The other board and recent NCLB stuff got me thinking

[NHbeacon]

I switched careers to education from being a lab tech for many reasons, however, the main reason was the hours, and summers off. (Hey, at least I am honest, plus I hated driving in blizzards, gotta love snow days) Honestly, if I still lived in the Boston area, I would still be a lab tech due to the variety of positions available which do not exist in NH.

I do enjoy working with my high school students and wish that I had more time to work with them, than setting up, attending and doing paperwork from all the meetings. I do not have a prep period to do my paperwork without students around because my one free period has a sped core meeting on one day and a building team meeting on the other period. I get 45 minutes on Mondays away from my classroom and students. This is my 3rd year on the job and I am still staying at least an hour over my job 3-4 days a week. I am envious of teachers who can go running or to the gym after school.

But, now with NCLB and being a general sped teacher, I am now experiencing the dark side of education. What I went to school for is now not good enough. The General sped. cert., well it's great if I am just going to be in a resource room, but not good enough to be at an IEP eval meeting with an LD or EBD certified person. The k-8 general ed. is now not good enough for 7-8th grade and now by the way, I have to take the Praxis II in k-6, even after passing the PRaxis I for the state and have 6 years of college education. This is just in case I want to leave and work at another school. :cry: :cry: :cry:

I am now taking an online course for learning disabilities which is sucking the life out of me, I guess I am not as motivated as I thought. My job at the high school in town is tough because I am working with a very cliquey group of teachers for the most part, who are not friendly or willing to collaborate. A few are friends with the woman who used to have my job, who they may have thought was good, but never got to experience the mess in the room and the sped folders that she left behind. I have high expectations for myself and for others to act professionally with the good of the students in mind, not just the amount of time it takes to leave the building after school. I have yet to see a teacher reteach a concept after evaluating tests or come down to the resource room on a frequent basis to work with students one on one.

I could go on, but, given the state of education, why would people enter it as a profession. Would you do it again given the hoops that the government has set up? After reading about IDEA 2004 and working with sped students, I feel that it is all "pie in the sky" without any money to promote pre-referral programs. It is discouraging to me to work so hard for the good of my students and school, when I know that come town meeting in March, we will barely get our budgets passed and I will still have kids who need remedial math and reading, who won't be getting what they need.

So I know that I am whining, but please send me some encouragement and good thoughts my way!

Jan

[JohnBoy]

That is why Spec Ed jobs are the ones that are creating a "teacher shortage". They find that the bulk of it has nothing to do with teaching the children anything- just making sure the bureaucratic legalist nonsense gets taken care of would be a job in itself. I don't teach Spec Ed myself, but their students get mainstreamed into my class, and I have had a lot of traffic with the long-suffering folks who labor over IEPs interminably. My opinion is it needs reform in the worst way. You have my sympathy.