So here it is, November. I went into this school year with a GREAT attitude. After working with my colleague all summer long, planning our curriculum for this school year, I was ready to face this year head-on and headstrong. I was determined to do everything in my power to not only get my kids to learn enough to pass this stinkin' state test, but also help our school get out of "school improvement" status...otherwise, the state will take control of our school next year.
Everything came crashing down since then. After all the stress, and the endless paperwork, and all the new mandates by our administration, I had one final breaking point. Within a 30 minute period, I went from 110% to 25%. All of my passion, all of my motivation, all of my drive - gone.
Our state has adopted this new teacher evaluation program that is being implemented in our school this year. It's bad enough that I can't transfer, I haven't received a raise in two years, my workload has actually increased due to budget cuts and our school status, but now I actually have to be subjected to this rigorous evaluation system that nit-picks at every single aspect of me as a teacher. You can view it here: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/profdev/training/teacher/teacher-eval.pdf Pay close attention to pages starting at #25.
My principal decided we needed to be trained on this, which is a good thing, because it's really wordy. Pretty overwhelming from our perspective. The problem with this is: when exactly is he going to train us? We are already swamped in after school meetings, and he would be slaughtered if he suggested we come in on the weekend. So, he decides he would pull us out of class during the school day. No, no, no. It's okay. He sent assistants to cover our classes. Because I don't actually do anything in the classroom. I just give my kids some activities to do and anyone can come in and take over for me. (please notice that this is drenched with sarcasm)
Well, when it was time for our meeting, no one came to cover my class. They continued the meeting without me (the meeting included 3rd and 5th grade teachers). After 15-20, the Assistant Principal came to my room looking for me. I just shrugged my shoulders, knowing I had no control over the situation. Someone finally arrived and I went to the meeting place. My principal tried to recap what had already been discussed, but I was already tuning him out. I was frustrated. After 15 minutes (hardly enough time to teach us how the new evaluation would be used on us), we had to stop because it was time for us to take our kids to lunch. Our principal asked if we would like to continue our meeting during our lunch so we didn't have to stay after school. Three of us very clearly stated "NO", we would prefer NOT to meet during our lunch - that is our only break! Well, they decided they would continue the meeting during our lunch anyway.
This is when you would have seen that "blue screen of death" if I were a computer. I went blank, crash, system failure.
The incident that made everything crash was not really that significant. I am like a computer - I just got overloaded with "applications". My brain couldn't take it anymore. My husband likes to fuss at me when I have too many programs activated on the toolbar on our home computer, and if you look at the "CPU usage" you might see that it is operating at 90% or so. Well, you keep pushing your computer and constantly opening programs asking it to do more than it is capable, then it will crash. That's what happened to me.
So, I'm done. Again, for the fourth year in a row, I'm starting to submit my resumes to anything I think I am qualified to do, hoping I can find a job that matches my salary - which shouldn't be too hard considering I only make $31,000/yr.
