Bob’s Blog

I turned in my contract for next year. Despite the nightmare of a year I’ve had at this school, I’m staying on board for at least another year. I’m not sure how I feel, but I am being cautiously optimistic about it all. I’m buying into the change and the vision. I want to give this school the benefit of the doubt. It’s been the perfect storm of First Year Teacher Syndrome, a circus of a community a nightmare of a student body, and first year administrative changes.

Though, later today I’m going to a job fair to scout out other schools. There’s a condition where I can opt out of my contract by May if I wanted to leave. I’m not planning on leaving (as stated above) but I want to see my options and see what else is out there. I want the experience of sitting on more interviews and to know what to ask. It would be dumb for me not to. And, truth be told I’m making no promises about a year from now on where I’ll be.

One of my biggest mistakes was not scouting out the area and doing some hard homework on the current school I’m at. My entire hiring process went as follows:

- Sent out resume at the end of June
- Sent up follow up emails a few days later
- Received a phone call from the school within the hour of sending that email
- Had an immediate phone interview that lasted over an hour
- Was offered the job on the spot
- Accepted the offer the next day
- Moved to Atlanta 2 weeks later on the spur and started to work.

Mind you, I’ve never visited or knew about this suburb of Atlanta. I could not find much information about this place on the internet, but I said to hell with it and did it on the whim. After all, you live only once, right? I had another offer from a school in South Carolina, but I wanted to be in Atlanta. I had visited Atlanta a few months prior and fell in love with it. The school in SC was not near a major city, and after spending 5 years away from a major city, I needed to be near one. I’m a city guy at heart.

Given the year that I’ve had, I need to do serious homework if I want to move a year from now and I figure I might as well start now.

From: http://flickr.com/photos/boyshapedbox/2282655473/in/set-72157603957925616/

Take some time every now and then to tell people how much they mean to you and how much you care about them. Life’s too short. It’s all too often that people we care about will get ripped away from us, both unfairly and unexpectedly.

So, a while ago, I posted some videos of Lasagna Cat. Which is essentially weird and hilarious interpretations of Garfield comic strips. You can find two of my favorites here and here.

There’s this website I stumbled upon that elevates Garfield comics to an higher level of awesomeness by actually removing Garfield from all the strips. Check it out here. It’s called “Garfield Minus Garfield”

As the website states:

“Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?”

Some examples:

I’ve watched this like, 5 times in a row now. The parts with the ninja just make me lose it.

I love the internet.

Oh, yes. Fantasy Baseball season is starting to gear up. And I could not be more excited.

I’m glad I have summers off to dedicate entire afternoons to achieve the perfect team, and crush any and all competition.

I’ve never been one to have a whole lot of friends in my life; I’m genuinely pretty reserved and shy. In middle school and high school, I didn’t have a whole lot of friends and my weekends and summers were spent working.

It wasn’t until my last 2-3 years of college that I had a large group of friends. But with my move down here to Atlanta, that’s changed. I’ve more or less had to “start over” with making new friends. It’s much harder to make friends in “real life” than opposed to college or even high school and trying to keep in touch with friends back home often proves difficult, despite wonderful inventions such as Myspace, Facebook, and AIM.

Many will say that if you have at least one good friend in the world, you’re better off than most. If that’s the case, I’ve been genuinely blessed multiple times over by the friends I do have. The people I call genuine friends are absolutely amazing and the impact I’ve had on people is something I have not realized until tonight.

So, thank you.

There’s something that every teacher must deal with every now and then, and that is the dreaded observation/walk-through by the higher ups. Every now and then, an administrator will come through to your classroom, observe you, and evaluate you. It’s normally a hassle because a lot of times, they come in groups of 3-4. So, you have 3-4 people just come into your classroom, they walk around, they have their walkie-talkies on, talk to students, etc. It’s a very rude and disruptive process for the most part. But it’s part of the job. I’ve been looked at quite a few times and I’m happy I can say that I’ve done well on all the evaluations.

But this last walk-through on Friday was completely insulting.

First, let me state that I have no problems with a walk-through on the last day before vacation. In fact, I expect them. I’m not one of those teachers that will show a movie or something on the last day, it’s just not my style. Instead, I will normally lecture and have the kids take notes. It’s a good way to keep the kids under your thumb since they’re bouncing off the walls over vacation.  I do the same for any other event such as an assembly or pep rally taking place at the school.

Some teachers think it’s shady that we get observed on days like this. It is, no doubt. But you should expect it in a district like this. It is what it is, plain and simple.

But here’s where things get a bit weird. This particular observation on Friday was a bit different than previous ones because you had…students observing/evaluating us.

As a teacher, I find it completely and utterly insulting. I’m sorry – but does this high school student have a degree in education? Did this student spend 4-5 years in college? Is this student licensed to teach in any way? Does this student work for the school district? Do they have any experience in teaching, at all?

Oh, no? So then please explain to me why I should care at all about what this student thinks about my classroom and why they should have any type of say on these evaluations?

The only student opinions on how I run things that I care about are the ones inside of my room day in and day out.  And even then, I don’t have to justify what I do inside of the classroom. I’ve adjusted myself in the classroom to meet the needs of certain students, but it more or less ends there. I’m not particularly interested in what a 14-15 year old thinks about my classroom. I’m there to teach and if I need to make adjustments to learning styles, then so be it. But as I’ve stated before, it ends there.

I’d like to know who came up with this idea, because this whole thing left a very sour taste in the mouths of just about every single teacher in the building.

Irritating. And insulting.

I’m going to donate to Obama’s campaign. I’m hopping on the Obama Express. Why? For the simple fact that I think Hillary Clinton would be the absolute worst thing to happen to this country if she became elected. And I want no part of that.

My feelings on any current Republican candidate is more or less the same.

Oh, American politics.