The Common Core hit me up the side of the head last year, combined with the full weight of the State of Illinois as it took over my district. To that I’d add the complication of whole new sets of Charlotte Danielson evaluation requirements. With all that new noise to process, it took me awhile to appreciate the meaning of rigid common lesson plans written to a set of standards that were set years above the academic operating levels of my students. I had always had some freedom to create original instruction for my students until 2014 – 2015, despite growing time shortages resulting from other demands, mostly demands related to the rising desperation to raise test scores.
I also lost my favorite principal during the 2014-2015 school year as part of the conditions of a government grant which required replacing school leadership. Time demands unrelated to instructional imperatives soared. For all intents and purposes, I did not have a reliable planning period during much of the 2014 – 2015 year. On lucky days, I salvaged some planning time, but I had math meetings, science meetings, grade meetings, school meetings, and bilingual meetings that I sandwiched into that alleged planning period, at least one meeting daily. On Wednesday, I typically had three meetings. In theory, I was supposed to get half of my planning period for actual planning, but my Dean[1] had a bad habit of running overtime, sometimes through the whole period. I also had to regularly double up math and science meeting days.
I am sitting at a pleasant oak desk in a quiet blue room. I get up when I want to. I meet former colleagues for lunch and dinner, a number of whom retired before they had intended to do so. I had planned on working one more year, but I hit my personal wall. I hit my can’t-do-it-I’ve-sucked-up-enough wall. I can work hard, but I will not work stupid. I want to nurture my students, and the tests I gave last year felt more like bullying than nurturing to me.
Substituting has been working out fine. As I write this, I am ignoring a website filled with substitute requests for today. The system has been trying to call me since 5:30 AM this morning and I could still step into any number of classrooms for the day. No one will step into many of those classrooms. Many of these requests come from top-flight local districts that pay well, too.
Today I am writing my book, though. Yesterday, I covered for preschool teachers who had IEP meetings. My favorite part was taking colored, sticky Styrofoam, yarn, paper and glue and making brains to tape on traced bodies that the kids had made. I liked playing restaurant, too. Restaurant seems to be a pretty good deal. You get a piece of pizza, then they open the cash register and hand you money. I explained a bit about how it actually worked, while I admired the plastic rectangle students now swipe as part of the process before they open the drawer to hand me random sums of money. I admired original Lego creations. I pretended to eat a lot of plastic food that students made for me. I had a great day.
Eduhonesty: All’s well that ends well, I guess. Those former teachers I meet, though? Some of them were excellent educators. Most or all would probably still be in the classroom if the world had not decided that somehow testing for 20% of a school year — while using tests that many students could not even read — somehow made sense.
[1] I don’t want to say a negative word about my Dean, however. She was the best Dean I ever saw. She worked endlessly, and she sweated the small stuff until kids were seldom tardy, and usually well-behaved in class. When I worked until six in the evening, she was always still in her office.