Okay I either need sympathy or to be told it is the same everywhere! How do YOU do it?
I am a very dedicated teacher. I am soooooo frustrated and seriously contemplate becoming a waitress or grillcook because I feel like I am a failure.
Our district has a nine period day. One is lunch and one is prep, so that leaves 7 periods with students. I teach early childhood special education (3 year olds), for two periods a day, and 4 periods of remediating for the 9-12 LD students. HELP! I just got 3 referrals and school doesn’t start until Monday. I just can’t do it! I have a deaf three year old, and it is going to take me an hour a day to prepare just for her! I really need to know how the rest of the world does it. I just can’t juggle four things at once anymore.
Re: Prep time
Welcome to the zoo.
On the one hand we have parents getting mad and saying you have to do all these extra things because it is your job, *just* ten more minutes here and there, and on the other hand we have fifty hours of work to pack into the day.
Don’t give up. The kids need you and even if you’re imperfect you care, and you do the best you can. There are times to quit in protest when the situation is actively hurtful to the children but you haven’t hit that wall yet, and you’re the best they’re going to get.
Ummm — you say seven classes of teaching, made up of two early childhood and four of 9-12 remediation — these numbers don’t add up — has the stress gotten to you that badly already?
When you say 9-12, to you mean ages or grades?
Advice:
(1) Prioritize. Don’t let little things, like bulletin boards which the kids ignore after the first day anyhow, fill up hours and hours of time while you don’t get to the important stuff like teaching reading. Put the reading and writing and math first and let the details slide.
(2) Do you have help? Maybe parent volunteers? They can do a lot of the repetitive work like copying and organizing, and at least some of the special ed parents here are very involved.
(3) Ask yourself *why* you are doing a particular job and what value it really has in the long run.
For a truly dreadful example, I have seen a teacher’s aide doing “prep” cutting out art projects for the kindergarten class. A double loss; this aide was hired to help non-English-speaking students and while she was wasting her time like this she wasn’t with the kids, and anyway, isn’t the point of cutting-out art projects for the *kids* to learn how to use scissors, so this was negating what little learning might have been involved in the project. Look at all your prep and ask how much of it could either be omitted or could be done by the students themselves. Another horrible example: I was in a school system where they graded teachers on their prep books and expected you to write in tiny print a full paragraph for every class every day, a complete waste of two hours a day (my class plan was “teach the balance method for equations, pages 11-13”, and really, that was all that was needed.) If you’re still writing out these detailed full paragraphs for every kid, unless you’ll get fired if you don’t, quit doing it. Write a few short notes to remind yourself or a sub if necessary, and do something more useful with your time. Be creative in the class, not in the prep book.
(3A) If you are spending hours and hours a day marking papers, re-examine your goals and methods — is your main value in teaching and learning filling in blanks and trading papers back and forth? Can you give less bulk but with more academic depth and challenge?
(4) Don’t re-invent the wheel. Many teachers have spent hundreds and thousands of hours making up good books and workbooks and programs. Spend the time researching and obtaining *high-quality* and *appropriate* materials, and then work with the student through the program. This takes an investment of several hours at the beginning, finding material that covers just this particular need; you have to hunt through school book closets and used book stores and new book stores and amazon online. But once you have found something well-prepared, then you can limit your preparation to checking out the next pages and figuring out how to present them best, rather than writing a book for yourself.
(5) For the long term, build a library and a knowledge base. You get a good reading program for each level, a couple of good phonics programs, one or two good math programs, a good writing program, a good spelling program (I’m just getting into AVKO), good materials for deaf kids — I haven’t got a clue there, but research —and so on; and these are your own personal stuff, you buy one copy of each for yourself, you put your name on them and keep them at home or in a locked filing cabilnet, only let out for photocopying if needed (this is a serious warning; books walk off and you find yourself without a vital program part that’s now out of print) As you work through a program with a student for the first time you get to know how this system works, what parts tie together, and what weak points need help and supplementation. Next year, you know how this all works and you can take students with similar needs and work through the same materials with them. After a few years 90% of your prep is there in your filing cabinet or home bookshelf. You add good new programs as you find them , but you don’t throw out older stuff if it works.
To much stress is right.
2 periods of three year olds (non-verbal, one deaf), reading, language arts, study skills, lunch, life skills math, study skills and prep….
no aide, no volunteers. I set up the bulletin boards at the beginning of the year with resources the students will need and don’t ever change them. :roll: It is good to see I am not the only one with this stress. I complain to my union support people, but special education just doesn’t seem to fit into the contract. :x I begin to wonder why I am paying for union dues!
is there a speech pathologist on staff that you can
collaborate with? I hear you on the young kids as I am an SLP and I have to juggle a bunch of kids and as a result I do a lot of collaboration with teachers. I literally freak out the first 2 weeks of a new assignment with trying to get into a groove, meeting the Goals and Objectives and standards. I end up doing a lot of collaboration with teachers in the classroom. It helps us both out. I think once you get your lesson plans down with the standards and start plunking in activities you will get into a groove.
Our district is the same way. I teach 7 periods a day and I cover K-5 special ed. kids. I teach ELA Math and study skills at all different levels. I just do the best I can. I have been talking to administers and board members. I may get more help this year, but it has taken me five years to get it. I use any available aides and older students to help with bulletin boards and preparing materials. I usually stay at school until 5 and bring lots home. It is frustrating.