A Day in the Life of a First-Year Teacher

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

SO MANY UPDATES! follow ups...

As promised, I have many updates today that I've been blogging about this past month and five days!

1. My unexplainable bad day yesterday...
Yesterday, I blogged about how I had an extremely unexplainable bad day. Nothing happened with my students, or the administration, or my co-workers... nothing. I don't drink at all (never did and never will! :)), and nothing bad has gone on in my life recently. It was just a bad day in general. I was low on patience, exhausted and less enthusiastic and energetic than usual. I actually had to take 1st through 4th periods off today (good thing I had wrote up those sub lesson plans last night just in case...) to rest and cool off the remnants of my headache. But now it's so much better! I think it passed away somehow...

2. James and the "Four Gangstas"
James' behavior has gotten a little bit better since my last post about him and since his one-day in school suspension. His grades have slowly been improving, but he's still not at the level of most of my other students. Unfortuanately, the behavior of the "Four Gangstas" has not been getting much better. All four are on behavioral contracts with me at this point. I've been reviewing their IEP's and talking to their teachers (ALL of them) from last year and from 6th grade. Hopefully, they can begin to improve as well... hopefully by my 22nd birthday! (in 15 days!!!!) I reallyyy want to see improvement in them - and will not stop trying until they have met my expectations.


3. My man Tito...
After the Tito incident/disappointment and the out-of-school suspension, I have been dreading his return. He returned on Monday, and from what I could tell, attempted to learn from his (not so little) mistake. He still has command of his respect that he had pre-incident. He even tried to rekindle our rapport. I can't hold grudges against my own students, so I supported his decision to start fresh. Even though I wasn't in my 3rd period class today, the sub said that he was very helpful to her in getting attendance done, etc. Meanwhile, the rest of the teachers at my school heard ALL ABOUT the Tito incident (gossip spreads like wildfire in NYC!): including the details of the hook up, what the discipline AP said to him and to me, his e-mail to me and his return. Some have stopped talking to me because I tried to help him learn from his mistake and allowed the student-teacher rapport to continue on mostly uninterrupted. But most supported me through the entire process, including my department chair, Tito's 6th and 7th grade teachers and the teachers in my academy's 8th grade division. One person who didn't support me, of course, was Mr. Buchell.

4. Ms. Lopez (my principal) is starting the teacher removal process -- on Mr. Buchell!!!
I am lucky in that I don't have to deal with a poor, ineffective principal. My principal, Ms. Lopez, was a math teacher in the South Bronx just like me. She's supportive, helpful, tough (yet reasonable) and fair. She's generally pretty organized and doesn't make rules that are terribly crazy (well, except for the fact that we're not allowed to leave the school at any time except for lunch, even if it's to get supplies for a lesson). Today, Miss Gonzalez and Mrs. Hoff told me that Ms. Lopez is beginning the (terribly, yucky, complicated, tedious, stupid...) process of trying to transfer Mr. Buchell to a different school. I WENT CRAZY... in a good way. I started jumping up and down, super excitedly. It would really make my day when I find out that the most incompetent teacher in our school can finally stop hurting students at the school. Now, it's just a matter of stopping him from hurting students ANYWHERE.

2 comments:

  1. im glad you're updating us really nicely! hope everything with the "four gangstas" works out... and im with you on mr. buchell - he really needs to go!!

    -michelle

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah I hope so too - I'll keep you guys posted! Thanks for your comment!

    ReplyDelete