A short but long-ish recap of the last 5 years:
Hey, it’s been a while, but I’m back! It’s been close to 5 years since I started this blog, chronicling my misadventures in the exciting world of substitute teaching. My children were in kindergarten and second grade. I was juggling babies, married life, school, several jobs with no set schedule, and the resulting anxiety. In my last post, you could feel the weight of the uncertainty mixed with a light veil of depression. My first long-term sub position had ended (the last 3 months of the year, 6th grade English) and I was back to being ocean trash… a piece of micro plastic in a vast sea, swooshed around by the currents, waiting for a turtle to swallow me up forever.
-The job led to an interview that did not lead to a job. I gained a number of contacts (who would later become my daughters’ teachers and principal) and a lot of experience.
-Substitute teaching continued to fill me with existential dread and crippling anxiety every day for months on end. It wasn’t the jobs, they were generally fine. I worked everything from special ed to kindergarten to drivers ed to music to 5th grade math to gym to Spanish 2 to graphic arts. I basically couldn’t live with the system calling me at 5:00 and going to a place I’ve never been, meet people I’ve never met, work with kids I’ve never seen, and having about 20 minutes to look at a plan, if they had one, and figure out how I was going to teach it and/or get through a day. I kept doing it (sparingly) because I wanted my own classroom and I wanted to teach.
-At the end of the next year, I was called for another long term job at my former Catholic elementary school (the last 3 months of the year, again! 3rd grade classroom). The job led to an interview that did not lead to a job. I gained a number of contacts (who were at one time my own teachers as well as fellow classmates) and a lot of experience.
-At the end of another summer in retail, 2 weeks before the first day of school, I was asked by a teacher friend if I’d like to take on a long term sub to start the year at her school. It was my “dream job”– high school art. This school’s art department (the largest in the state!) had one of their teachers move to another school at the last minute. I dove right in. I was given 7 sections of Art 1 with freshmen. I didn’t know at the time that this was kind of a horrible nightmare of a schedule, so I took it in stride all the same. The head of the department complemented my teaching, which boosted my confidence as I prepared to interview to take on the position permanently
-Long story short, I am now right in the middle of my 4th year of teaching in my own art classroom. I’ve taught 9th-12th grade, all inclusion classes, Art 1, Art 1 for graphics (a pre req to the computer graphics course), Art 2, Art 3, and Developmental Guidance (life lessons for freshmen). I’ve participated in teacher work stoppages (kind of like a strike), a strike, protests at school and at the state capitol, teacher talent shows, spirit weeks, teacher art shows, and the daily grind.
-Statistics show that many educators leave the profession within their first 5 years. So far, I’m sticking it out, although I believe that’s one of the many reasons I didn’t start my career until my 30’s. I’m ok with change, but it’s also so easy to stay complacent.
-See new posts for why I decided to start blogging again and my goals for upcoming years! 🙂
quirks in the classroom 