Current mood:	hopeful
Current music:	I-tunes shuffle of everything

The Adventures of a First-Year Teacher
Where have I been for the last month? Buried in the work of a first-year teacher! My first three weeks of teaching have gone well overall, but there is SO MUCH WORK TO DO!!! And I have small class sizes! So I'm overwhelmed, but no major complaints. In fact, I feel very blessed with the situation that I have. In compliance with the Baldrige model of cooperative management used at my Middle School, here is a Plus (Good things) -Delta (Things that could improve) list:

Plus:
1) Everyone, from the teachers to the administration to building services, is super nice and supportive. This has definitely made my first few weeks of teaching manageable. The school has a good, cooperative atmosphere.
2) I have, on the whole, small class sizes, which makes the variety of abilities pretty manageable.
3) I only have about ten students on my IEP caseload, which is a nice size for a first year case manager.
4) I have not yet had to give out a referral to the office or call security, though I have given out a couple of lunch detentions.
5) I have not yet received any complaints from parents, nor has the Special Education Resource Teacher. Apparently this is a good sign for the first three weeks of school.

Delta:
1) There is so much to do! I better get more efficient at all of this, because some nights I am at school until 8PM and I still don't finish everything that I plan to do. I want to plan ahead by several days, but I am constantly re-adjusting my lessons and discovering new challenges or students who can work ahead, so it is difficult to plan very far ahead, even if I had time. I think that all of this stuff gets easier as time goes by. I hope it does!
2) The main reason why the entire school did not make AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) last year was Special Ed Math. This is what I am teaching (though many of the special ed students are in general ed classes this year). This is stressful, as there is a lot of responsibility resting on me to raise standardized test scores. I suppose that I can just do my best and hope for the best when the dreaded Maryland State Assessments come around.
3) There is a lot of pressure to get through the entire curriculum. There is a lot of curriculum. I also need to do a lot of remediation, and the teachers last year did not get through the entire curiculum so there was some stuff that was never taught (though I haven't reached that part yet). I feel like if I teach one ineffective lesson (which I've pretty much already done) and I have to reteach something, I've already derailed the class and we'll never get caught back up.

I still think that I made the right decision to go into teaching, but I want to be a Master Teacher without having to be a first-year teacher!