New Job

Starting in february I am going to be a seventh grade teacher. Widely recognized as the craziest grade to teach in education. I am also not a math teacher in february. After 4 years of teaching math at the same place, it is fact that I am the ranking member of the math department. The new principal's decision must have either ignored this, or thought my experience was not good enough to keep me from replacement.

Why is it that I failed to rise to the top of the math teacher pile at a failing school? Let me say that I certainly know a lot about math. My mental math is not that bad, but not that good when I am up in front of class. I have been good at creating worksheets to show case students how to do bigger picture math concepts. With that said,
I have not been that successful at being a math teacher. My organization skills have kept me from getting a lot of things done. Likewise, simply getting things done in any form has been a consistent problem at school. When it is time for me to explain something to someone I have a lot of trouble putting together a real cohesive explanation that doesn't just give a kid a series of steps to follow, but an connection between what they already know, and what this new concept is. Perhaps the fact that I want to do that at all is why I am not considered successful with a principal who said that the class should be about standards first, coherence second. The big story with my lack of success has been with classroom management. I realized now that the classroom management is going to be entirely up to me, because the administration of the school does not want to be bothered. Even with the new mindset, I realize that for management I will have to be able to have a positive way of relating to students so that they can be encouraged to follow the rules, not fearful of breaking them.

At this point I wondered whether or not I can overcome my shortcomings in this area, or if I will ever realize a maximization of my strenghts in this area as well. Clearly, the first thing I need to do is tighten up my whole professionalism routine. Regardless of what area I am in I will need to be more professional. More than 10 times this year I have showed up at school without a lesson plan, started a class where I wasn't prepared. Started writing on the board without knowing what the end of the sentence would be. I really enjoy solving problems and the adrenaline of handling challenges, and I don't really value being organized, or sitting down and making mundane worksheets, but if I can't get over these issues and actually do the job of teaching like a professional, well, I can't expect to be successful at any job.