Tag: education

The answer to this question is “No.”

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

…and it should probably just be a Facebook post.

Do I want to pursue administrative certification?

I don’t, right? Because really the only reason I might want to be a principal is the higher pay and not being in the classroom any longer, and neither of those are good reasons. And I’d have to take classes, and I’d have to pay tuition when my current student debt load is already more than I make in a year, and I’d have to figure out where to apply to take those classes, and that costs money, and … well, I’d have to be a principal, which if anything is even more impossible a job than being a teacher is.

I’m fine with making roughly $55K a year for basically the rest of my career, and being locked into this district, because the way the law works moving to any other district nearby will permanently lower my salary by probably $5-10K a year. Right? Sure I am. And just because I’ve been looking for three straight years for jobs that pay similarly to what I can earn as a teacher in my current district and literally haven’t found a single thing that was even close doesn’t mean that those jobs won’t magically appear soon. They’re out there! I’m just really bad at job hunting. And have been for three years.

Gaaaaaaaaaah. Somebody shove an icepick into whatever part of my stupid brain keeps bringing this idea up.

Here we go here we go here we go

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

Spent most of the day in my classroom, alternately rearranging desks and staring at the wall. I ended up taking the second classroom from the earlier post, mostly due to some late-breaking information about occasional temperature problems in the other room. The good news is that the other teacher has moved out of the room; the bad news is that she, uh, took a little bit more of the furniture than I was expecting her to, and one of the things I had to do was email the principal and ask for things like a file cabinet and a teacher desk.

I’m going to end up swapping about a third of the big desks for one-piece arm desks, which I think will end up as a best of both worlds situation in my room– I’ll have mostly the larger desks, which are more comfortable for bigger kids (and bigger teachers) and left-handed kids, and still have some of the smaller one-piece desks that will give me a little bit more room to move around the classroom once there are actual bodies at all of those desks. Right now there’s too many places where not only am I convinced I can’t move around between desks, I’m not sure I can have kids seated at both of them without bumping into each other.

I’ll get it sorted. Once I have I’ll post some pictures.

Oh, and I dropped just under $180 on classroom necessities today, too, without touching things like new clothes (not really an expense I can count, but still) and office supplies– just stuff that I know good and well I’m going to need no matter how I end up laying the room out. I do so love having to spend my own money to get my room set up, guys. It’s awesome.

Anyway. All sorts of family stuff going on tomorrow, which means I won’t have time to be in my classroom, so I’ve got Friday and all of next week to get ready for this. I am surprisingly enthusiastic about it, despite how this post might sound. This is gonna be a good year, dammit, if it kills me.

Well they aren’t exactly wrong

On By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking

There is probably still a full post coming today, but while I’m still out and about I wanted to immortalize today’s search results:

An observation

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

…I have survived the first day of the Great ReTeacherification. I’m only doing two classes, not three as was initially suggested, but that’s still on top of my already full-time job, remember. The honors kids continue to be a pleasure. My 7th hour is … well, one of us is gonna win this, and I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be me but I’m not a hundred percent sure yet.

One day at a time, one week at a time, right?

shut up shut up shutupSHUT UP

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching

On the heels of last night’s admission that spending half an hour talking about education with a couple of very talented teachers made me actually miss teaching, I woke up at an indecent hour last night to an email from my boss warning me that I was likely to have to spend a good portion of today and Monday covering classes, specifically 7th grade math, which you may remember was my major subject during the last year where I was actually a full-time, entire-year teacher.

This ended up not working out because of several preexisting commitments, but I did teach math during sixth, seventh, and eighth hour today. And I’ll admit it: I had fun. It was nice.

(I didn’t do any lesson planning or grading or really have to deal with any discipline issues. I shut them up at the beginning of class, let them know that if they were silent and respectful while I explained my rules I’d give them a generous leash during class, and then went from table to table checking in and answering questions during class. In other words, I only did the fun part of the job. Hell, I didn’t even have to do any whole-group shit! That might have required classroom management!)

I am not going back into the classroom next year, Goddammit. I’m not. No. And I’d appreciate it if the universe would quit trying to contrive situations where it pretends that thinking about returning to the classroom is anything other than a cataclysmically bad life decision.

In other news, it has been a solid four days since I’ve had a decent night’s sleep, despite sleeping for about 20 hours on Wednesday, and I’d appreciate it if that could happen tonight. I’m mostly over the cold, which is now only manifesting itself in occasional acute and intense bouts of dry throat, but I’m surprised at how functional I am given how little useful sleep I’ve had lately.