As my regular readers have no doubt noticed, my posting has been extremely sparse lately. Time to come clean.
I had a very rough first semester. It was far harder than I thought it would be adjusting to a new school environment where the administration and other teachers didn't recognize my talents. The school is larger than my previous school, so I feel that I haven't stood out or gotten the attention of the administration in any way and that has been frustrating. But mostly, my bad first semester was a result of my negative attitude.
When I switched schools, I came at just the wrong time, right as an administrative change was taking place. As a result, the people who hired me told me one thing, when the reality come September was something else. Rather than teaching 2 Earth Science classes, as I had been told, I was teaching only one 32-student class and two biology classes (which I had never taught before). I felt betrayed and angry and as a result, my planning and engagement with my students suffered. I blamed behavior issues for all of my problems, instead of recognizing ways that I could improve. I'm not proud of how I acted, but at least now I've had time to sit down and think about concrete ways to improve.
I think every teacher will go through something like this at some point in their career. We are caring individuals and it hurts us when we feel that our talents are being wasted. There comes a time when idealism isn't enough to stop us from getting angry at situations we have no control over - the bureaucracy, the bad decisions of others, the difficult home lives. There is so much outside the classroom that affects our work that it can be overwhelming and disheartening to think about.
I took time over the winter break to step back and what I missed most was my passion for teaching and the great feeling I would get when something did go right. I realized that I had been focusing too much on things I couldn't change and dwelling on all the negatives, often overlooking the positive. So I made a New Year's resolution to record in writing one good thing about each school day. I did it every day this week and I already feel better. Despite all the difficulties, there are still good things happening and THAT is what matters most. I hope to post the best things here on this blog (and I'll still write about difficulties now and then). This year, you should be hearing from me more!
You know, I have been doing writing down one (sometimes more) good thing about each day since October. It really does help!
Posted by: Kelvin Kao | 01/09/2012 at 02:53 AM