I Finally Figured it Out

I knew that teaching at Alpine Elementary would pose different challenges than at Cherry Hill, but the ways that I thought I would be challenged haven't come to fruition, at least yet. I thought that I would struggle with bratty kids, but more specifically bratty parents. So far, I have only seen great things from both parents and students. I couldn't be more thrilled.

But, I have found out what specifically will be my challenge this year, and it wasn't necessarily what I expected. I knew from the day that I met them that my team would be a tad hard to work with. Not because they aren't great people, but because they didn't like to do anything together, and I noticed that first off. It has been very hard going to collaboration with them (every Monday is early-out so we have about an hour to an hour and a half to talk and collaborate as a team) because they don't want to talk about anything regarding students. On Monday, they knew that the principal was going to come in and check on us, so they literally said, "Let's not talk until she gets here so we have something to say!" How hard is it to talk about what we can be doing better as teachers, or what we've done that's worked really well for us? Apparently, pretty hard.

So, I have figured out why this is so hard for teachers here in Alpine. It's because no matter what they do, their students will pass end-of-year testing. No matter what they do, Alpine will probably be the best school in the district when it comes to scores. So they don't need to worry about what they can be doing better. They can just do what they've always done and get on with it. Collaboration to them is a waste of time because they haven't seen a need for it. I, on the other hand, understand how wonderful it is to have a team that talks with one another and bounces ideas off each other and continually tries to be better than they already are. And that's because I taught at a school where we did have to worry about how many of our students would pass. We had to constantly think about how we were teaching things because we wanted to try and help our kids progress from one year to another.

I think I like the other mindset a bit more. As hard as it was to teach at a school with so many low kids, it challenged me, which I liked. It was my first year, yes, but I tried everything I could to make each lesson of each subject meaningful so that my students would learn something. I already feel like I'm slacking a bit and adopting the mindset of "I don't have to do anything special and these kids will do just fine in life." That scares me a bit.

Hopefully, I can keep up my motivation to be the best teacher I can be regardless of how my team feels.