Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Goodbye vacation

As usual, it's here too soon: the last day of vacation. The upside to my vacation is that I hardly dreamt about school at all (which I'm horrifically guilty of doing on vacation) and barely talked about school (also guilty). The downside is that I consequently did very little work for school, either. Just before the vacation, I received my teaching points for our new reading and math units (which are written for us by our literacy coach). The reading teaching points made me cringe so much that I couldn't even look at the writing ones until the next day, at which point my jaw dropped: They are literally the exact same teaching points we used for our unit in September. Two words have been changed in each one, to replace the theme of September's unit with the theme of this unit, but other than that, they are exactly the same.

(1) Did anyone in adminstration actually approve this? If so, how and why?
(2) What exactly does our literacy coach do all day, if she's just copying and pasting stuff from old units and passing them off as new units?
(3) Why must I always teach what my literacy coach and administration order me to instead of what I want to?

Although administration must feel differently, I am not stupid, and my students are not stupid, and we all know this means we are actually teaching the same unit over again, which is ridiculous on about eighteen different levels and I refuse to do it. And yet, over the vacation, all my badass plans to rewrite the unit evaporated, because...it's April and I'm already burned out? I wanted to have a life outside of teaching? I am lazy and incompetent and don't care about what's best for my students? You be the judge.

Maybe it's because I've come down with a cold just in time to go back to school, or maybe it's because next year's preference sheet is already out and I'm pondering what I'll be doomed to teach next, but I really, really don't want to go back to school tomorrow.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't beat yourself up..you are human and totally deserve a life outside of teaching. I'm on spring break this week and can relate.
As far as what your literacy coach is doing...good question. Who evaluates the work that she/he is putting out???
Hope you feel better soon :)

Ann T. said...

Dear Miss Brave,
Lots of orange juice! Zinc! Echinacia (or however it's spelled).
You're a newlywed, entitled to vacation, and yes! Even if the previous two things were not true, you have a life separate from school.

I hope you enjoyed yourself hugely.
Ann T.

Anonymous said...

Miss Brave, the blogosphere was tough on you over the Julio issue (both those who support keeping Julio in a regular classroom, and those who support moving him to a more therapeutic setting). I hope you'll continue blogging, both about the Julio issue and about your other perspectives on teaching.

Anonymous said...

Wow. That does sound asinine. I'm sorry aren't allowed to use your good judgment and figure out what to teach, rather than having to listen to a stupid literacy coach!

Nanncy said...

I read your content This is about a goodbye vacation. It's a nice post. Keep it up. Now it's time to avail Signature Shopfitters for more information.

John Hardy said...

Good bye vacations interesting information for us. I really love it. I hope you will share more good updates. Now it's time to avail luxury airport transfer for more information.