No, I'm not talking about the birds outside of my windows, and no, I'm not talking about the crazy Indian man who roams the streets around me yelling every Saturday and Sunday morning. I'm talking about me. Making noise.
School has been stressing me out. Big time. It's been a difficult transition to go from a situation where you almost feel completely scripted, all the way to an environment where although there are some standards, you basically are left to figure it all out on your own. When I got here, one of the things I was really excited about was the fact that we had 90 minutes per day of prep. I thought to myself, "Man, we're going to have SO much free time on our hands! I'll never have to stay late or come in on weekends!" WRONG. Pretty much every day since I've gotten here, I've stayed in my classroom for two hours every day after school, and every weekend, I've come to the school on one of the days to try and plan. The problem is, there is SO much to learn, and in the end, so little time to do it (because we constantly have meetings during our prep, each one of which makes me feel even more stressed by the time it's over). I've grown to dread going to meetings for the simple fact that it never feels like we actually accomplish anything. During our time, we're basically unloaded on with a bevy of new "to do's" and more "expectations" from the school. I think I reached my low point this weekend, where in an act of desperation, I actually called our school's director of Curriculum & Instruction to voice my concerns over two things: curriculum overload/lack of training and poorly functioning grade-level team meetings. Making noise.
The conversation went well, although I will say that it was tough to articulately state how I was feeling. There was such a range of emotions, all the way from desperation to frustration. I kind of just had a stream of consciousness, sharing that I felt like "the writing was on the wall" in terms of our grade level not working well together and/or getting anything accomplished. I felt that we were off to a rough start, and that if something wasn't done quickly to get us back on track, things would end up going awry. I also discussed how completely overwhelming it's been for new teachers to be expected to figure out all of the complexities of our new program and attend meeting after meeting, all while trying to work with kids and adjust to our new lives. Although I certainly appreciated our "soft landing" in terms of the actual physical transition, it was a rude awakening to go from that to one of the more stressful emotional transitions I've ever experienced. After our talk, I felt better. I did end up going to school, but I basically just sat there and scratched my head. Have you ever been in a situation where there's just so much to do that you don't even know where to start? And because you don't know where to start, you don't do anything? Sure you have. That was me on Sunday. So, I bailed after a couple of hours and did what any stressed out person would do. I went to the mall and got a haircut (that's what stressed out people do, right?).
The next day (Monday), school started off so-so. Megha and I had a fairly decent lesson planned, and the kids were less lethargic than they were last Monday (which was brutal). The morning kind of crawled by, and then at around noon, we had our grade-level meeting. In those meetings, there are about eight of us, one of which is kind of like a trainer/liaison named Andrea. She's probably in her mid-40's, from New Zealand, and has been on the international circuit for quite some time. Last week, I actually made a snide little comment about how instead of having "meetings about meetings," maybe we should have been having meetings that were actually useful. I asserted that meetings talking about how to conduct yourself in meetings were probably useless, because after all, who in the hell can't be professional in a meeting?! Well, I guess that was the wrong thing to say. I decided to shut up after that. So anyway, we were at this meeting, and the first 45 minutes were spent listening to our cool-ass librarian, who's totally on our side. He talked about everything he could do to support us, and that was awesome. Next came the superintendent's wife, who is really great and teaches first grade. She presented how her team had spent considerable time last year working together to develop a math curriculum. When they were done presenting, our team leader, Becky, quickly changed the subject and started saying how we should all break up and start talking about SS and Science. Well, at that point, I was beginning to feel my frustration level rising, and before long, I had to make some noise. The noise went something like this: "OK, sorry, but I can't move on. I feel like someone's got to say something here. Every meeting we have, all we do is talk surface-level about everything under the sun, but we never actually make any progress. Honestly, I'm tired of coming to meetings where I leave feeling more frazzled than when I got there. At some point, we need to start having meaningful discussions that actually move us forward. We spend five minutes here, and five minutes there, but never really get anything done. I mean, think about it from our perspective. There are three of us new teachers, and two of you who have been here for 17 years. I know you guys tell us to just 'do what we can,' but when you're both sitting here telling us about all the things you're doing in your class, and we don't know anything about them, how are we NOT supposed to compare ourselves and feel badly that we're not doing for our kids what you are for yours? Instead of focusing on three subjects and doing a mediocre job at each of them, why aren't we focusing on ONE and doing a thorough job on it? Wouldn't our time be better spent working together on Math, rather than having new teachers try to develop curriculum that they don't even understand?" When I was done with my little tirade (it wasn't an angry tirade, but definitely impassioned), there were lots of stunned looks. For a second, nobody said anything, and then after that, we had a fairly intense conversation that ultimately ended in us deciding to focus on math for our entire next meeting. In the end, I don't know how people felt about my assertiveness, but I can say that Andrea came to my classroom about 30 seconds after I walked in and told me she agreed with me and that I had a good point. Nobody else really said anything, so I can't be sure how they all felt, but at least I felt a little better.
