Time to Revive this Blog

I haven't posted in what seems forever. This last school year I got pregnant and had a baby just 2 months ago. My life has now been consumed by caring for an infant and not giving teaching a second thought. In September, I go back to work and will be teaching Kindergarten. I'm sad I'm leaving first grade but it will be a nice change. Maybe I should think about changing the name of this blog but who knows what grade I will be teaching in 2015 since I'm a SPED teacher and I can be bounced around in my school. ICT's depend on numbers and this upcoming year we have a lot of K special needs kids and two ICT classes. First grade only needs one ICT class so I was the lucky one to get bumped. I think it was because I was on maternity leave when reorganization happened and it was easier to move the teacher who wasn't in the building because she wasn't there to bitch lol. Oh well, I love my co-teacher for next year.

This past school year was extremely difficult for me. Between being pregnant and a new teacher evaluation system I was always on edge. Basically I'm observed 6 times during the year and my principal and assistant principal can walk in at any time and sit down for 20 min and observe my lesson. It's awful! One observation my principal didn't think was well planned and I was pretty much told that not so nicely. It was a Math lesson teaching addition strategies doubles plus one and doubles minus one. Google that if you don't know what it is. I've never taught a concept like this before and Go Math was brand new to me. I went to some PD's for it and was using concepts taught at those PD's and she didn't seem to agree with them because everyone else was doing the same thing except me. My reply to her was "Well they got the lesson by the end." Isn't that the result we want regardless how we teach it? She stated to me "They're six. Of course they'll get it!" I really didn't know what to say. That was the most ridiculous answer an administrator has ever given me. You can't even argue that. Needless to say she made me cry and feel like an incompetent educator. Ten years I've been teaching and NEVER had a bad observation. She had not one positive thing to say to me. But she didn't count it and observed me another time. Still, I will never forget that day and how she made me feel. I definitely have a different outlook of my school after that. But that's a different post for a different day. Are you being evaluated by Danielson's Rubric? How is it going? Any NYC DOE teachers out there dealing with it? I think we as teachers know our students better than anyone else academically. I have a very hard time when someone walks into my classroom and from one glimpse tells me I'm doing something ineffectively. Hoping for a better upcoming year.