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Woohoo! I'm famous and popular...online!! Just kidding!!

I did the google-your-name thing and my work website comes up as the #23rd entry! Woohoo! (My students access my website a lot, so I was wondering just how popular it was...yes, I am a dork)

Right after college, I joined the Teach For America movement in Los Angeles and during those two years, worked as a science teacher at a school in East Los Angeles. Then I got a great opportunity to help start a middle school in downtown Los Angeles as a science/math middle school teacher and the science coordinator at the school. After two years there, I got married and started working at a fairly well-known charter high school down here in SD county (which, with just some careful observation, you can easily find out its name if you so desire). Needless to say, I've accrued some teaching experience throughout the years in different areas and at schools with fairly different views on education.

Somehow, (yes it surprises me every year when I think about it), I'm still in the teaching profession. And I think I've stuck with it because I'm still searching for that perfect classroom and perfect school. I've taught at a very traditional middle school in East LA, then a let's-try-to-shake-up-public-education type school (but was still plagued with many typical public school problems) and now, I'm at a fairly progressive charter school that believes that project-based learning is the way to teach students.

I think I become jaded as the years of teaching go by. I thought this school that I'm at is the wave of the future in education, but I'm not quite sure it's the model that American education should adopt. I'm still not convinced that it's ok to not teach traditional topics in math, science or humanities because students won't use them in the future. Aren't we cheating them out of the one chance they have to learn geometric proofs or balancing chemical equations? Does everything really have to relate to the real-world or be useful in their future lives? Can't we just teach for the sake of learning? Is it okay that there are gaps in a student's education because they spent so long learning one narrow part of a subject, but missed out on everything else?

I know that nothing's perfect, especially when it comes to things like government initiatives and programs and institutions that are meant to serve the broad American public. But because I'm idealistic (and naive I suppose), I still believe that somewhere out there, in America, there is a public school that's not so dysfunctional. A school that engages all students in learning AND adequately prepares them for college and/or the working world. Or maybe not.

Maybe it's time for me to leave the classroom and explore other options in the educational field. I might try my hand at changing the American education system -- because, it's such a mess and so freakin' frustrating sometimes and someone needs to help fix it!

miniangel

I don't want to talk about this on FB because I don't need the whole world to know.

I am in need of a Metal Health day. And if one isn't familar with what that is, it's essentially a 1 day vacation, away from all the things that are stressing you out.

My school, work, family and personal life is beyond my control at the moment. But I just need to get through the next three weeks and this semester will end and hopefully I can work at resolving other things.

Two things are really bugging me at the moment. One is at work. I took measures today to hopefully resolve some of the pressure that have been handed to me because I am one of the oldest people in my department and the one with logic, reason, and objective oh and professionalism. So it has been put on my shoulder to deal with something that has gotten out of hand. But it is regarding a certain person. Because I am not HR personel nor upper management I am not allowed to deal with it on my own otherise it'd get much messier if I don't handle it properly. Instead I had to properly present the issue to upper management. I could literally get this person fired/canned whatever you wish to refer to it as. But I am not that malicious so I still held a lot of things back. If I say certain things, but the reprucssions may affect more than one person.

The other is the realization that I didn't make any impact on someone I thought I had brought change to. Or at least I feel like I am left with that impression ... It's no one's fault but my own. I just wish I had never been so foolish. I am contemplating on whether or not I regret caring about that person. It scares me that I even think that way. But I think I'm just mad and I want someone to lash out at.

At this point in time I just want to survive this semester and hope that I can recover my emotional and mental well being come Winter break. Music seems to be the only thing keeping me from the brink of insanity.