Now let's fast-forward to yesterday morning, because I wasn't done with my noise-making. My co-teacher, Megha (who I'm starting to actually really get along well with) and I were doing a little writing lesson on being more descriptive with the kids' narratives. They had out their laptops, I had mine hooked up to the Smart Board, kids were working, we were laughing, and in walks Kevin (the elementary principal). It was his first time in the classroom, so the timing was excellent. We happened to be talking about adjectives that described me, and Jae Hoon (the one who wrote me the letter) mentioned that I was "kind of fat" (not an accurate assessment, but we went with it because the kids thought it was funny). Anyway, it was up on the screen because we were looking for synonyms (and explaining that words like "obese" or "massive" wouldn't be appropriate because I'm not those things), and when Kevin walked in, it was right in the middle of this discussion. The kids were all having a blast, and even Kevin was pretty amused. He hung out for a few minutes, snapped some pictures, and I think Megha and I both shared a moment of relief. It's not that he's a menacing figure (quite the contrary), but still, it's your principal, and you want him to be impressed. Later that day, he wrote me a nice email saying he liked what he saw and that it was clear I had a great rapport with the kids and had succeeded in creating a positive and fun atmosphere. Then, he asked me if I had any questions for him...
Wrong question, because yes, I always have questions. Lots of them. Basically, I told him all about how I felt in a very carefully-crafted email and went on to ask if we could have a half-day for the entire team so we could get some planning done. Then, after I sent it, I talked to my friend Laura (who's spent the last six days in the hospital fighting off dengue). I read her the letter and she said it was brilliant, but that I should also send it to Anne, the VP, who's really my evaluator. So then, I panicked a little bit, because now, I had sent an email to Kevin AND I had had a conversation with a director, but had never reached out to her. I sat back down and wrote her a fairly lengthy email explaining how I was feeling and justifying why I hadn't included her or reached out to her earlier. I know, what a neurotic mess. After that, I had the whole, "Should I have sent that?" feeling in my gut, but luckily, after two back-to-back episodes of "Breaking Bad," I fell asleep and didn't worry about it.
This morning, when I was walking down the hall towards my classroom, I turned around the corner just in time to see Kevin and Andrea having a conversation, no doubt about me and my emails. They both got quiet really quickly, but kept the conversation going without any specifics. Nice try, but I'm on to you guys! I said my hellos and walked past, and after I returned from getting my coffee, Andrea came into my room and offered to spend some time meeting with me today to talk about Science, which was really a nice gesture. Within an hour, both Kevin and Anne had written me, telling me that they appreciated my honesty and would do whatever they needed to do to help me out. In fact, Anne and I are having a "working lunch" tomorrow, and on Thursday, another woman (who coordinates some curriculum herself) and I are meeting for an hour after school. I'm blown away at their outpouring of support, and am certainly very appreciative at the way they've received my SOS signals. Truly, this school is amazing.
Today ended up being a great day, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I like to think that professionally, I hit my low point and that there's only one way to go from here. I'm looking forward to my meetings these next couple of days, where hopefully I'll be able to get even more clarification and support and that real soon, I'll get the hang of things. Being in survival mode is no fun...and I'd forgotten how that feels. It's a good reminder of why a lot of the "experienced" teachers I've known for the past decade or so have been so reluctant when change comes their way. It's stressful!!
Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go look at my potential new car (mini tank). Stay tuned...
Ben
School has been stressing me out. Big time. It's been a difficult transition to go from a situation where you almost feel completely scripted, all the way to an environment where although there are some standards, you basically are left to figure it all out on your own. When I got here, one of the things I was really excited about was the fact that we had 90 minutes per day of prep. I thought to myself, "Man, we're going to have SO much free time on our hands! I'll never have to stay late or come in on weekends!" WRONG. Pretty much every day since I've gotten here, I've stayed in my classroom for two hours every day after school, and every weekend, I've come to the school on one of the days to try and plan. The problem is, there is SO much to learn, and in the end, so little time to do it (because we constantly have meetings during our prep, each one of which makes me feel even more stressed by the time it's over). I've grown to dread going to meetings for the simple fact that it never feels like we actually accomplish anything. During our time, we're basically unloaded on with a bevy of new "to do's" and more "expectations" from the school. I think I reached my low point this weekend, where in an act of desperation, I actually called our school's director of Curriculum & Instruction to voice my concerns over two things: curriculum overload/lack of training and poorly functioning grade-level team meetings. Making noise.
The conversation went well, although I will say that it was tough to articulately state how I was feeling. There was such a range of emotions, all the way from desperation to frustration. I kind of just had a stream of consciousness, sharing that I felt like "the writing was on the wall" in terms of our grade level not working well together and/or getting anything accomplished. I felt that we were off to a rough start, and that if something wasn't done quickly to get us back on track, things would end up going awry. I also discussed how completely overwhelming it's been for new teachers to be expected to figure out all of the complexities of our new program and attend meeting after meeting, all while trying to work with kids and adjust to our new lives. Although I certainly appreciated our "soft landing" in terms of the actual physical transition, it was a rude awakening to go from that to one of the more stressful emotional transitions I've ever experienced. After our talk, I felt better. I did end up going to school, but I basically just sat there and scratched my head. Have you ever been in a situation where there's just so much to do that you don't even know where to start? And because you don't know where to start, you don't do anything? Sure you have. That was me on Sunday. So, I bailed after a couple of hours and did what any stressed out person would do. I went to the mall and got a haircut (that's what stressed out people do, right?).
The next day (Monday), school started off so-so. Megha and I had a fairly decent lesson planned, and the kids were less lethargic than they were last Monday (which was brutal). The morning kind of crawled by, and then at around noon, we had our grade-level meeting. In those meetings, there are about eight of us, one of which is kind of like a trainer/liaison named Andrea. She's probably in her mid-40's, from New Zealand, and has been on the international circuit for quite some time. Last week, I actually made a snide little comment about how instead of having "meetings about meetings," maybe we should have been having meetings that were actually useful. I asserted that meetings talking about how to conduct yourself in meetings were probably useless, because after all, who in the hell can't be professional in a meeting?! Well, I guess that was the wrong thing to say. I decided to shut up after that. So anyway, we were at this meeting, and the first 45 minutes were spent listening to our cool-ass librarian, who's totally on our side. He talked about everything he could do to support us, and that was awesome. Next came the superintendent's wife, who is really great and teaches first grade. She presented how her team had spent considerable time last year working together to develop a math curriculum. When they were done presenting, our team leader, Becky, quickly changed the subject and started saying how we should all break up and start talking about SS and Science. Well, at that point, I was beginning to feel my frustration level rising, and before long, I had to make some noise. The noise went something like this: "OK, sorry, but I can't move on. I feel like someone's got to say something here. Every meeting we have, all we do is talk surface-level about everything under the sun, but we never actually make any progress. Honestly, I'm tired of coming to meetings where I leave feeling more frazzled than when I got there. At some point, we need to start having meaningful discussions that actually move us forward. We spend five minutes here, and five minutes there, but never really get anything done. I mean, think about it from our perspective. There are three of us new teachers, and two of you who have been here for 17 years. I know you guys tell us to just 'do what we can,' but when you're both sitting here telling us about all the things you're doing in your class, and we don't know anything about them, how are we NOT supposed to compare ourselves and feel badly that we're not doing for our kids what you are for yours? Instead of focusing on three subjects and doing a mediocre job at each of them, why aren't we focusing on ONE and doing a thorough job on it? Wouldn't our time be better spent working together on Math, rather than having new teachers try to develop curriculum that they don't even understand?" When I was done with my little tirade (it wasn't an angry tirade, but definitely impassioned), there were lots of stunned looks. For a second, nobody said anything, and then after that, we had a fairly intense conversation that ultimately ended in us deciding to focus on math for our entire next meeting. In the end, I don't know how people felt about my assertiveness, but I can say that Andrea came to my classroom about 30 seconds after I walked in and told me she agreed with me and that I had a good point. Nobody else really said anything, so I can't be sure how they all felt, but at least I felt a little better.
