Tropical Storm Day Thoughts

 Hello all! It's been a few weeks since my last post, and honestly can you blame me. So far this school year, I have subbed 28 out of our 50 days. Every morning is a new adventure as I find out what new subject I will teaching and how to still teach my one ELA class at the end of the day without losing my ever loving mind. I think I am just managing to do that, but even with my mask on my kids can still tell when my day has been a little rough and ask me if I subbed for a certain teacher again. I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing yet. 

Report cards went home yesterday, which means we are officially done with the first quarter of school. It feels like we should already be done with the first semester though. So let's catch you up!

The year has gone for the most part without a hitch. Sharing both of my classroom has not been as bad as I thought it would be. The room where I teach ELA at the end of the day, also hold Chinese for two class periods and the Blind and Hearing Impaired teacher for two periods. So far the only issue there is someone keeps stealing the markers or leaving them uncapped. The positive side is that one of the teachers has a service dog for their diabetes and they let them love on people. I got to say, grabbing my computer from that room in the morning (because I'm lazy and don't feel like walking it down the hallway at the end of the day) has become my favorite activity. How could your day not be better by getting puppy love? 

The SIPPS/ESE room is where I spend the majority of my time and honestly the four of us have formed such a bond. Sadly, one of the ladies left for a better job opportunity which now leave the ESE department down one push-in teacher. As stated above, since I've subbed for over 50% of the day so far and SIPPS isn't a legally binding course I offered to do the push-in work until the new person is hired. I haven't heard yet about if I am helping or not, or if we are getting a fourth roommate again. Hopefully we will hear soon because parents have already started emailing teachers about lack of push-in support (see subbing mentioned above). I cannot stress this enough though, I DO NOT WANT THIS JOB! I don't want the headache of writing IEP's and all the paperwork that goes with it, however I also don't want our school to be sued for not following the IEP plans of a whole grade of students. I'm subbing nearly every other day as it is, might as well through that in there to. 

I also want to be viewed as a team player because I found out my job may not be approved for next year. It was built as a special position for a trial run in the county. They will be voting on it at the end of the year to see if they would like to continue this position for a third year. In theory they would be looking at data from the last three years to see if having a reading coach has improved scores, but because of Covid there isn't any data to compare at the moment. My principal has assured me that they would find a place for me somewhere, but you can never be sure. Who knows what our allotments will look like next year after all the issues with our number and kids doing the state virtual instead of county virtual which makes it look like we lost kids, when in reality they'll be back come August. 

We have had off two days this week because of Eta, which have honestly been so relaxing. We haven't had a break yet from school, not even our weekends are truly ours. Our teacher workday this year was on Halloween to get grades inputted. Our only other day without kids was on 11/3 for a professional development day because our schools are used as voting locations. I know the kids are feeling it too. I am hoping this week will make up for their insanely short Thanksgiving Break which starts on Thanksgiving and ends that Sunday night. Winter Break will be no better, since it starts on Christmas Eve and starts back on January 4th. 

So where does that leave us? Well we have exams starting 1/11 which should be super interesting to see how they do coming off of break. We are also in the process of adopting a new textbook to go with our new standards that the fabulous governor decided to implement without consulting anyone in education it feel likes. Middle schoolers will now be doing rhetorical analysis and reading full on poetry.... it is bad enough trying to get them to write in full sentences and understand figurative language. I will be getting my knee surgery at the end of the school year, so I get to figure out if I can use all my days or FMLA or something so I can pay my bills. 

I promise to try to keep this updated more often, but honestly probably not going to happen (sorry future self for failing epically at this) Talk to you when I talk to you.