For the very first time since I started teaching my population of students (those with significant cognitive disabilities) I’m seriously considering leaving my position and looking into something else at the job fair this June. I love my kids and I love what I do every day. I love my teaching assistant and the teacher that I share a room with. I love to be greeted with hugs when I arrive at school on Monday mornings and I love celebrating with them when they achieve something that they’ve worked hard to learn.

I’m very sad about this but I feel like I’m being torn because my love for those kids is being overshadowed by my disdain from the Alternate Assessment Datafolios that I’m required to submit to the state every year. I know that every job has pros and cons but that’s just it… the scales have tipped so far this year that my hatred of the project that I’m mandated to do far outweighs my love of the job. I fear that the stress of it all is permeating every aspect of my life and the stress surely can’t be good for my health and well being. (Only 2 teachers in my district are required to do them and the number of hours that I spend working on it is completely unrealistic for anyone. Not only am I required to dream up 36-48 distinct activities to match goals, but collect data on over 100 others, enter data on a website that continually crashes for me, and have the students actually perform those activities … All in addition to the typical things that we just do each and every day as part of our curriculum.)

Of course, there may not even be anything available of interest to me at the job fair but to think that I’m seriously considering it is just unbelievable. It’s so sad that I feel that I’m almost being forced out of my career of choice because of something beyond my control. (The completed datafolios are due May 8th and as of now, I’m not even close to being done… and I mean not even close…. so, I’ve got every free period, school night, weekend and April vacation earmarked to work on them. Forget about reading, getting enough exercise or sleep, enjoying nature and putting out any web content. My life will begin again on 05/09/08.)

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kjcardoza on March 28th, 2008 | File Under Ramblings, teaching | -