New Job
I have a new job for next year, and the most astounding thing about that is that I did not realize, up until I got the new job, how much my current job has been weighing on my soul and self.
It's hard to describe what I do all day. Partly because it's never the same, and partly because it is so broad and often vague - even to me. My current official title is 'resource teacher', but that doesn't speak to the complexity of the duties that end up in my lap (or that I take on willingly).
Maybe this anecdote describes most clearly why I am so excited for a change:
I got the news about my new job on Wednesday morning last week. The morning was uneventful - I taught a class of English, and then told a few select people about my new position - not going to lie, it was hard to focus and I didn't get a lot else done that morning. I went out for lunch with some friends (who are as happy as I am, because they know I needed a change), and when I came back to school for the afternoon, it was business as usual.
As I walked in the door, a teacher grabbed me and said 'let's have that meeting now about that kid', so we spent the next 45 minutes talking about options to deal with a student's rude, disrespectful and unsafe behavior. I coached the teachers who work most closely with him through their options and we decided on a course of action. After a phone call home to request a meeting and to say that the child couldn't come back to school without parents, I went and got the student, escorted him to his locker and then out of the building. Understandably, he was mad and had some choice words for me and the school.
About an hour after that, after I had just finally gotten myself to do some actual WORK (calling parents of grade 9's who have stopped attending/are at risk of not passing their courses and setting up intake meetings for students who are moving to a new building next year), I got a call to come to the office. There I find a social worker who is here to apprehend 2 of our students. I go and get the one in grade 7, who we suspect has an intellectual disability, from gym class. I stay in the meeting with the social worker and the child, who doesn't understand what is happening. The social worker has to explain it three times before the child gets that she isn't going home. Her face falls, and she is very very quiet. She is wearing tiny, cheap sandals, capri leggings, and what looks like her older brother's jacket. These will be her clothes for who knows how long, until they can get her new ones.
After they leave to go find the brother, who left for home without me realizing it, I start directing people who are arriving for the next meeting, about this family. It has been a year and a half and the boy is nearing the end of grade 9. We have made some progress with him and the family, but he has to move to a new school building now, and the uncertainty of his future (custody/guardianship and citizenship have not been resolved) has sent him into another depression: he hasn't left his room in over a month. Mom is in pure crisis mode. She can only deal with what is immediately in front of her and is so stressed by everything that she often says things in the moment that she later says she doesn't mean. However, children aren't good at hearing the second part of the message. Only the first part. We try to pin down some solid information from mom about dad's whereabouts to move forward on the custody/guardianship issue, which needs to be established before we can work on the citizenship/immigration issue. Mom evades and deflects until I look her straight in the eyes and coach her into telling me all the names of anyone who might know where dad is. She promises to send the phone numbers for the people she knows. She hasn't yet. We, me and the interpreter from her culture, will need to go to the house next week and look at her call display. She is terrified and unable to focus, which creates a cycle where nothing gets resolved - it is only crisis after crisis. This makes it impossible to help her. There are 3 teenagers and two adults (one very sick) living in a 2 bedroom apartment - no one can get space from each other and all it does is intensify the cycle of drama, but mom can't get out of the drama long enough to make any changes. And for us to make changes, we need her help.
I left school at 5pm that day, after an afternoon of dealing in other people's stress, pain, and distress. My days don't always go like this, but they do often enough. My patience is beginning to run short. I am not always able to let a teacher vent for as long as they need to about an issue they have come to me with. My heart has millions of tiny cracks in it from watching children enter into the broken foster care system, or fall in the gaping holes of our broken education system, knowing the success stories for these kids are few and far between. And the thing is, I am GOOD at separating myself from work. I am also good at handling crisis, problem solving, and making necessary decisions quickly and with compassion (for kids. Way harder to have compassion for adults). But it is getting to be too much.
Next year I will be teaching full time. Grade 9 English Language Arts. We will read books and articles, discuss our place in the world, explore issues around Human Rights, critical thinking, critical literacy, and figure out who we are (Well, the kids will :)). I will teach about 120 kids a day, and it will be glorious because I won't have time for all that other stuff.
I'm also going to be in a new building, a high school. People there won't know me as a problem-solver, so I won't have to do that for others. I will just be a teacher. In fact, I'll be at the bottom of the totem pole, as a lowly grade 9 teacher, and that is just fine with me. I need to take a massive step back from all the responsibility I have currently and just focus on kids. Because they are the most fun.
Of course, the demographic of kids I'll be working with is still high-needs. There will still be disclosures and the need to pass on terrible information about children being hurt by those who are supposed to love them. I expect I will still have kids visit my room and tell me things that are hard about their lives (and mensch, they are so hard that sometimes I become callous. A former student came by a few weeks ago and told me she had been raped at a party a month before, while she was black-out drunk. I was the first person she told. It was terrible to hear and I talked with her for a good long while before sending her on her way, but after she was gone I filed it away and didn't even think about passing the info on to her new school until I relayed the story to some colleagues), but there will be a buffer-time where kids aren't comfortable enough yet - new school, new classmates - to get in to the nitty gritty details.
