right now at the moment, teaching is not fun.
just being 100% transparent with you.
there is way too much the state is expecting us to do and there is no where near enough time to complete it. there are not enough resources to help us with it. and the apathetic students are not very helpful either. neither is the lack of money.
for some reason, the state believes that i need to (realistically) teacher 7 units of the curriculum, focus quiz students at least every 3 weeks, schedule PASS essays twice in a semester, schedule EAGLE test with every unit we teach, set goals on how we think our students are going to do on a test we are not allowed to see, segregate data with our student work, create modules that we are to teach from instead of the normal lesson plans that we have to do already, create a new curriculum for our students for next year, make sure they all pass the eoc, oh wait, we are going to change that test too, teach this strategy, focus on this technique, include this in your lesson, and this everyday, oh wait you also need to teach this every day as well. what the heck?!
keep in mind, our school only has 2 computer labs that are available to 80 teachers and classes. the other 3 labs are only available one hour a day. we have to buy our own ink for our printers so we cant make all the copies we need in that area. if we run out of paper, we have to buy that. we are expected to do all these things in less than a 6 months time and if we do not complete them or excel then we are failures. plus, we have around 30 kids to a classroom. do you know how much individual time a student receives from the teacher this way? like 1 min a day. our planning periods are constantly taken up with meetings after meetings. for example: during my planning, i have meetings on every monday. wednesday is professional development. thursday after school is literacy design meeting. wednesday after school is the occasional faculty meeting. we use to have an act meeting tuesdays before school once a month. then, i have duty on tuesday and thursday during my planning. please tell me when i have enough time to do all those things you want me to? after school, i try to have my own business so i can make extra cash. no. don't have time because i am grading the papers that i did not get to do during planning or recreating lessons because they want them on them to be changed to the new curriculum or they want them to be in the notebook files so that way we use the smart board more.
i do love my job dearly. but right now i feel over worked, stressed out, confused on what i am suppose to be exactly teaching, and just burnt out all together. i hope that this is just for a season because if not, i really do not know what i would do for the rest of my life. there's not much else out there for me. i know this is my purpose. so, why does it have to be so hard? it gets to the point where i feel like i am not doing a good enough job because of all the things that are expected of me, i have to do them halfway. nothing is ever thoroughly done. i almost feel i would be of more use being some random secretary somewhere else because at least i would know what would be expected of me and i would not have to guess at what i am suppose to be doing then be graded on it and fail because of that. i feel like i am treated like a child in this profession. i love the kids.. i do. but i do not love the rest.
any teachers reading this? am i alone in this thought process?
