My Year Is OVER!!!!

For only the second time in my teaching career, I am not upset or disappointed that the school year has ended.  

This year has been an uphill climb that never ended and every bit of it has affected my overall health, especially over the past two months (more on that later). 

When the year began, I knew I was getting a couple of students with behavior challenges. Along with these two impulsive boys who lacked impulse control and empathy, I had an additional 3 or 4 boys who were prone to poor decision making on more than a few occasions.  This normally doesn't bother me as behavior management is my strong point. 

I managed to control their behaviors for the most part but that is the point - I controlled their behavior...there was never any self-regulation of behavior.  This was apparent whenever my teaching assistant was in charge.  They did not listen to her at all!!!!!   I loved her and appreciated her greatly, but she and I were never on the same page as far as setting the bar high for behavior expectations and holding them accountable for their poor behavior. It became so frustrating.  

I can sum it up like this --- as long as they were in the classroom and confined to their desks, and I was in front of them, things went smoothly. We spent the vast majority of the year this way and it was not very much fun at all.  

The second tier to this highly unusual year was that I was given 5 students who were reading at a Kindergarten level at the beginning of the year.  They had a first grade "teacher" who really wasn't a teacher at all!  Her major was Art Education and she had no idea how to teach the students to read.

I couldn't blame her - but it created for me a LOT of extra work this year to get them caught up. I worked my tail off and got some satisfaction from the end of the year testing  which showed 3 of the 5 improved to mid-late 2nd grade, 1 improved to early 2nd grade, and 1 was sooooo low, we knew from the beginning of the year he would be retained. But even he reached the goal we had set for him which was mid 1st grade level. 

I was proud of all of them because as a class, they improved by 152% in Math and 191% in Reading.  It's nice to see your hard work paying off with results like those - even if I felt like a dictator all year!  

When I was hired by this school 2 1/2 years ago, I thought this would be the place I'd stay until I was ready to hang up my teaching hat. I was happy and content here and worked with some great people. Unfortunately, sometimes God's plans are different and because of a certification issue, I was forced to find employment at a private school next year. 

I will be teaching 2nd grade at Central Florida Christian Academy. I am very excited about this - my favorite teaching years were at Oshkosh/Valley Christian. 

But for now, I am going to relax for the summer and try to get my health back on track.  I am guessing I am having an autoimmune flare-up. This has resulted in uncontrollable psoriasis and three serious infections in the past two months. These infections are "full body" response infections complete with vomiting and fever.  

Not fun!