Major Venting Ahead

Bitch Mode: On

I am SO pissed! It's my last week of student teaching and I've had enough. It's taking almost all the strength I have to not walk out of the school and never come back. I can deal with the issues here, but this is enough.

Today is the final day of TAKS testing. The seniors were herded into the cafeteria for a long morning of meetings, getting ready for graduation and hearing college reps speak about how wonderful their college is and why the students should go there. Because my teaching supervisor is a Senior Sponsor this year, I got stuck with watching the seniors in the cafeteria.

Normally, these kids are OK with me. They generally listen with an occasional moment of rebellion. They quickly get over it and we get along fine. But today was another story.

The school has a very strict rule - no cellphones, PDAs, etc during school hours. While the college reps were speaking, the Deaf group just sat at their tables and chatted away - completely ignoring the interpreters. They also played with their phones. Instead of taking them away, I gave them a warning. Put it away... and I won't take it if I don't see it again. I guess these kids were really bored (so was I), so they kept playing with their phones. After several times of telling individual students (one warning each) to put away their phones, I got fed up. I told them all.. if I see ONE more phone, I'm taking all of yours.

Of course, they all played with their phones again. They refused to give their phones to me, telling me that I wasn't their mother and their teacher, and I had no right to take their phones. Keep in mind - during this time in the cafeteria, I was alone with 20 students. My teaching supervisor had left me alone with them for at least 45 minutes - AGAIN. He has a nasty habit of leaving me alone with the students so he can roam the halls for people to annoy.

After struggling for a while, I walked out of the cafeteria. I found my supervisor and with a stern expression, I told him that he needed to go back to his students and handle them because I'm fed up. He just said "OK, go back over there. I'll be there soon." He shows up 15-20 minutes later and HE DID NOTHING! The students had their phones out. He just looked at them. He didn't say anything to them and he didn't do anything.

I realize that as a future teacher I need to get a handle on my discipline abilities. In elementary, I quickly got my students under control, I even won over the girl with emotional issues. I got along well with my high school students. I taught and they listened. However, they've been spoiled by their real teacher. He's all talk and no action. Whenever I tried to discipline them (or just teach), he would frequently step in and interrupt me.. when he's around. I feel that he undermines my status here at the school and presents a huge problem here.

Anyway, the students sat there and boldly started talking bad about me - in front of me and my supervising teacher. "She can't do nothing, she's not a teacher," is one example. You don't want to know what else they said. And my supervising teacher did - you guessed it - NOTHING.

In fact, he turned around and started flirting with a young interpreter. They chatted about Gallaudet and they both took turns talking about themselves, promoting themselves as an excellent teacher and excellent interpreter ("I learned all ASL all by myself! I never took ITP courses, I became very skilled because I have excellent deaf friends." mock giggle). GAG!

I was fuming inside. I pulled the assistant principal aside and told her about my situation with the kids, their disrespecting me and using the phones. She told me to go to her office later and to write them all up. I'm going to do exactly that. You can be damn well sure of it.

On top of all this - my supervising teacher told me this morning that I wouldn't be able to teach my lessons. On Friday, I approached him and told him I came up with an idea on how to present reading materials to the student and that I wanted to do that this week. He said "Oh, sure!" Today, he said "Well, we need let them go to the computer lab and do online activities. It's been crazy with the TAKS testing so this week will just be easy, OK?" I'm thinking - the past FIVE WEEKS has been easy on his students! The seniors did absolutely nothing all week last week except watch movies. And we need to take it easy because of TAKS?

I had started to become excited about potentially teaching a new idea I came up with. I wanted to test it out on my students and see if it really improved their understanding of their vocabulary words. Guess it won't happen.

4 more days. Will I make it?

Bitch Mode: Off