What??!!

Okay...so THIS is how different my job is this year...

EVERY year, since I started working at my school EIGHT years ago, I have meticulously counted down the days until the end of the school year, after returning from spring break. It's been my ritual to write the countdown in my lesson plan book with a big "1", circled, and followed by lots of exclamation points on that final day with students. As the day drew nearer, my level of joy increased exponentially. The countdown helped me get through the year.

I was sitting in the teacher's lunch room on Thursday, and someone made the comment that there were only 41 school days left until summer break. I ALMOST dropped my sandwich...I hadn't even THOUGHT about the countdown at all...and spring break was in early March!!

I was COMPLETELY flabbergasted! Seriously, the "countdown" was ALL that kept me going UNTIL THIS YEAR.

Several things could explain this...

number 1...I switched from the spiral bound lesson plan book to the calendar in Outlook on my computer, and don't have the paper lesson plans in front of me anymore on which I wrote that countdown, (and which came in WAY handy last week when I had the flu, and needed to figure out what I needed to reschedule when I called in for a sub for the next day. How AWESOME to bring up my calendar from home and switch over to my e-mail to send notes to the teachers I needed to reschedule!),

number 2...I've been so busy redesigning my media lessons, getting the building ready for our IB authorization visit in May as part of the WOW group, prepping for the Microsoft Publisher Workshop Kris and I are teaching this week, and all of the other stuff that I've got going on right now that I haven't had time to think about the "countdown",

number 3, and the one that I think is the actual reason...I REALLY, REALLY LIKE MY JOB, NOW THAT THE JOB DESCRIPTION HAS CHANGED AND IT'S THE JOB I ACTUALLY TRAINED AND WANTED TO DO WHEN I WAS HIRED IN 2000!!!

It's been crazy, and awesome, and exhausting, and wonderful, and a TON of work, but SO worth it. I haven't felt "empowered" in my job for eight years...which has been difficult. When I lived in Fairfield, and was doing the whole "children's librarian" thing at the public library, it was SO rewarding, and SO fun, and I really felt like I was making a difference "literacy-wise" with those toddlers, preschoolers, and elementary age students. It was amazingly rewarding.

When I interviewed for my current position, having just completed grad school, and having just had two years of "you need to teach collaboratively, and be a resource to be used by the teachers " methodology, I spent most of MY portion of the time talking about collaborative teaching, and my philosophy of why it was a good thing. (I say "my portion" because I was interviewed with another candidate, by a team of about TEN staff members...I'd never gone through that type of interview before, and, after a few rounds of questions, learned that it was better to let the "other guy" rush in and answer the question, then follow up on what he said and IMPROVE his answer...except for a couple of the questions that I took the lead on...since I knew I'd have a better answer).

I asked SEVERAL TIMES if there were opportunities to collaborate with the grade level classrooms. I was assured that there were TONS of opportunities, and then, after accepting the position, found out that my first job would be to define collaboration...their idea of what it was, and my idea were a little different.

Collaboration is NOT talking in the halls between classes...it is NOT sharing ideas in the lunchroom with no "co-teaching" opportunity to make it work, it is NOT working on "lesson ideas" after school with a colleague. These are CERTAINLY "elements" of collaboration, but I needed to get the whole "co-writing/teaching/assessing" concept across. I was told, when I accepted the position, that this was a possibility, but that I'd have to do things as they'd been done (seemingly since the dark ages!) until the opportunity arose to make the desired changes.

When I realized that I would be a prep provider, along with art, p.e., and music...and would basically be "babysitting" kindergarten through 6th grade students so that their teachers could have that mandatory one hour of "non-student contact time", and would be teaching outdated, boring library skills, in isolation...NOT attached to anything they were actually learning in the classroom, for GOD KNOWS how long, my "job worth" plummeted. I became the person who just showed up for work, taught what I was required to teach, and then went home...which was SO not what I was used to feeling. I was depressed, I was discouraged, and I SERIOUSLY thought I'd made one of the biggest mistakes OF MY LIFE by moving here and accepting this position!

Okay...so this is me, so OF COURSE, I tried to add some fun, and zing to the lessons, and rewrote a bunch of the stuff that was left for me to make it more interesting, but I was STILL faced with the fact that I was a glorified babysitter, and that the lessons were still being taught "in isolation" and weren't linked to anything in the classroom curriculum at ANY of the grade levels. Library prep was so "important", in fact, that I didn't even give grades for what was done in "library class" (not that I'm complaining about not having to give grades to 700 students (!), but how worthless is a position when you aren't even assessing students on what they learn when they're with you!?).

Luckily, our principal was very open to discussing my "vision" for the position, and how collaborative it could really be. With a combination of his openness...and willingness to change my job description, my "broken record" discussions with him about what I wanted to job to be, and the implementation of International Baccaulearate (see website for a description of what it is...www.ibo.org), and LOTS AND LOTS OF TIME to make the changes, it has FINALLY become the job that I've always wanted it to be.

Wow...this was just going to be an "I forgot to start the countdown!" entry, but it got a little "bigger" than that! Enough for today...ramble, ramble, ramble...! I hope that YOU are doing something that you love!!! If not...stick with it, and maybe YOUR job will change to better suit what you want it to be...you may have to tell people what that is, and keep telling them, and work for it, and push for it to happen (as I did...for SEVEN years!), but DO it! Shouldn't ALL OF THAT TIME we "put in" at work be worthwhile and "make a difference"??!!

Here's hoping that YOU'VE forgotten your "countdown" too!