Don't Know What To Say...

Last week I got called down to the principal's office.

For the record, let me tell you that in all of my jobs, I've always been a stellar worker! I've always had great reviews and I've never gotten in trouble for anything. So I wasn't that worried when I got called to the principal's office... even though he told me that he'd invited my union representative.

When I got there, I made friendly small-talk with the principal while we waited for the union rep.
As soon as the union rep got there, the principal wasted no time in telling me, "We've decided not to renew your contract for next year."

I was surprised, because my review isn't even until the middle or end of May, and that is when they usually tell you about their decisions whether to renew or not renew your contract. This was somehow different. They had all gotten together in a special meeting to talk about not renewing my contract.

I know this makes me sound like a horrible teacher. I must have done something wrong, right? My union rep reassured me that this isn't true... especially after I asked if there were any specific reasons, and the principal sort of shrugged and said, "Oh, nothing specific."

You may remember when I began this blog, I explained that I was hired as a learning support teacher. I was supposed to teach academic skills to small groups of K-3 kids with ADHD and learning disabilities. I had set up a great classroom with lots of different multisensory opportunities for learning. I was also supposed to provide behavior support, but usually in a resource setting this is pretty mild and involves things like check ins, pep talks, and helping teachers create behavior support plans for individual kids. But the reality was, the kids who needed behavior support needed a lot more than Resource. They were tearing up classrooms and frightening the gen ed teachers, left and right! Whenever a kid started flipping out, I was called to the scene. If I was in the middle of teaching an academic group, my academic kids had to be sent back to their classes, and all groups would be cancelled until the flipping out kid had settled down. They were losing their minutes but nobody seemed to care. The only advise I was given was to stop making individualized, engaging lessons, and just put them all in workbooks. This way, any random person could step in and take over... it would just be a matter of flipping to the right page and reading the script. The idea made me gag.

Then in the middle of the year, we got a new kid who required a self-contained classroom. So the special ed director... I will call her Mrs. Meanie... declared that I would now be the self-contained behavior classroom teacher. All of my academic groups would be taken over by substitute teachers, often a different teacher each day. Anise, Ruddy and Montana were dumped into my room. From this, I had to somehow create some semblance of a classroom. In the mean time, my academic kids... many of whom also have some degree of social and emotional disabilities and really struggle with changes... were being taught by a different random sub every day. I hated to go into the other classroom where they'd been sent, because they would cry and beg me to come back. And I had to tell them, "I can't."

So that is what I dealt with. I still had to write full lesson plans for each of the academic kids every day, and case manage them, while also running the behavior classroom. The principal came in and observed a few times and complained that I wasn't posting "learning targets" on the board. When I explained that I wasn't really doing any teaching anymore... the kids just worked on work sent by individual gen ed teachers... he said, "Well, there should be academic lessons going on in every classroom." Except I had been told to just give them their folders of gen ed work. So...

Anyways, I've been canned. But I still have to stay until the end of the school year and act all cheerful around the principal and Mrs. Meanie.

Plus, today they had Skipper (the kindergartner with autism) in my class all day, because he was having behavior issues in his gen ed class and the teacher was fed up. What could possibly go wrong with putting an autistic kindergartner into a 3rd-5th behavior classroom?

It actually wasn't that bad. except that Skipper, being a little guy, needs a lot more of my individual attention than the others do. He is unable to sit and work independently. This means that the others balk because they feel like they're not getting attention (I only have an assistant for part of the day) and I get ZERO work done. Even less than usual. Believe me when I tell you, I have not had a lunch break or planning time since January.

But I'm fired because I'm doing an awful job. At this.

I'm terrified I won't get another job for next school year. This could be the end for Miss Butterfly. Stay tuned...