The Party's Over

**Beware--Stream-of-conscience processing ahead****

I honestly don't know when I'm going to be able to tell stories on here ever again. Dramatic though I may be, the truth is...we are all miserable at school. It's been going on for weeks and I haven't really wanted to talk about it, mostly because I'm so tired of it. But, I will lay the whole thing out here, for the purposes of getting it out of my system.

The curriculum web is our worst nightmare become reality. Our district, one of the best in the state (and really, the nation--3 of our 4 high schools are in the top 50 High schools in the US--according to Newsweek), decided a while ago that they wanted to create this online curriculum that every teacher in the district would teach. The idea was that everyone would help create this world-class curriculum.

The reality is that the curriculum sucks and we are being forced to teach it. Man, now that I'm into it I still don't want to talk about it. There is so much to this issue.

Since everyone has to write something that everyone else can do, the lessons are so boring. The more creative you get with your lessons, the more conceptual, the harder it is to explain it to someone else so that they can teach it. The result is that every single day the lesson is to do some kind of a recall warm-up and then to give my kids a huge, fatty document, and make them read through it and fill in a worksheet.

That is not good teaching.

The problem is, the district wants us to just...make it better. Just fix what's there. We tried that originally but it just doesn't work. there are only so many ways to fix having the students read a document and fill in a worksheet without getting incredibly behind.

The rest of the major issues aside, here is our dilemma.

Last week: Our kids quit. They had had enough (if you've never been a teacher and experienced this...it's awful, especially if you can't do anything about it and you know you'll have to keep torturing them). I could see it in their eyes, they verbalized it and I was miserable. I had enough too! I hate making my kids hate history. I hate not having them have to think through the concepts instead of reading and regurgitating. I hated spending hours going through the lessons trying to decipher what I'm actually supposed to be teaching them. I hated the hours I would then have to spend fixing what is there and I hated the feeling I had the whole time that I was just going to be killing their spirits by giving this to them.

Nate and Keith and I spent hours and hours (making me exhausted and depressed) after school last week trying to figure the bad curriculum out and then...an opportunity arose.

Friday of last week: Nate realized that the next unit isn't on the web yet. There were only 3 lessons written of 12 and the three that were there were impossible and badly written. Our VP had told us that week that "we don't teach crap" at Newport. Well, this was crap. (For a 2 hour lesson the kids were supposed to split up and read 6 different documents--8 pages each--and then share with each other what they learned. The readings were at a college reading level, way beyond my Freshmen--they used words like "heretofore"). We brainstormed and weighed our options, and then got excited. Nate had a horrible week last week because he hated his job. He looked absolutely miserable. Nate has inspired me as a teacher and I hated seeing him so miserable. He said, "I have never hated my job before...but I am not connecting with my students over this. I don't have control over my classroom and they've stolen my joy for teaching." BUT!!! HERE WE ARE!! We had the opportunity to write our own, good, stuff again--just because they didn't have anything for us. After school Friday we reworked the Unit and made a plan. If we reorganized and planned the whole unit before they could come up with a time to meet to finish the lessons, then we could 1) steal some of our joy back 2) refresh our students 3) possibly come up with something good enough that they'd accept so we could teach it again next semester. (Sidenote here: Our unit was so AWESOME!! The topic was religion and 4 major civilizations...at the end of it we were going to have a salon where the "heads" (pairs of students) of the major religions gathered together to discuss the meaning of life and death. Can you imagine Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Sophoclese, and Plato all discussing that?)

Today: They stole our joy back and I don't know how long it will take us to recover. Emails went around today. They're going to write the missing lessons (even though it won't be engaging) and we've decided to still go ahead with our plan. But, we risk getting in trouble. It may be for nothing, and it will be a lot of work.

Work load has increased since we've had to factor in the curriculum web.
I hate teaching Foundations (it's a good thing the kids are wonderful. One told me last week, "Ms. Burdick, I still love this class, but I don't know how much more of this I can take." That killed me.)

Here's the thing I don't understand--> We are ranked 24th in the nation. That must mean that we have pretty good curriculum as it is. They fire anyone whose weaknesses will take too much time to correct. The educational pedigree of our staff is incredible. Our students love the classes we offer. Why, then, since they try so hard to get good teachers...why will they not trust us to teach!?! I understand the power of a curriculum that would be created from those amazing teachers, but that is not this curriculum. They need to let us experiment with common objectives and then submit options of lessons.

But then!!! Argh. You know what makes a good teacher great? (My kids told me this when they saw how tired I was from trying to deal with Foundations last week). A teacher is great when they are so entranced by the subject that their lesson is like a creation that the teacher can't wait to share. A teacher is energized by a lesson that they've crafted into something amazing, that they get excited about and that, by extension, their students get excited about. My students asked me last week, "If you don't get to write your own lessons, how will you bring passion to your work?" I was wondering the same thing.

It's like the Industrial Revolution. We were artisans and they've taken our craft specialization away. Instead we are left to work long hours in this factory known as the High School, cranking out inferior products to be consumed by the faceless masses.

In grad school we learned that the best schools are those which are teacher-driven. Ours was that. Now it is not. You look around, and people are grim. We are all miserable. If the school doesn't change their tune they're going to lose that precious ranking like they're losing good teachers.

Nate and Rob are amazing teachers. They inspire their students and make their students think. Rob and Nate are both looking like they may only be around for the rest of this year and maybe next year. If this doesn't change, they'll go elsewhere--places where their talents will be appreciated, where they can practice their craft.

In the meantime, we all just work...

I have now wasted enough time with this stream-of-conscience writing. I'm sorry...but that's why I haven't been writing.

I'm overworked and struggling to find joy in my job.

Reflection: I want to stay positive but it just gets worse every day. I'm so overwhelmed.

Related Items