Why I Am Here

My seven-year teaching itch has come a bit late. I find myself in an odd position; I've been seeing people who started with me (and after me) move steadily up the ranks, becoming Principals, Assistant Principals, ISs, RISs, DIZZES, FIZZES, and yet here I am, a classroom teacher and literacy coach (a position that I really think I hate). At the moment I have no desire to move up the ladder. In part, it's because I ONLY have 9 full years in the system, and I just have such issues with Baby Principals. Some of that may stem from my own issues with confidence and ambition and belief in myself, but some of it comes from my belief that a good supervisor works his or her way up through the ranks. The Leadership Academy, which takes people from anywhere and everywhere (as long as they are "smart") is cranking out principals like it's an assembly line process. The premise that someone can be a good school leader with minimal classroom experience troubles me. And I know of a few instances where this has been a complete and utter disaster.

Then again, I have worked with people who did work their way up through the system who are at best clueless and at worst nasty and coldhearted. Maybe I need to make judgments on a case-by-case basis.

I am finding that I need some personal academic rigor. I want to be more abreast of the issues that educators face. I want to be on top of research in my discipline and broaden my content knowledge. I want to use my writing skills to think more about things that are important to me. And of course, I want to be as good at teaching as possible. This blog will hopefully give me some new direction.

I guess, in a nutshell, I am bored. I need something that will help me feel more in tune with what I am doing. Writing has always been incredibly important to me and as much as I love teaching, I have wondered if I shortchanged myself by not trying to do something with my writing first. I think I felt that I didn’t know enough about anything (except cosmetics) to be able to write about it.

I am surrounded by complainers and they are dragging me down. The amount of negativity is truly staggering. And while it’s nothing new, I’ve gotten to a point where I have to learn work around it while staying unaffected by it. I really, really never want to buy into some of the beliefs I see. If I were a stronger person, maybe I would try to share more of my own input, but I think I would be wasting my breath. At the moment I am concentrating on trying to be as positive as I can, and when people say things that I disagree with, I’ve been trying to disagree respectfully, even though it would be so much more satisfying to say, “You know what? You’re an asshole.”