myself with my own classroom of kids around this age I think I'll do a more in-depth version of this project. It was tons of fun, but the subject is so huge it would be better with more than a few hours worth of time.
All in all I was pleased with how the summer session went and how the kids responded to my lessons. It was really valuable.
One of my main hopes is that I can establish myself with a set classroom. This would improve the flow of students through the day's schedule immensely. Last year I sort of camped out in the director's office and then moved around the school, pulling kids out of their classes at the appointed times. This wasted a lot of time and the older ones (7th grade) often put on a big show of resisting coming with me. This is sort of understandable; if you don't feel great about being pulled out for extra help you're likely to try to resist. If you're 12 years old anyway. This year the school is adding 8th grade (so it's now complete as a preK-8 school). I see even more of this silliness unless I change my methods. The school is housed in two converted houses, and space is at a premium. They're working on grants to convert and take possession of a third house on the property, but I don't expect it to be ready by September, or maybe not even this year. However, if I could stake a claim on even a small room, probably in the primary grades building, I could pretty much have the older students show up for our sessions on their own and I could get the younger ones from their classrooms across the hall or whatever without wasting any time. Then my transition time between sessions could be spent on work instead of on walking back and forth across the property.
I'm also hoping my 20 hours a week at the charter school can be condensed into three days, so that I can have two days for other work. This could bring my weekly schedule much closer to 40 hours. I may have an intervention gig at my own kids' Urban Public School, prepping students for their state assessments. If that's two full days a week, I'm in great shape. This scenario is basically how last spring semester went, only with more hours per day. I did about 5 hours at Rural, three days a week, and about 3 hours at Urban, twice a week. That added up to around half time, but spread out in such a way that it was pretty tricky to do any other work. If I do my 20 hours at Rural over 3 days and get two other 8 hour days at Urban, voila! I'm working full time! Still no benefits, but whatever. I'm going to push for this schedule. The Urban job likely won't start in September, but could be lined up to start in October. I think I'll contact the principal at Urban and propose this. It's based on an idea he presented to me back in May or June, and this would be a great solution both to my own income and career needs and, I think, to both schools' intervention needs.
The recession has thrown everything into a tizzy. I started grad school thinking that if I just applied myself and presented myself well to the powers that be, I'd be given at least a couple of job offers and my biggest dilemma would be choosing which grade level I wanted to teach. Then, while I was in school on my way toward my degree and teaching license, everything went south and no one's retiring and the few teachers who do leave aren't being replaced and some are even getting RIF'ed and someone like me who's just entering her second year is pretty low on the totem pole. As a result, this blog has become much more about the job hunt and the economy and ohmygod how am I going to pay the bills than about education. Now that I'm somewhat at peace with the direction I'm headed for 2010-11, I will allow myself the luxury of talking for a minute about Actual Teaching. How novel!
I spent the month of July teaching summer school at Urban Public School. A caveat: I use the word urban rather loosely. I do not live in a big city. I live in a rural county; I'm in the downtown area (really downtown in a loft in a converted commercial building) of the town that is the county seat, and my kids' school (which I'm calling Urban Public School) is a few blocks away in the 'hood of our community. I like this and wouldn't have it any other way, but truly my town has a population of about 40,000 and is not contiguous with any other towns. It's the smallest place I've lived for more than about three months. It's not a big city. But within that context this is the most urban area of the whole county and we have a proportionate amount of the ills of most cities. Heck, I live directly next door to the local Gospel Rescue Mission- basically a soup kitchen and homeless shelter. I hear a lot of sirens. My daughters are familiar with gang graffiti. It's by no means a bad place, and I'm not going to make it out to be truly Inner City or anything.
The rest of the language arts block was spent reading The Lightning Thief to the class, with required brief written responses each day. Then during the second half of the month I brought in a dozen books from the public library on Greek mythology, and the students did a small written description and a portrait in markers and construction paper collage of their favorite character or type of creature from the myths. We had quite a few Medusas. The draw of decapitation was too much to resist. Poseidon also loomed large. It was sort of an abbreviated version of Project Based Learning. We read some literature, did some research on pretty freely chosen subjects (any character they wanted was fine) and created a final presentation that was then put on public display at the district office. If I ever find myself with my own classroom of kids around this age I think I'll do a more in-depth version of this project. It was tons of fun, but the subject is so huge it would be better with more than a few hours worth of time.
All in all I was pleased with how the summer session went and how the kids responded to my lessons. It was really valuable.
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