Friday, September 08, 2006

Sorry for the delay....

It's been almost 4 months since I posted anything. My sincerest apologies to everyone who has been reading and offering support. There was always plenty to say, maybe too much, and sometimes when there's too much I get studck and don't do any of it. The end of the 2005-06 school year was frustrating, to say the least.

1st frustration: I didn't even get an interview in the district where I finished my student teaching. I knew everyone in the English department, had recommendations from the current and past department coordinators, the principal liked me, and I knew the curricula for two of the openings they had. Out of 4 or 5 total positions they filled this year, I didn't even get a call. I didn't push it because I really didn't like the department, but it's disheartening to see that the people you worked with won't even give you the courtesy of an interview.

2nd frustration: Not one of my new batch of students had any motivation to succeed. No matter what techniques I tried, I could only get them to do the barest minimum amount of work, and not nearly enough to pass their finals or regents tests. And I did try every technique in every book I could find. For one reason or another, they were determined to fail and there wasn't much I could do about it.

One of them had a legitimate excuse. Her parents are drug dealers and she has a horrible home life. She also has some sort of emotional disturbance that she lets get the better of her. She actually made the biggest strides and I was incredibly proud to see her starting to succeed at math, something she hasn't done in three years. But she melted down during finals week and failed to show for two of her tests. No good reason, she just didn't show up. Our meeting spot was a quarter mile from her house and the weather was nice. She just didn't manage to make it that day. She did show up for her Math final, but melted down at the end and refused to use all of the alotted time for the problems. I think she could have figured it out if she tried a little more, but she gave up and missed passing by 7 points.

The other two just didn't want to work. One of them actually said this to me while we in the library to do research for his essay: "Mr. G., I didn't know we were going to have to use, like reading books." I'm not sure what kind of books he had in mind.

By the end of the school year I was simply glad to be done. I miss all of my students, but it is a relief not to have to teach them now.

No comments: