Came to an end today.  I handed in my resignation letter Friday, and 
today was my last day teaching.  I already have another job lined up 
(less pay, but the bills will be paid).

It turned out that there are a lot of things that new teachers need to 
know that I didn't learn until after months on the job.

The frustrating part is that the principal who hired me knew that I was 
going to be fallen-off-the-turnip-wagon ignorant of these things.  I 
know this because I told him this during the job interview.  In one ear, 
out the other.

Oh well.

Regards,
John

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"John VanSickle" <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:47e80b82@news.povray.org...
> Came to an end today.  I handed in my resignation letter Friday, and
> today was my last day teaching.  I already have another job lined up
> (less pay, but the bills will be paid).

Good luck on future endeavours. What are you going to be doing now, and why
the move?

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Hey John, sorry to hear that.

   I don't know anything about school teaching apart from it's a hard 
profession to cope with.

    Good luck with your new job.

      ~Steve~

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On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:13:42 -0400, John VanSickle
<evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

>Came to an end today.  I handed in my resignation letter Friday, and 
>today was my last day teaching.

It sounds like you are well out of it, teaching is an under rated
profession now-a-days. I wish you well in your new jobs and as Gail
asked why? What straw broke the camel's back? 
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Ack.  Good luck with the new career - don't they require a teaching 
certificate to teach there?

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Ack.  Good luck with the new career - don't they require a teaching 
> certificate to teach there?

I'll answer all of the questions here.

Florida requires that teachers eventually be certified, but if one has a 
bachelor's degree, the state will grant a certificate of eligibility for 
the field in which the degree is held.  A public school can then hire 
that person as a teacher.

After that point, the teacher has to complete a bunch of courses (which 
essentially duplicate the training required for certification), at which 
point a professional certificate is granted.

I entered teaching under this system.  When I was being interviewed for 
the job, I told them, and they understood, that I had never taught in a 
school setting.  I also told them, and they clearly did not understand, 
that since I knew nothing about conducting a classroom, that they should 
make no assumptions about what I know, and that they should not assume 
that I would recognize that a problem even existed, let alone how to 
prevent or fix such problems.

Because I knew so little about managing a classroom, I made a number of 
missteps which caused the students to regard my classroom as a place 
where there were no rules.  In February I was told that I had about a 
month to get the students behaving according to expectations, or I would 
not be retained for the following year.  I had already asked if he had 
seen such a classroom situation, and if so, how it had been resolved, 
and he hadn't given me an answer.  I asked the same question again, and 
again he could give no answer, which is a strong indication that the 
problem, as far as this batch of students is concerned, is probably 
unsolvable.  After another two weeks of trying to get the little dears 
to simply be quiet while I was lecturing, I decided that keeping the job 
wasn't worth the effort, and started seeking work elsewhere.

Throughout all of this it didn't help matters that whenever a parent 
complained about what was going on in class, the principal did not even 
make a token effort to verify that the complaint had any factual basis, 
and even after receiving first-hand evidence that he cannot accept such 
accounts at face value, he continued to act on complaints as if they 
were wholly reliable.  He also exhibited a pattern of ignoring anything 
I said that didn't already agree with what he already thought.  This is 
a guy who once got on my case for talking about another teacher in my 
class, but people have been talking about me behind my back for six 
months, and if he's done anything about it, he sure hasn't told me what 
it was.

Right now I am working in a job in retail sales, and I will probably 
stay there for a while until I decide what I want to do next.

Regards,
John

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On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:18:34 -0400, John VanSickle
<evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

>
>Right now I am working in a job in retail sales, and I will probably 
>stay there for a while until I decide what I want to do next.

It sounds as if you are well out of it. Good luck in the rest of the
year.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Wow.  How old are the students?

I've done adult education classes myself, much easier to control (though 
there's always one or two who want to "show up" the teacher's knowledge 
and skills - that presents a unique challenge).

Sounds like a bad situation all around - glad to hear you got out of it.

Jim

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The phrase "salary schedule" comes to mind.  I suspect that some school 
districts keep their teaching budgets under control by hiring teachers 
that they know can be forced to resign after a year or two at the very 
bottom of the salary schedule, thus clearing the way to hire 
replacements at the very bottom of the salary schedule...

...but only, of course, for trivial, unimportant subjects like math or 
science.  Football coaches, now--that's a different story.

--Sherry Shaw


-- 
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[1rgb 1]}}finish{ambient 2}}//                                   TenMoons

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On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:22:52 -0600, Sherry Shaw wrote:

> The phrase "salary schedule" comes to mind.  I suspect that some school
> districts keep their teaching budgets under control by hiring teachers
> that they know can be forced to resign after a year or two at the very
> bottom of the salary schedule, thus clearing the way to hire
> replacements at the very bottom of the salary schedule...

I dunno, I think the teachers' unions would have a problem with that 
here...

Jim

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