Now let's fast-forward to yesterday morning, because I wasn't done with my noise-making. My co-teacher, Megha (who I'm starting to actually really get along well with) and I were doing a little writing lesson on being more descriptive with the kids' narratives. They had out their laptops, I had mine hooked up to the Smart Board, kids were working, we were laughing, and in walks Kevin (the elementary principal). It was his first time in the classroom, so the timing was excellent. We happened to be talking about adjectives that described me, and Jae Hoon (the one who wrote me the letter) mentioned that I was "kind of fat" (not an accurate assessment, but we went with it because the kids thought it was funny). Anyway, it was up on the screen because we were looking for synonyms (and explaining that words like "obese" or "massive" wouldn't be appropriate because I'm not those things), and when Kevin walked in, it was right in the middle of this discussion. The kids were all having a blast, and even Kevin was pretty amused. He hung out for a few minutes, snapped some pictures, and I think Megha and I both shared a moment of relief. It's not that he's a menacing figure (quite the contrary), but still, it's your principal, and you want him to be impressed. Later that day, he wrote me a nice email saying he liked what he saw and that it was clear I had a great rapport with the kids and had succeeded in creating a positive and fun atmosphere. Then, he asked me if I had any questions for him...
Wrong question, because yes, I always have questions. Lots of them. Basically, I told him all about how I felt in a very carefully-crafted email and went on to ask if we could have a half-day for the entire team so we could get some planning done. Then, after I sent it, I talked to my friend Laura (who's spent the last six days in the hospital fighting off dengue). I read her the letter and she said it was brilliant, but that I should also send it to Anne, the VP, who's really my evaluator. So then, I panicked a little bit, because now, I had sent an email to Kevin AND I had had a conversation with a director, but had never reached out to her. I sat back down and wrote her a fairly lengthy email explaining how I was feeling and justifying why I hadn't included her or reached out to her earlier. I know, what a neurotic mess. After that, I had the whole, "Should I have sent that?" feeling in my gut, but luckily, after two back-to-back episodes of "Breaking Bad," I fell asleep and didn't worry about it.
This morning, when I was walking down the hall towards my classroom, I turned around the corner just in time to see Kevin and Andrea having a conversation, no doubt about me and my emails. They both got quiet really quickly, but kept the conversation going without any specifics. Nice try, but I'm on to you guys! I said my hellos and walked past, and after I returned from getting my coffee, Andrea came into my room and offered to spend some time meeting with me today to talk about Science, which was really a nice gesture. Within an hour, both Kevin and Anne had written me, telling me that they appreciated my honesty and would do whatever they needed to do to help me out. In fact, Anne and I are having a "working lunch" tomorrow, and on Thursday, another woman (who coordinates some curriculum herself) and I are meeting for an hour after school. I'm blown away at their outpouring of support, and am certainly very appreciative at the way they've received my SOS signals. Truly, this school is amazing.
Today ended up being a great day, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I like to think that professionally, I hit my low point and that there's only one way to go from here. I'm looking forward to my meetings these next couple of days, where hopefully I'll be able to get even more clarification and support and that real soon, I'll get the hang of things. Being in survival mode is no fun...and I'd forgotten how that feels. It's a good reminder of why a lot of the "experienced" teachers I've known for the past decade or so have been so reluctant when change comes their way. It's stressful!!
Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go look at my potential new car (mini tank). Stay tuned...
Ben
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