Failure

[Selkie]

I'm late to the game here (busy week) but I wanted to say that you are a wonderful teacher and person, Veronica. If you make an impact on one student, you're making a difference. It's a shame that some students take up 90% of your energy (I've found that as a manager---just one POS employee can suck you dry, but you have to still focus on not short changing the good ones).

Crankin - I have not read Harry Potter and I have no interest in doing so. Just not my bag (no offense to those who read and enjoy those books).

By the way, as a 7th grader, I discovered Jacqueline Susanne's books, but they were my "dirty secret." My parents, however, didn't let me or my sister date until we were 16 or even wear make up. I was a "good girl" in terms of my behavior when it came to boys --- I was raised to respect myself in that regard.

[Crankin]

I understand exactly what you mean about the conversations.
They won't let the kids go on a research vessel? Oy!!!!

I saw a thing on the news last night about the state of education and the budget crisis in CA. I think you are working under very horrible conditions. One of the things that helps you deal with horrible kids is the support of other adults. People like school counselors, psychologists, special ed teachers. It sounds like you don't have much of that.
You are doing the best you can in a very stressful situation. Don't beat yourself up over it.

[uforgot]

Support from special ed, school counselors and PSYCHOLOGISTS! hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

First of all, special ed is now politically incorrect. It's resource in our school. We don't have aides anymore, they're "paraprofessionals". Our resource teachers have their own set of problems and the paperwork they have to do...unbelievable. Who has time to support each other? The day is full and the only time I touch base with my co-workers is after school. As for psychologists, are there schools that have access to those? I'm curious now. We certainly don't, but we are small.

We are under-funded, under-staffed and making more cuts next year. When the bell rings and the door shuts, believe me, I'm on my own. No one wants to hear from me unless it's really serious.

BUT- guess what, I love my job and my students. Go figure.

[Crankin]

Well, I had access to all of those. I did not work in a rich district, either. Sure, MA has more acronyms than anywhere for all of those services! Here, it's special needs and we have various types of teachers, called various things. Our aides are called assistants or paraprofessionals. I think this started when the word "aides" had other connotations. I don't have an issue with that. When I moved here and was interviewing (I was still a spec. ed. teacher then), someone asked me what my "prototypes" were. I was like, huh? I figured out it just meant what was my caseload...
What I really meant by saying that having access to other adults like I mentioned above, is that the #1 thing that alleviates teacher stress and burnout is collaboration with other adults. I am not saying this as a pie in the sky academic. I taught for 31 years and I know this is true.
One thing that saved me is that I was a middle school teacher for most of those years. Middle school teachers work in teams. We eat together and have a team meeting time together to discuss issues and plan things. Yes, I was very lucky at my last school that this team time was in addition to my prep period. But even when our planning time was the same as our prep time, there was still a brief time we could talk. Elementary and high school teachers are extremely isolated. This leads to a culture of distrust in most places. I have worked in all 3 settings and the differences are quite amazing.
In my last school we shared our school psych. with the HS. But, we had 2 school counselors for 450 kids. Every team had a special ed. (inclusion) teacher and 1-2 assistants. One team was attached to the resource room, with more severely disabled kids. We also had a more separate program for PDD/ behavior disordered kids. A few of those came to my LA classes with a 1:1 assistant. Before that, I worked in a 1-5 school in a different district. We had our own school psych and 2 inclusion teachers, who each worked with 2 grades. Each grade had 2 assistants.
I think this just shows how much schools vary from place to place. I really feel for you all. Just having difficult kids is bad enough, but not having the support to deal with them is not fair.

[Veronica]

Our schools are tremendously underfunded.

We have no resources like that here. I am very lucky to work with two other great teachers at 5th grade. We don't have a common planning time other than our lunch. The three of us all have tough classes this year. Mine is acknolwledged as the worst of the bunch. Well that is until one of the others got a kid expelled from another school in the district. We're constantly perusing each others' test scores and sharing ideas. But I do see that lack of trust at other grade levels in my school. That's one reason why I stick it out at 5th grade.

Our kids only get to see a counselor if it is in their IEP. My resource kids aren't the ones who need the counselors.

Veronica

[salsabike]

Those resources vary not only state by state and district by district, but even school by school in my district (school psych here). The poorer elementary schools get at least some resources for pre-special ed interventions, like Title I math and reading specialists. The wealthier elementary schools have much less, weirdly. So your fate as a kid in my district depends to some degree on which school you go to. The wealthier elementary schools start pushing to have kids labeled disabled when they're, like, six months below grade level in reading. The poorer schools---I'm at one of those and I love the place---will do their best to give extra help to kids until it becomes clear it's not working and there might be a genuine, serious disability.

The fate of a kid should not depend on caprice like this. It drives me crazy to know that whether a kid is labeled disabled or not will change from school to school in my district. It shouldn't be that way.

My district also decided about a decade ago to have a full time counselor in every elementary school. They have breached that a couple of times, and I worry about what funding cuts will do to that now--but so far, I have the world's most wonderful counselor in my elementary school. I can't imagine the school without her.

[Flybye]

Salsa and Veronica, I can't imagine teaching some of the kids that the teachers in our district teach after I hear their stories. How do we expect kids to come to school ready to learn when they have been molested the night before or had a table thrown at them by a parent that morning? Or the girl that was abandoned by her mother and feels like no one wants her and is contemplating suicide. It is terrible, but I am concerned that the school Counselors will be taken out of the school picture if funding gets cut.
I admire you both for working with so much diversity in a classroom. It is a bigger endeavor than most would be willing to take on!