Teaching Update

I guess I should mention how my new work situation is panning out. After my whirlwind week of being interviewed and provisionally hired (until my drug and background checks came back later the next week), I settled back into the routine of teaching. It’s kind of like riding a bike, honestly. I was a little wobbly at first, remembering what it’s like to manage larger groups of rambunctious teenagers and stand/talk all day. It was exhausting, but good. During my first few provisional days, I had a sub in the room with me to help me get the hang of things. Annoyingly, I didn’t get computer access until mid week, which kept me from moving forward with content and doing everything else that I needed to do.

In a pleasant turn of events, my new school is 1 to 1 with MacBooks, so I get a nice computer to work with all year! Although I’m a lifelong pc user, I picked up the MacBook fairly easily. 

Within my first few days at school, I gained an interesting perspective on how different teaching at my new school would be as opposed to my old school. Since it is a private school, most of my students are not at much of a financial disadvantage. They have a lot of high end luxuries that my old students didn’t necessarily have. Most of them have access to private tutors if they don’t understand a concept the first time around. Most of their parents have a college education and they are expected to do the same. Attitudes are a little different. Most all of my students thank me and wish me a great day as they leave my classroom (unprompted, mind you!). Oh yes, class sizes are much smaller than I’m used to—my biggest class has a whopping 12 students! (Granted all of my students have some combination of dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, and slower processing speeds, among other learning differences, so it’d be tough for everyone if classes were any bigger...not to mention that my classroom is tiny!)

In some of the best news of all, I received a substantial pay raise! Granted, Oklahoma has a LOOONG way to go in terms of teacher pay, so maybe my pay rate is nothing to get that excited about. Nonetheless, Thomas and I are thrilled to finally both be earning reasonable wages, so that we can start working towards achieving some of our financial goals. 

I do miss my old coworkers, especially my classroom neighbors. However, I like my new coworkers and the fact that I’m a member of a department, not just the sole member of the department. It’s nice to have people to talk to about math teaching, as sometimes history teachers just don’t understand how difficult it is to teach about systems of equations!

Sadly, I guess teaching in Oklahoma was a good preparation for teaching elsewhere. If I can teach at a small school, where I taught 4 different classes, classrooms of 20+ students, have minimal parental support/involvement, use outdated materials, barely make a living wage, and prepare kids for some arbitrary standardized test that determines the worth of my school, my teaching skills, and the students’ knowledge levels, then I suppose that I could teach well almost anywhere else! 

I truly love what I do now. Getting to teach at my new school affords me so many wonderful professional and personal opportunities! So grateful for how this turned out!