Last week marks the first year that school started without me.
As last year progressed, I realized that teaching was not something I would stay in forever and that instead I wanted to go to law school. At the time I had expected to teach another year since I missed the deadline to apply for fall 2009 law school. But things changed in July when my husband was offered a job to work with the federal government in the area where we are both from (he has always had a strong desire to return closer to home and it has always been his dream to work with the government). So needless to say we could not pass up this offer even though it meant another move and me leaving my position.
Unfortunately with the state of the economy, jobs are very hard to come by. There were not many Spanish teacher openings and I did not even get an interview for the few I applied for. Additionally, my focus has been more towards the direction of a law career and so I have been also looking at legal assistant/paralegal positions as well.
This may seem like a sudden change because of all the enthusiasm I put into the last year but really it has been a thought in the back of my head for a long time and last year was really a chance for me to see if my frustrations were specific to my previous school or if they applied to a new school (last year was my first year at a VERY different school than the one I taught at the three years before).
My biggest frustrations were with the lack of learning that occurs. It always felt like a battle trying to keep expectations high while colleagues had very low expectations, parents only wanted their kids to have good grades (regardless if they learned anything), and administrators expected us to appease the parents. At my last school you add in the fact that I was in competition with all the elective teachers since the school was so small. And kids choose based on how fun the class is and not whether the class will help them in the future.
And that is not to say all kids don't want to learn and that all parents only care about grades. I did have the time of my life with my small Spanish I class this past year. But it's those kids and those parents who aren't focused on learning and being successful in the future who speak the loudest, convince the adminstration the best, and in the end all but dictate what goes on in the classroom.
Well, this will likely be my last post. Good luck to all of you! And if you would like to continue to follow my journey, I have started a blog entitled "Changing careers - Educator to Attorney".
