Who owns this mess?  Who could fix it?  Who’s getting something out of the way it is?  Because a system that doesn’t work for anyone would get fixed by whoever signs off on it.

I can think of a whole better system, if I had The Button to push.  There are tons of alternatives from the top.  But, from down here…there aren’t a lot of options.  There’s what’s called teaching, aka crowd control and babysitting, and the more I think about the reality of it the less I think I can put up with what it’s turning into; I still want to do what it’s supposed to be, is the thing, and I hate the thought of walking away because I’ve never had the chance to get my feet firmly under me, but…maybe it’s too broken for me to work with.  There’s private tutoring, which isn’t really an option for a job–the hourly rate is good, the number of hours sucks.  There’s classroom aideing, which pays enough to live on for someone who lives modestly and has only the two years’ worth of student loans that are expected to get into it.  There are more options for people who have the special ed degree or license since that’s a part of the field that’s less about all fitting the same mold.

I’m trying to temper this with the facts…I’m some form of burned out right now because of getting screwed over by the last job, not every job has to be that extreme…but at this point, I don’t know if I can work myself around to be able to function in this system faster than it would spit me out again.  Maybe subbing will work for that, I don’t know…I’ll try it, if I get a chance.  But I wonder if the reason it’s not working is because it just doesn’t work, if grouping the kids by only age and expecting them to all work at the same pace on the same stuff is just fundamentally fracked to the point where it naturally chews up and spits out anyone that gets near it.  Even though I don’t want to be that statistic, the 50% that burns out in less time than it took to get through college to get there…maybe it’s time to walk away.

And do what, though?  I know that teaching, in the actual sense of the word, is what I’m supposed to be doing; I don’t even mind doing a modest amount of paperwork like a reasonably comprehensive lesson plan or anything else with some practical value.  That’s what I’m about.  There are things that I could see working my way into, further along in my career, but they’re not things a person gets to do before they pay their dues.  I kick butt at tutoring but I’ve never met anyone who could do that as a full-time job; the hours just aren’t there since most of the kids’ awake hours are taken up with being crowd-controlled.

I’m just at a loss for what to actually do.  I still want to make it work but maybe I just found out six years and $70,000 too late that it’s too much of a mess for me to function in.  If I saw anything else that uses what I’m good at and would pay the bills, I could probably walk away…but so far, I just don’t see it.

Is there anything left to fix?  Is there anything else for me, if there’s not?

Contrary to grad school telling us that we were all going to be leaping tall IEPs in a single bound, I’ve turned out so far to be a mediocre teacher. Contrary to grad school, and then Pendergast, telling us that nothing but perfect was good enough, I’m OK with that. I’m first-year; I have a right to be mediocre. After all I’ve had to do to drag myself to this point, I deserve to be mediocre for a while.

The problem is, in pretty much everything else I can think of in my life, I’m falling short there too…on any given measure I can think of, I’m so far from who and what I was supposed to be right now, especially for what I used to be. I miss being a kid, for that; I like the independence now but I also liked being good at stuff, and as a general rule I’m not any more. “Good at stuff” as the foundation of my identity doesn’t work so well when it stops being true. It doesn’t help, I guess, that work is pretty much the only thing in my life. That’s what makes it hard to accept being mediocre; if I’m only doing one thing, I should at least be good at it.

Now, I hit the snooze too much (though less so than a few months ago), go to work, work my way through the day, walk home, try to get things done at home (with embarrassingly ineffective results), hang out with my online friends, and stay up too late (though a little less so because I just don’t have it in me) worrying about things I need to do.  The variation on weekends is to, on Saturdays, remove the alarm clock entirely in favor of oversleeping, on Sundays I’m once again experimenting with the church thing, and of course no work.

Hmm.

Same friends–I had some work friends at the last job, which turned out to be YATIs (Yet Another Temporary Interaction). Same lack of a local social life, due to lack of local friends.  Still stressing, not about the exact same stuff but it’s mostly connected.  Not only am I, contrary what grad school told me to expect of myself, not saving the universe, but I’m barely even managing to save myself from various stuff.

My new life is my old life but with cacti.

For this I packed up and moved to a different time zone.

What’s the point?  I’m not sure.  Partly I’m just trying to think things through.  Partly I think there might be someone out there who finds all this entertaining or something.  Partly, I’m looking at ways of making my new life more different from my old life.  I don’t know what to change, how, or into what, but other than that I’ve got it all figured out.  Heh.

Long story short, work got to me.  I went in with enthusiasm but not a lot of energy, and it chewed me up.  Some of it is confidential.  Some of it I just don’t want to talk about.  I will say this…I still think I can teach and do well at it, somewhere else; and, for all the stuff I had a hard time with, I feel that there were things I had going for me that weren’t valued as much as they should have been.

So, I’m being released from my contract.  In theory I’m going to sub and find a part-time job.  In practice, hard to say.

Today, the job search began again. I got around to, final count, 7 different districts, to pick up the paperwork.  Tomorrow I need to take as many of those back as I can and get around to a few more.

I also got my personal belongings from the classroom…which sucked.  A few of my students were there–really decent kids, who I’ll miss.  Hopefully some of them will stay in touch, though it hasn’t happened yet.  Everyone was so nice; I almost fell apart.

Life is going to be extremely crazy for the next several months.  Subbing, some other kind of job (maybe working in a bookstore or tutoring), putting myself back together.  Preferably keeping the rest of it from falling apart.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

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I’ve learned the weaknesses of two ways of teaching math–CMP and its relatives (unless you add routine practice onto the program, nothing ever gets easy) and starting with the bare standards (takes freaking forever and working in a different order from the book doesn’t work anyway because the students aren’t set up for the materials). Now I know how to work around both. Next year, wherever I am (and by implication whichever I’m working from) I’ll be able to set that up in a way that can actually work, from the beginning.

