Gladly Would I Teach

A few weeks ago, I explained in a post that I had decided to retire since so many younger teachers were losing their jobs.  Although it was difficult to walk away from a job I loved and students I adored, I cleaned out my classroom a couple of weeks ago, and I’m moving on to the next stage of my life.

In the next couple of months, I’ll write about the lovely retirement reception that the kind souls in my department held for me, and I’ll write about how it felt to walk out and lock my classroom door for the last time. For now, however, my emotions are still spinning, and descriptions of those last days of teaching will have to wait until I can think clearly and without all the tears that keep welling up whenever I think of not sitting inside my own classroom in August.

Thank you for reading my teaching blog! I sincerely appreciate your support and enthusiasm. If you want to follow my thoughts during my retirement, I’ve started another blog that you are welcome to read. I may not be a teacher in the future, but I suspect that many of my posts will revolve around teaching, teachers, and students. It’s impossible to just walk away from teaching after 32 years!

Leaving School

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My seniors take the AP English Language and Composition test at 8:00 tomorrow morning. They are prepared and ready to go, but every year I worry myself sick as I sit alone in my classroom and wonder about how the kids will perform. Did tell them . . . ? Did I spend enough time on . . . ?

I’ve been teaching so long that I know I have covered everything the kids need to know, and I am sure that they are as well prepared as I could possibly desire. Tomorrow, morning, however, I will still be nervous and sick to my stomach. I will still reach panic mode when one of 140 students walks into my classroom because he forgot the test or was late for the test (happens every year).

A couple of months from now when the scores come in, I will celebrate and congratulate the kids who makes 3′s, 4′s, and 5′s, but I will blame myself if kids don’t pass.

Why is it that teachers always think it’s their fault when students struggle?

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I have been thinking of retiring for the last year or so, but I love teaching too much and planned to teach probably another two to three years. I have great kids and teach in a wonderful school. Unfortunately, however, because of the terrible economy, my school district is laying-off over 500 teachers.

500 teachers will lose their jobs in a school system that has never layed-off teachers.

Last week I turned in my retirement papers and will end my 32-year career next week when my seniors graduate. I wanted to stay, but it’s hard to justify holding on to my job when I know that my retirement will allow another teacher to keep his or her job. I know many teachers who dream of the day when they can retire, but I’ve never been one of them. I thought I would teach until someone had to drag me kicking and screaming out of my classroom.

I never thought I would have to leave because of the economy.

I wanted to keep teaching, but sometimes we just have to walk away and make room for the younger teachers who follow us.

This week is hard as I bring the semester to a close with my seniors. Next week will be even harder as I say good-bye and watch them walk across the stage at graduation.

In all of my years of training as a teacher, I learned volumes about how to walk into a classroom and begin my teaching career. I never learned, however, how to lock my classroom and walk away at the end of my career.

Lord, give me strength!

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Today we returned from Spring Break. As an AP teacher, my interior clock is already ticking away: 22 class days until the AP English Language exam. Because my school operates on a block schedule, we are forced to teach an entire year’s curriculum to students during only one semester of 90-minute class periods. We’re always running or cramming or screaming in frustration because we have too much to teach in so little time.

But we manage.

Then I returned today to discover that an administrator is pulling some of my students out of class tomorrow in order to conduct a pep rally to encourage students at a local elementary school to do well on their standardized tests. As if we don’t have enough class interruptions for our own students who are involved in tests! I asked administrators to reduce how many times our classes are interrupted so students are in class for the 22 remaining days before AP exams. One administrator sees nothing wrong with pulling kids out of class so long as they have A’s and B’s, and another administrator never responded to my concerns.

What I would give to work in a school where all administrators were truly instructional leaders! Why should I have to fight to keep students in my class?

Another email flew out to teachers this afternoon. Since the school will hold an honors day next Friday during school, followed by the junior-senior prom that night, we have a special form students must complete in order to check out at noon.

One more interruption! Sometimes I think it is amazing that our kids learn as much as they do.  I can only imagine how much our kids would learn if learning were indeed our primary focus!

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A few weeks ago I wrote about an explosion of theft I experienced years ago in another school.

Watch Your Pocketbook

I thought of those terrible days when I walked into my classroom this morning. As I placed my satchel on my desk, I saw my pocketbook on my chair, right where I had left it the previous afternoon. Indicative of how worn out I am in these days when we’re sucking wind and awaiting spring break, I left school yesterday without my purse and never realized it until I found it this morning.

Years ago when I saw so many thefts of purses, I started leaving my pocketbook locked in my car each day. I continued that practice for years – never bringing my purse into the building until just recently, just in the last year.

As I looked at the pocketbook this morning, I immediately worried about stolen credit cards, stolen money, stolen identity and all of those fears we all have. I had no one to blame but myself. Much to my delight, when I opened the purse, all of my credit cards and money were still there, right where I had left them the previous day.

Sometimes I do really dumb things.

Usually, the good Lord takes care of me when I do dumb things!

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Having never had children, I have always respected young teachers who have to juggle the needs of their own children while they also struggle to help their students. How does a teacher with toddlers and babies find the energy and time to work all day at school and then go home and feed, engage, bathe, teach, and put their own children to bed? I suspect the answer is something along the lines of parents always find the way when you have no choice.

I’m not sure I could have done it twenty years ago, and I know for a fact I couldn’t do it today.

I’ve been thinking about this for the last couple of weeks as I met with a realtor and put my house up for sale. First I had to complete all the deep cleaning; then I had to get a plumber to install a new hot water heater. Next came the closets I had to organize and the trips to Goodwill to donate items I’ve coveted way too long. Then I had to call the plumber back to deal with a faulty new hot water heater. Meeting with the realtor and listing the house took several hours out of my Saturday morning. By Monday the house had been advertised and a bright yellow and green for sale sign beckoned visitors.

A day after I breathed a sigh of relief, the rains came and came again, and returned for a third day. I haven’t seen this much rain in Georgia since the early 1990s. My very dry basement that experienced its first leak in the fall with the heavy rains had been sealed back in October and remained dry throughout the winter.

Until last week.

The water seeped into the basement once again, and two days and $450 later I have a new catch basin outside and the guarantee that the basement won’t leak.

Then a wayward bird flew into my nice clean house . . . until my cat caught him, and I spent another hour of cleaning.

Finally, today I’m caught up! I came home with no papers to grade and planned to spend a night of leisure until the realtor called to tell me a caravan of local realtors will be visiting my house TOMORROW.

Back to the store to buy doughnuts and juice for the visitors.

Back to cleaning.

Back to stress and lack of sleep.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to deal with a child. I have my hands full with a house that doesn’t complain, doesn’t whine, doesn’t cry, doesn’t demand, doesn’t eat, and doesn’t need me to rock it to sleep, but I’m still exhausted.

Now, if you are interested in buying a house amid hundreds of trees in the mountains of North Georgia, I know where you can get a really good deal!

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After my sermon to seniors yesterday about the evils of senioritis, another problem surfaced today. With all of the budget cuts in Georgia, state colleges and universities may have to make drastic reductions in the courses they offer and the people they employ. As in most states, we are experiencing troubling times, and I didn’t know just how worried some of my students are until today.

Last week The University of Georgia, a popular school for many of my students, announced that if the proposed state budget is approved, UGA will have to make major cuts, including retracting the admissions offers they have already extended to 500 freshmen!

What do you do if you are 18 years old and you have worked hard for years in order to win acceptance into UGA and then you discover there is a chance that your acceptance will be revoked?

What do you do if you are 18 years old and NOT accepted in the first round of admissions at UGA and you find out they may not admit additional students?

