Required Blog: Success Story

In this post, I am required to post a success story...  At this point, there aren't many.  It feels as if I am babysitting for 6 hours a day rather than actually teaching, but it's not like I would be any more effective as a teacher if these kids could behave themselves any better or if they would even care to begin with.  That is the topic of a completely different post altogether. 

I can say although, that in terms of success, I have influenced and encouraged many of my students, the bright, well-behaved ones, to apply and become qualified for APAC, Jackson's sad equivalent of advanced placement classes.  Basically, it is the advanced classes where they remove all of the class clowns and weed out the inclusion students, and allow these APAC students to have an actual, challenging secondary education that will partially prepare them for college, or at least some form of higher education if they so choose.

I have written almost 5 recs for some of my students and have influenced and encouraged, as I stated earlier, around 8 more.  I have some really bright students, and unfortunately, I feel that they are receiving a disservice for being in these "regular" classes, when they could be doing so much more.  Unfortunately, some of the "APAC" teachers are no better than I am at teaching.  Therefore, half of the problem is me.  I cannot possibly keep up with my bright students when I have to accommodate my inclusion students, work one on one with several others, and deal with ridiculous discipline problems for 75% of my classroom time. 

In short, school down here is a joke.  I'm a zoo-keeper, not a teacher.  I'm a baby-sitter not an educator.  I'm simply a time filler.

For example, this week, I wrote up a teacher's daughter.  My third write-up in total, for cussing, and then for cussing explicitly at me.  This girl in my class was getting into it with another student, and I'm pretty sure I heard her cursing.  SO, I gave her her warning.  She talked back.  I gave her a check which means a writing assignment.  She looked directly at me and said, "I don't give a f*ck."

Marinate on that for a little while.  A teacher's daughter...

So, in short, I'm still waiting on the biggest reward.  Hopefully May will get here soon, because that will be the biggest success:  Making it an entire year as a teacher in a Jackson Public School...