Where do I go now?

I once heard that it is a good idea to be ambitious and get put out business when you're young so you can deal with it. The school that I have worked at has seen its administrator pushed out, a new one replacing her from the district, and now the district has decided to shut the school down.

The school has gotten shut down for a number of reasons, first and foremost though is the statistics. The student performance, and more importantly, student progress, is at the heart of this decision. Why did the students not perform? Maybe the teachers could not teach effectively, although they faced very VERY trying situations in the classroom. There was little support for the teachers to be able to handle the things that they would face. The students also did not get a lot of support at home. Students rarely do homework, and parents are not known to help them. The facilities were either inadequate or underused, but students did not get to see the benefits of the building where there school was.

The blame game can only go so far though. Especially when you realize that nobody else agrees with you. The students did not perform for a lot of reasons, but their behavior is the first thing that almost every teacher that has walked through our school has said. The teachers lacked support for handling the teachers, but every kid felt as though the teachers were not using really well developed curriculum, or taught effectively. The facilities were bad, and the people who were supposed to maintain them have acted very defeated and were ineffective by many measures.

Then, if you're me, you point the finger at yourself, probably because all that pointing else where gets tiring. Why me? Well, I wasn't perfect? Moreover, I didn't know what exactly I should have done. It is really easy to look back at what transpired and only see my flaws, that is a bad habit of mine for every endeavor that I have taken on. If I take a further step back though, I think it is very clear that I was merely another fish, not strong enough to swim against the powerful current.

For the future I imagine that I will have some great job someday, and I will be able to look back and say something significant from my experience at the school. The only lesson I have learned so far, is that only the strong can survive. For me to be able to have the career I have was because I was able to be strong enough to get the work done during the school year. I was not strong enough to move the students to where they had to go, but that is not what I was thinking when I first started working there. I was not ready to be as serious about the kids and their work to get the work together.