Whew! Another year of seventh grade boys is over! I have worked my butt off these past two years at Young Oak Kim Academy. This year was just as hard as the one before, but I was more successful. I implemented a completely project based curriculum, and I did less yelling. My classes were still noisy, (and unfortunately I had a neighbor who was very sensitive to noise and called the principal frequently to complain), but they also did a lot of very interesting work, much of it on the computer.
For some reason I didn’t have the energy to blog this year, but I was even more engaged in my teaching. Thanks in part to my friend Linda Guthrie I had a set of five very engaging, high interest projects that corresponded to the writing domains in the district curriculum. I was actually one of the few teachers to use a project based curriculum at YOKA, notwithstanding the school’s and district’s stated intention to encourage PBL. I also used the computers extensively, more than most of the other teachers. My seventh grade boys learned to write and research on the computer, and they produced documents with headings, illustrations, title pages, bibliographies, tables of contents, etc. Bravi ragazzi!
My reward for all of this hard work and successful teaching was...to be displaced from YOKA, cut loose to find another school to start over at. It could have been worse since I did get a RIF notice, but at least that was rescinded. I’m not happy about having to start over at another school with different classes & students, different colleagues, etc. I like to stay in one place long enough to be part of the culture. Teaching is hard enough without having the stress of a new situation. I can’t help feeling like I’m on a shrinking piece of ice being pushed out towards the deep water.
Now this isn’t anyone’s fault (except maybe Ronald Reagan’s). The school had one too many English teachers, and I have low seniority since I only returned to the district six years ago. So now I’m looking for a job...calling principals every day...asking for an interview...wondering how they react to my unusual resume (and my obvious advanced age)...hoping I don’t get something too far away or too awful.
That’s life on the ice floe.
In the meantime, I’m going to write a series of entries for this blog about the past school year, the projects I assigned, the problems I had, the victories I enjoyed. Stay tuned.
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