The school district I live in uses CMP, which is not my favorite math curriculum; on the other hand, they don’t neuter it like Salem-Keizer did, and I know how to fix it now, by adding on the more traditional stuff but in a more structured and accountable way than Grant did. I could probably do OK at teaching there. They also have a middle school where the boys and girls are separated; I really wouldn’t mind giving that a try, to see how much good it does to cut out the flirting.

Or I probably could stay where I am. I’m sure today’s observation was much better than the first one, and improvement is a good thing. I know I still have to pull the kids into line a bit more…unfortunately that’s something no one seems to be able to explain how to do. The thing is, I know I used to know that–I hate some of what college did to me.

Anyway, the district I teach in uses these “curriculum maps” that supposedly break the standards down throughout the year. If I had it to do over I’d ignore the curriculum map and start with the first chapter of the textbook and see what standard each lesson met. It’s a little late to switch to that now. Next year, if I’m still there.

Partly, it depends on whether I’m going to stay in this area. If I’m only going to be around here for another year or two, there’s no point in going through the bother of another job search. If I’m going to stick around in this area, I might as well switch fairly soon–next year or the year after–because, although there are plenty of good things to say about this district and even this school, upper-middle-class kids aren’t my calling; I just don’t speak the language of families in which twelve-year-olds have $200 cell phones. I know I’ve made the Rafe Esquith comparison before, about other things, but…Camelot. Not my world; I could do some good in the Jungle. (Read the book if you have no idea what I just said.) There are several options nearby.

I don’t know. It’s not decision time yet, and partly it’s hard because not only have I not thought through the effect of either on my career goals, I’m not really sure what those are any more. Definitely don’t want to go into the administration side of things–yuck (I mean I totally honor and respect those who do that so I don’t have to, but…politics and paperwork, do not want!). I think I could do something that focuses on curriculum, but I don’t want to leave the classroom; too many decisions are already made outside of where the rubber meets the road, and I don’t want to be part of that. So, I’m not sure. On one level I’ve got what I’ve been going for; on another, I have a hard time believing that this is the pinnacle of all success for me. I thought I’d “see what comes along” but that’s really not how I operate.

So, there’s the basic question: Other than (someday) pay off my student loans, what am I going to do with my life?

The positive aspects are mostly obvious…it’s math. It’d be fun. I could show my students what I’m doing now and then, point out some ways that what I’m doing uses what they’re doing. I’d be able to continue to further courses. This is the kind of course I would have taken as an undergrad if I hadn’t been trying to fit myself into WOU’s mold. And of course the intangible part: I really want it.

However, I’m already going to be retaking Tech for Teachers in spring, if I can find it. By the way, here’s the official blog announcement about that: I got stressed, I had too much going on…I messed up…I got behind, too far behind to fix it, and got a grade that I can’t count toward my degree. So, it’s a do-over if I want to graduate. Which I do. I want the degree, I want to not be a screwup, I want to get that $4000 pay column bump next year. Teaching is my top priority, Tech for Teachers would be second. Throwing another class on top of that might be more than I can handle, especially this soon after getting out of full-time school.

Wishful thinking says I can handle it. Self-doubt says wait. I don’t know which one is telling me to do something that’s reasonable for the actual real situation. I have a suspicion that getting stuck in acting out of fear is not in particular any better than screwing up again. I think I might be able to handle it…

I’ve been thinking it over for a whole day, a day in which I needed to be doing other things, and I’m still no closer to figuring it out.

Transcript to follow shortly.  Goodbye, MySiteSpace.  I got started with you guys on a free account and traded up when they went away, and I learned a lot here about how to make websites, but I won’t tolerate “service” that ignores a problem.

I’m now officially looking for a different host.  Feedback is welcome in comments (i.e. ad comments for hosting services will be considered on-topic, not spam).  Expect another update shortly.

This isn’t a decision I’m making lightly; I expect it to be a pain in the neck to get everything set up.  But their response time had been slipping for a while and this was the last straw.

But…eventually…

I haven’t any real interest in going into administration, and that’s the usual career advancement thing. Having the expertise-based influence to get positive changes made (i. e. when someone’s wrong about something in my area, I wave the magic piece of paper in their faces), though, and creating new information about what practices really are best, those sorts of things strike me as worthwhile. And I can see how going really in-depth on something and doing methodology and statistics would be interesting.

It’s also weird to think about not being in school, not having stuff to figure out and count down to about that. That might not be the greatest reason to jump into something, though, just kind of in order to not be not in school…hmm. I’ll have to think that over some more.

However, even with all the worthwhileness of it, I don’t know if I want it bad enough. It’d probably mean doing a research-based master’s first, since I just can’t see jumping straight into doctorate-level research from an MAT. Either one takes years; the combination…yikes. I wouldn’t have needing it to make me want it, and I don’t know if I want it enough.

One of the sayings that I’ve come up with is “If you want it so bad you’d rather chew your leg off than walk away, you can do anything.” This is what got me through the MAT as well as the last several terms of undergrad; it’s the long, philosophical version of “I’m just too darned stubborn.” I just don’t know for sure if a degree is something that I can want that bad, and I don’t know what the topic would be.

Maybe once I figure out a possible topic I just might want it bad enough. But for now, I’m out of school for a while, or I will be in a few weeks. Craaaaaaaaaaazy.