Janae Says...

Sometime last school year, I had a teacher at my school cover the last half of my 4th period class. She commented on how well my students knew what to do. She was very impressed. Earlier this week, I received an email from that same teacher. She informed me that some first year teachers would be coming to our school to visit. They asked her to make some recommendations of teachers who had great procedures. She told me that she immediately thought of me because my class "could run itself," and asked if they could come observe me. I was flattered that she thought of me. I regretted to informed her that I had no students during the period that they'd be at our school. I told her the periods that I do teach in case they could observe one of those. On Thursday, during my 3B, in walked four teachers. Two of them were first-year teachers, one was their adviser, and I'm not sure who the fourth was. They sat in the seats that are against the wall as that is my smallest c...

You know, my life has been taken over by things that I basically have to do. I don’t like feeling like I’m not in control of how I spend my time. At work, as a teacher, my life is controlled in part by testing. What days do I have testing? What can I teach them to prepare for testing? What can I do before and after testing dates to keep things connected still? When will I start being evaluated based on my students’ test scores? I am controlled in how I plan lessons, what I write on my board, meetings I attend, and (pretty soon) how many copies I can make. I am controlled at my second job, which is as an independent SEO contractor/writer. My friend got me the job well over a year and a half ago. It has been an immense help when I have needed some extra cash. I loved it and loved being able to count on it. It was easy, not very time consuming, and reliable for some money. However, things have gotten more than frustrating lately. We writers have recently gotten 3-4 emails a day ...