On Oct 13th I started my job.  Its been clown shoes all the way down in terms of them being ready for me or them even knowing what I was supposed to be doing.  It took me quite a bit to hunt down someone to tell me what time I was supposed to show up and then not knowing where I was going.  After a bit of jumping around, I got my schedule and so I'm not attached to a particular teacher/classroom nor a kid (although there is one kid who shows up a lot in my schedule so I guess he's "My Kid").

Its been kinda stressful.  

I remind myself that I'm where its most needed so the whole school isn't full of illiterate firestarters, but it feels like it.  I'm also in a school with a mostly Hispanic student body and English is not the most spoken language in the building.  A lot of teachers are bilingual - two of the teachers I work with are from Mexico and Puerto Rico, respectively.  I'm in a serious disabled classroom at the start of the day and since English is my first (and only) language, I read the English sentences with them and they repeat it back.  Some of these kids are never going to be independent and it breaks my heart.  One of the girls I work with in that class then ends up in my second period Algebra class and I wonder at it - how does she go from a class where they're still learning how to hold a pencil and write and learn how to fold towels to they can have "life skills" then show up in regular Algebra?  I think another one of the girls ends up in a mainstream Science class.  I haven't been given a single IEP or dossier on any of these kids and I don't know that it's cool of me to say to another para "WHat's her deal?"

Which I can't really with the paras in my first period class - one of them has about as much English as I do Spanish, so we can barely talk to one another, and I'm not sure the other one is the type to talk, if I had time in our mutual schedules to get her alone.  Which I do not.

I know that this school is a Tier One school - which is a school that has all that struggle bus underperforming thing going on - and the district as a whole isn't the best - but man - three days to take an Algebra test?  And there are only six questions?  And you can use your study guide?  How are these kids not at least getting Cs?  So much open book/open note tests and still so many of these kids are failing.

But its the behavioral ones that are the most infuriating.  Again - weirdly - no one says Mr X or Mrs Y.  They just yell out "Teacher!  Teacher!"  like no one ever taught that the way you get another adult's attention is to call out their fucking name with a "Could you please help me?"  And they don't stay in their seat and they swear and they talk over the teacher and there's no fear.  No punishment that matters.  They don't care about stickers or points or detention or calling their parents.  The science teacher said something to me that I found painfully insightful - "The kids don't care because a lot of these kids have problems in their lives that aren't going to be solved by a gold star or a piece of candy.  This is a school, not a bank."

Which is entirely fair and accurate.

I suppose I'll stick out the year and see how I feel and if they want me back.  I'm betting that yes, they'll want me back - unless I completely lose my shit on the behavioral problems and punch a kid in the face that clearly is over due for one.  I'd have to stay 14 years until I could draw full pension.  Right now, that seems like a lot of fucking years.