As I tried to ease the worries of many of my students, all I could do was emphasize that other than voicing our concerns or protesting budget cuts, we have little control over the legislature; we only have control over ourselves and what we do. “Study hard, do your best work, and prepare for college,” I cautioned, “and you should be just fine.”

I don’t think UGA will cut 500 students they have already admitted into the freshman class.

I hope I am right. My students are much too young to have to endure such troubles even if some of them are already coasting until spring break.

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Wikipedia is one of the few sources that tackles the definition of senioritis:

The main symptoms of senioritis include chronic procrastination, lack of motivation, a drop in academic performance, and “coasting,” which is the act of going through classes with very little concentration or application of intent. This usually happens in the last year of high school, college or graduate school. One of the most notable symptoms of senioritis, is that all attempts by educators to curb senioritis tend to actually increase senioritic symptoms. High school seniors experiencing senioritis after admittance to college are fed up with high school; as they see it, they have achieved high school’s goal of getting into college and don’t understand why they are still expected to work.

Halfway through the semester, many of my seniors are suffering from senioritis. The quality of their work is declining; they are counting the days until spring break and until graduation; a couple have been in In School Suspension; three are suspended; and several start nodding off each class period.

Today I delivered my annual Senioritis Speech and warned students that if they coast until graduation, they may discover that colleges that have already accepted them into the freshman class may indeed rescind that offer. I challenged them, “Read the fine print in that college acceptance letter and see what it says about ‘pending acceptance or review of final transcript.’”

I have good kids and I want them to enjoy the end of their high school careers; I just want them to hang in there a few more weeks and save the coasting until May. By then, we should have a little more time to play and celebrate their achievements.

As I spoke with the kids today, I told them about a parent who exploded at me about a decade ago when her daughter failed my class and did not graduate. The mother admitted that the student had been failing the entire semester and that I had phoned her to warn her that her daughter was in danger of failing. In the end when the child failed, however, the mother blamed me. When I asked why she thought it was my fault that her daughter had failed, she replied, “You were too nice to her. Since you were so sweet, she didn’t think you would actually fail her!”

Interesting logic!

I now make it a point to tell seniors, “I may love you and I may laugh with you, but if you don’t meet the requirements of the class, I will indeed fail you and keep you back with me another year where I will love you and laugh with you for another year!”

I think there is a special place in Heaven for teachers who work with high school seniors during the spring.

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Because I live so far from the school where I teach, I spend an inordinate amount of time driving alone, roughly two and a half hours to three hours daily. That quiet time is great for thinking, great for listening to music or books on tape, or even great for talking on the phone on rural roads occassionally. That quiet time, however, is terrible for my health. Awaking at 4:00 every morning, arriving home around 5:00 every afternoon, and going to bed around 9:00 leaves very little time to exercise.

By the time I get home in the afternoon, I have a list of things I need to get done, and exercise falls farther and farther down my list until it falls off my list half the time.

So, last week I decided to learn a new skill: walking and grading. Since my planning period is before school, I have at least 30 minutes to walk the building in total silence long before most teachers or students arrive. Of course, since I have lots of grading and reading to do, I don’t have the time to walk exclusively for 30 minutes. If, however, I keep practicing, I should be able to walk and grade or walk and read simultaneously.

I know I won’t be a fast walker as I walk the halls and grade, but I will be much faster than I currently am as I sit at my desk and grade. Walking slowly and deliberately may not be the best way to walk, but it’s much better than sitting.

So, here’s my new goal. I’m going to walk and grade 20-30 minutes each morning before 7:00.

For now, I think I better stay away from the stairs.

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I started my morning dealing with an intelligent and talented senior with great potential who has been goofing off most of the semester. I ended the day with two students who made really bad choices and will suffer serious consequences. Just when I thought the day was over, I discovered that a student earlier in the week had skipped my class and then lied to me.

Usually, I work hard, find a way to reach kids, and celebrate their successes.

Every now and then, I’m just angry and disappointed. This is one of those days.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott