Related Posts
Chief
What are common easy to pick up side hustles?
Bowl Leader
Hello, what dress clothes do you wear to work?
Additional Posts in Special Education Teachers
How do I effectively utilize my special ed ea?
Anonymous User
Countdown... beginning now
Bowl Leader
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
For me, the social politics have always felt stifling. My background included years of performing art. Years of dance, playing an instrument, choir, and drama. Particularly now vs when I began teaching in 1990, being creative and "thinking outside the box" so to speak is nearly impossible with inflexible curriculum, teaching to improve standardized test scores, and pacing guides that don't take into consideration the needs of individual students, particularly students with special needs. I went back into the classroom this year after my youngest moved out on her own. New school, all new people to work with, and as an ESE teacher in a push in program had only 20 minutes in each class. The number of students in each class needing intervention varied from one to 3 and 4 students. For many of my groups in a class, those 3 or 4 students sometimes each needed very different interventions. I was assigned a small classroom where I set up my office and should have been able to pull students from different classes but who's needs and academic levels were more similar. Unfortunately, the teacher I shared that classroom was extremely introverted and bothered by any noise other than from groups she pulled out and worked with. As a friendly person who enjoys conversing during down times, we just clashed. Not only that, but she wasn't able to just talk with me if there was anything I did that was bothering her. Since she'd taught there a few years and I was new, she went behind my back and gossiped to her friends about me, blowing things way out of proportion and twisting whatever she wanted to make her look like she was in the right and I was in the wrong. It's never easy being the new person and I'd really looked forward to making new friends and living my life now that my children were on their own. No support was provided, only criticism, and the year just went from bad to worse. Compounding the difficulty was that I was older now and only a handful of teachers there were my age. That didn't make any difference to me, but the younger teachers were like "mean girls", left us out of everything, and ridiculed our differences. Needless to say, I'll be moving on. It was deeply disappointing to be treated that way because of age differences and an unwillingness to get to know us with the same openness and not discriminate simply because of our age and in some cases racial identity, which by 2024 now we should be beyond.