Ok...I can't help it. This has been a really crappy week. It's like the planets were just at the right alignment for things to be bad.
Most of this year I have been arguing with kids about everything. Directions, the rules, homework, their behavior....etc. I have never felt so worn out when it comes to the end of the day or sometimes week. Today was just another day of arguing with middle school kids that they come back into the building once they leave. I haven't been sworn at more than this year or been so disrespected. I've been called names and had the f-bomb used in reference to me. I have been working with my adminstrator to fix the behavior, but we can only do so much. You can only write so many referrals, talk to them individually, talk to them with other adults, etc. before you are mentally and physically done.
Again, I don't say anything on here that I haven't spoken to my adminstrator about. We've had conversations....many! We've agreed to disagree, but it's not getting better. It's still the same thing. This is again, the opportunity where I want to invite our legislatures and our governor into our middle school buildings....I want them to answer questions like, "how do we maintain high test scores when we have to deal with behavior instead of teaching"?
This weekend we have a "townhall meeting" on Saturday. Our governor will be there....I may issue a challenge to him. I want him to turn it down because he's too busy. I want him to dare to do that.
This brings me to my second complaining thing.....TESTING! Today we completed a post assessment to see if the students got anything we did the last 7 weeks. I'm so frustrated. Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if I should be in this profession. Whatever I did the last 7 weeks....our scores don't reflect any of it. Our team worked on certain skills...did mid-testing to check skills...did rotations with all 4 of us teaching a different skill....did exit slips....did spot checking............and I still feel like they didn't get it! What are we doing wrong?! I'm starting to despair that we will never get our students to understand what we're asking them...that they will never understand what we trying to put into their brains....
I'm just so tired this year. I don't know what more I can do. I felt like we were so on...the kids seemed to like how we were delivering the material...we were all on the same page and positively working with each other and the kids.......and now I feel so defeated. What more can I do?
WHAT MORE CAN I DO?
I'm glad to see teachers are feeling this frustration as much as the parents. I stopped blaming teachers once I realized BOTH our hands are tied (AKA pulled my head out of my ass). Discipline is the key here. "Back in the day" when kids could get spanked by their parents AND teachers, things were better I'm sure. Much easier for us as adults to deal with children, but now with all this sensitive towards feeling sh!t we instill in these kids the quicker they are to say to themselves "gee this is too easy I can say and do whatever I want and all they do is give me a piece of paper or talk to me to try to make me feel bad....hahaha." Jokes on us I guess. The leaders of the country, our society, or lives have let us down, our generation of parents. They sit back and watch these pathetic shows on TV like Teen Mom or Pregnant at 14 or whatever the hell else crap we allow on TV, and say "look at these kids these days, things were never like that when we were kids" blah blah blah. "Things" should have never changed, but no somewhere along the line someone somewhere said "no I don't think I'll spank my kid, let's talk to them like adults"..."yeah great idea, I hated getting spanked" "yeah! YEAH! we will get everyone to stop hitting there kids cuz that's abuse plain and simple." Well god damn it these are the people sitting there looking at the TV going "uh oh maybe we did something stupid...oh well not my problem anymore"...anyway that's only some of my rant on the subject. And posting on a teachers blog, and an English teacher to boot (if I'm not mistaken)I apologize for any lack of correct grammar or punctuation I am trying to work on that...I swear. Keep fighting the good fight Jill...big ups
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