i came into this school in feb of 2005. i was picking up where this terrible teacher had left off - resigning after slamming a kid into a locker. the kid probably deserved it, but from all accounts, this teacher was inappropriate and not doing his job. in between the teacher resigning and me starting was a month of substitutes, so not a great condition. i took over 5 geometry classes in a 7 block schedule. it was kind of hellish.
i came into the school as kind of a golden child, i think. the principal and the math dept head loved me for being intelligent. i think he was telling other principals that he had picked up a columbia engineering grad. i was promised good things.
fall of 2005 - i had an ap stat class, a stat class, and a geometry support class (because there weren't enough kids for another stats section). we switched to a block schedule - as opposed to a rotating 6 of 7 blocks every day for a year, we now had 4 90-min blocks every day for half a year, and new kids with the new semester. most teachers had only TWO classes one semester, and three the other. i was apologetically informed that i would be three and three, because AP stats was yearlong. it was ok.
ap was wonderful. stats was pretty all right. geometry support was hellish. both semesters
of geometry included that one asshole kid that just tries his or her damnedest to be a shithead.
i can deal with one shit class for two decent ones. barely two months into the school year our principal leaves us for a higher-paying, easier job. who wouldn't? we get a new principal. i didn't trust her then and i hate her now.
we voted pretty early in the year that all meetings besides PD were optional. optional - our choice. faculty meetings, department meetings - we didn't have to go. we had to stay in the building and work, as per our contract, but where we were and what exactly we were doing was up to us. i missed a faculty meeting to meet with a student. he had to change his ap stats course into an independent study and take some form of physics because of a conditional acceptance to wpi or rpi or some pi. i figured a solid use of my time was the independent study with this student.
i got a long and rather strongly worded letter from my principal about skipping the meeting. her expectation was that all teachers would attend all faculty meetings. there is lots of information that we need to hear from her at these meetings. she expected me to be at all meetings from now on. all that shit.
i never missed a department meeting. those were worth going to. faculty meetings were and still are a giant waste of fucking time. never mind that i live with two fucking teachers from the same fucking school, and i can just ask them what happened and get it in less than 5 minutes.
about a month earlier i had given feedback on the most worthless pd in the world that taught us how to open our laptops, log in, and check email. i am not kidding. we spent an hour learning how to do that shit. and this was extra PD time, above what we normally needed to do. what the fuck. in response to the pd survey i had filled in, she said that the pd was a faculty meeting, and as such was optional. let that sink in. that PD was conveyed to us as PD, and mandatory. it was an extra PD, so contractually i guess we didn't have to go, but who would fight it?
she says it's PD so i go. i say it sucked and her response is that it wasn't PD because it was a faculty meeting, and therefore optional. i then miss a faculty meeting to tutor a student individually and i get a fucking letter telling me i have to attend all faculty meetings.
in addition, i brought the letter into the teachers' cafe immediately after i got it. i asked other teachers, and i talked to two teachers right there in that room who were puzzled. they were puzzled because they had skipped the same meeting and received no letter. that was two teachers who happened to be in the teachers' cafe when i was. how many others skipped the meeting? what the fuck.
it's only gotten worse since then.
fall of 2006. no ap class. not enough people signed up. no one tells me until it's too late to do anything about it. instead i get another, NEW prep (intermediate math, or algebra and geometry again for retards), giving me three different preps AGAIN, which is technically against union law. i roll with the punches. the kids actually aren't that bad. wonder of wonder, the repeaters in both remedial classes i have are actual repeaters. they're older, and for the most part they want to pass this time. this is opposed to the repeater geometry i taught the previous year full of freshman who had FAILED algebra 1 and NEVER taken geometry before. explain to me how a kid stupid or lazy enough to fail algebra 1 will pass a course that might as well be called, algebra 1 but with shapes. so, not terrible.
instead of 3 classes and a block-long prep, i now have a half a block of prep and half a block of duty. this is worse than before, but relatively less worse compared to teachers who went from 2 blocks classes, 1 block prep, 1 block duty, to this. now every teacher has 3 classes and half prep half duty. my duty consists of watching the bathroom and the surrounding hallway. kids are not supposed to be there, so i ask them to go back downstairs. they either listen, or they ignore me. if they ignore me, i can do nothing about it.
a string of bathroom fires prompts the "lockdown" on bathrooms. officially, all bathrooms are locked and no passes are to be issued. in reality, it is not enforced, like every other rule at this school. whatever. i now have to unlock and lock the bathrooms after every student uses it, and record their names in a logbook. fine.
i get my schedule for spring 2006. normal stats is gone now. in its place is another geometry support section. what the fuck. i check with the administrator in charge of scheduling. somehow, it was decided last summer that there would be no stats section in the spring. i didn't find out until november. also - "There's no class because no one signed up! No one signed up because you didn't recruit anyone! Didn't anyone tell you that's one of your responsibilities?"
what the fuck. no, no one fucking told me. this school has been phasing out higher level maths ever since Jara (the old principal left), and now a normal, nonhonors section of stats needs to be RECRUITED. what the fuck. ok. i got my new duty schedule this morning. i now have duty in the cafeteria. i can't get shit done in there. i have to walk around among way more screaming loud fucking obnoxious teenagers than should ever be allowed to exist in one place in one time. what the fuck. before, i could bring my shit into the hallway and do work, at least. christ.
in addition, i started out floating. floating means i have no room. i don't mind it terribly; it frees me from a lot of responsibility and accountability. by now, every math teacher that has started even a little before me has a room. and, let's see, johnson, tripoli, usova, nguyen - i can name four teachers right now that started after me and now have rooms. two of them only started this year. they are in 9th grade teams, which means they need rooms. by the way, "9th grade teams" is code for "they're still going to fail."
i want to resign right now. i want to walk out of this building and never look back. but, there are a few things holding me back.
-it's really not that bad. the worse the job gets, the worse of a job i do, and i still collect the same paycheck.
-money. i fucking hate it. all these commitments tying me down. all i want to do is float. i want to drift along like some useless floatsam, but i have rent, utilities, student loans, car loans, and all that shit tying me down.
-the future. walking out of one's job can't help in future applications. why did you leave your previous job? the school was complete shit and still getting worse. why did you leave in the middle of the year? ...
shit. fuck.
