This will be my 26th year of teaching, and I believe it will be my last because by the end of the year I will reach the rule of 80. I started the year saying that I will wait until December before I make my decision, but when I feel that neither the state, the district, nor the campus cares about my physical and mental health, or the physical and mental health of the students, I have to say that it is time to go.
I was supposed to read this to the school board on Oct. 5, but I was only given two minutes to speak. This is just more proof that the district does not care about its teachers or its students.
This year has been a roller coaster ride that will not stop, and I will not hesitate to say that I am not a fan of roller coasters. One of my planning periods was taken away and replaced with an accelerated learning instruction class. When I was given this class, I was not told what to do with these 30 — yes, 30 — 8th-grade students. I do not have a computer on wheels, so every day we have to find a computer lab to work in, and then ask another teacher to borrow laptops so that every student can work on the program.
I had the students for two weeks before I got training on the program they are supposed to use, but I still don’t know how to give them grades for this class.
On Sept. 17 we gave permission slips to the students, asking parents to give the school permission to put these kids in a small group of more than three. Thirty is not a small group.
The students who are placed into this program are only supposed to acquire 30 hours. We have been told that even if the students complete their 30 hours, their schedule will not change.
Parents originally were told that the students would not stay in this class. Do they know that it is for local credit only? I would think that allowing them to go back to their elective, which they were not supposed to lose according to House Bill 4545, would be motivation for these kids to complete their hours.
There is also confusion as to when we are to start counting the 30 hours. Do we start counting the hours when they actually started using the program that keeps track of their progress, or do we use a database that was sent to us in October? If we are to use the database, what happens to the hours the students had put in the last six weeks?
At this point we are documenting in triplicate: once for attendance, once for the program that keeps track of their progress and once for the database. This is unfair to the students. They are being cheated out of the time they already put in.
The final straw was that our teachers were told that if they volunteered to give up one of their planning periods, they would get paid $35 an hour. I asked if I would get paid the same even though I was forced to give up one of my periods. I was told that I would not get paid because the time is within the school work day, and the subject that I teach, sixth-grade world cultures, is not a tested subject. I find it highly ironic that the ALI class I am teaching is a math class even though I am certified as a history teacher. I am given an additional class for which I am not certified, but I am not eligible for the $35 an hour because I teach a non-tested subject.
What my principal basically told me was that my time is less valuable, I am less valuable than a teacher who is teaching a subject that is being tested. As a history teacher, I have been told this over and over again. Maybe not in so many words, but certainly in action.
My subject is not the only one that gets ignored often. Yet according to TEA we are required to teach the core curriculum/foundation classes.
Has the district informed high school parents that their children who passed the beginning of year test are sitting in a class they do not need and are only getting a local credit for?
We have been told by upper administration that they do not have enough teachers for virtual teaching. If they want more teachers, then how about returning that second planning period and giving all of us the same opportunity to earn that supplemental money?
More classes, more students, more demand on our time, less money, and little or no raise. No wonder this roller coaster is making me sick to my stomach!
Jennifer Ochoa, Brownsville
