discernment

So I've applied for a job at a school that values its teachers very highly. 

I wonder what it would be like to work in a place like that?  I applied not sure if I would be OK with accepting an offer.  Of course I don't have an offer, but what would I do?  It depends.

To help me fill in the ledger, I looked back over the blog at what I've written about my school.  Brief flickering moments of joy shine among long, frustrating slogs.  That's the impression I have of the last two and a half years, interspersed with some true disasters -- the 2nd science fair that the students just didn't do, dealing with students who are not normally socialized, etc.

And I still feel like a square peg in a round hole, even more so when I look at the grades my students are earning in other classes, and I click through to see their assignments in the other classrooms.  I see that I have three times as many assignments/assessments - usually 3 or 4 a week.  How else can I hold them accountable?

The bottom line is the majority of my students don't care whether or not they pass science, because they can fail science and still get promoted at my school.  This policy is sub-optimal, as institutional support is lacking from the get-go, but I'll still go through the motions of printing out missing assignment reports and calling parents and all that.  But every time I do those things, I keep thinking, why am I bothering with this? No one cares about this except me.

This week, balancing chemical equations to a crop of eighth graders who can barely do fractions.  It's going to be interesting.

Oh: Thanksgiving was awesome.  I have photos and will get them up eventually.