So, a new challenge, a change of pace, new colleagues, and new walk to work. I am so excited, I can barely contain myself. It's like Christmas and birthday's and June 30th all rolled in to one. I might actually be excited to start work in September. And I will FOR SURE be excited to hand over all my files at my current school for someone else to handle :)
It's hard to describe what I do all day. Partly because it's never the same, and partly because it is so broad and often vague - even to me. My current official title is 'resource teacher', but that doesn't speak to the complexity of the duties that end up in my lap (or that I take on willingly).
Maybe this anecdote describes most clearly why I am so excited for a change:
I got the news about my new job on Wednesday morning last week. The morning was uneventful - I taught a class of English, and then told a few select people about my new position - not going to lie, it was hard to focus and I didn't get a lot else done that morning. I went out for lunch with some friends (who are as happy as I am, because they know I needed a change), and when I came back to school for the afternoon, it was business as usual.
As I walked in the door, a teacher grabbed me and said 'let's have that meeting now about that kid', so we spent the next 45 minutes talking about options to deal with a student's rude, disrespectful and unsafe behavior. I coached the teachers who work most closely with him through their options and we decided on a course of action. After a phone call home to request a meeting and to say that the child couldn't come back to school without parents, I went and got the student, escorted him to his locker and then out of the building. Understandably, he was mad and had some choice words for me and the school.
About an hour after that, after I had just finally gotten myself to do some actual WORK (calling parents of grade 9's who have stopped attending/are at risk of not passing their courses and setting up intake meetings for students who are moving to a new building next year), I got a call to come to the office. There I find a social worker who is here to apprehend 2 of our students. I go and get the one in grade 7, who we suspect has an intellectual disability, from gym class. I stay in the meeting with the social worker and the child, who doesn't understand what is happening. The social worker has to explain it three times before the child gets that she isn't going home. Her face falls, and she is very very quiet. She is wearing tiny, cheap sandals, capri leggings, and what looks like her older brother's jacket. These will be her clothes for who knows how long, until they can get her new ones.
After they leave to go find the brother, who left for home without me realizing it, I start directing people who are arriving for the next meeting, about this family. It has been a year and a half and the boy is nearing the end of grade 9. We have made some progress with him and the family, but he has to move to a new school building now, and the uncertainty of his future (custody/guardianship and citizenship have not been resolved) has sent him into another depression: he hasn't left his room in over a month. Mom is in pure crisis mode. She can only deal with what is immediately in front of her and is so stressed by everything that she often says things in the moment that she later says she doesn't mean. However, children aren't good at hearing the second part of the message. Only the first part. We try to pin down some solid information from mom about dad's whereabouts to move forward on the custody/guardianship issue, which needs to be established before we can work on the citizenship/immigration issue. Mom evades and deflects until I look her straight in the eyes and coach her into telling me all the names of anyone who might know where dad is. She promises to send the phone numbers for the people she knows. She hasn't yet. We, me and the interpreter from her culture, will need to go to the house next week and look at her call display. She is terrified and unable to focus, which creates a cycle where nothing gets resolved - it is only crisis after crisis. This makes it impossible to help her. There are 3 teenagers and two adults (one very sick) living in a 2 bedroom apartment - no one can get space from each other and all it does is intensify the cycle of drama, but mom can't get out of the drama long enough to make any changes. And for us to make changes, we need her help.
I left school at 5pm that day, after an afternoon of dealing in other people's stress, pain, and distress. My days don't always go like this, but they do often enough. My patience is beginning to run short. I am not always able to let a teacher vent for as long as they need to about an issue they have come to me with. My heart has millions of tiny cracks in it from watching children enter into the broken foster care system, or fall in the gaping holes of our broken education system, knowing the success stories for these kids are few and far between. And the thing is, I am GOOD at separating myself from work. I am also good at handling crisis, problem solving, and making necessary decisions quickly and with compassion (for kids. Way harder to have compassion for adults). But it is getting to be too much.
Next year I will be teaching full time. Grade 9 English Language Arts. We will read books and articles, discuss our place in the world, explore issues around Human Rights, critical thinking, critical literacy, and figure out who we are (Well, the kids will :)). I will teach about 120 kids a day, and it will be glorious because I won't have time for all that other stuff.
I'm also going to be in a new building, a high school. People there won't know me as a problem-solver, so I won't have to do that for others. I will just be a teacher. In fact, I'll be at the bottom of the totem pole, as a lowly grade 9 teacher, and that is just fine with me. I need to take a massive step back from all the responsibility I have currently and just focus on kids. Because they are the most fun.
Of course, the demographic of kids I'll be working with is still high-needs. There will still be disclosures and the need to pass on terrible information about children being hurt by those who are supposed to love them. I expect I will still have kids visit my room and tell me things that are hard about their lives (and mensch, they are so hard that sometimes I become callous. A former student came by a few weeks ago and told me she had been raped at a party a month before, while she was black-out drunk. I was the first person she told. It was terrible to hear and I talked with her for a good long while before sending her on her way, but after she was gone I filed it away and didn't even think about passing the info on to her new school until I relayed the story to some colleagues), but there will be a buffer-time where kids aren't comfortable enough yet - new school, new classmates - to get in to the nitty gritty details.
So, a new challenge, a change of pace, new colleagues, and new walk to work. I am so excited, I can barely contain myself. It's like Christmas and birthday's and June 30th all rolled in to one. I might actually be excited to start work in September. And I will FOR SURE be excited to hand over all my files at my current school for someone else to handle :)
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