Being a "Resident Educator"

Part of Ohio's new guidelines for getting your 5-year teaching license is for new teachers to go through something called the "Ohio Resident Educator Program." The program is 4 years long, but it's currently only in it's second year, because last year is when this program began. Being in my second year of teaching, I am now in the second year of this program. Once a month, all of the second year "REs" meet with their mentors to discuss things like the "Standards of the Teaching Profession," best practices, the Common Core, and other such education topics. We also have to do various tasks such as setting goals and evaluating our progress (with evidence) and creating and evaluating lessons (don't forget the evidence) and other looking at trends of student data.

But now I'm going to rant about it, so if you don't like that, maybe it's time to stop reading, but scroll down to see the picture at the end if you really want to understand my frustration!

I teach math at the high school level. These meetings contain elementary, middle school, and high school teachers. We all teach different subjects and different levels, but we're trying to have meaningful discussions, which usually goes relatively well. But then we get into discussions of things that are coming and how much work we're going to need to do in the future as OTES comes our way (that's Ohio Teacher Evaluation System for all you non-education folks) and we talk a lot about collaboration. But you see, we're not very good at collaborating at the high school level. And a lot of this stuff that's going to happen will need to be done together. So eventually it will probably get better but as of right now, it's just not all going to happen.

But here's the really crazy part... as much as I hate these meetings, if it weren't for them, I'd have no idea what I need to be preparing myself for because it isn't really discussed much at the high school. Some people are going to be in for a rude awaking in the next year or so. Some things are really going to have to change. And we really need new textbooks. They would be an excellent resource in making this whole process much easier.

But I can't force people to change. And I can't magically come up with thousands of dollars for new books.

So I go to these meetings once a month, I get really annoyed and stressed out and want to go home and cry at the end, and then I go back to work and it's like it never happened. What's wrong with this picture?

I hate being the only high school RE in my district. :(

Anyone else dealing with these things as they progress through the Resident Educator program?

Oh, and one last thing... What exactly are we working toward? Well, it's some kind of long, complicated, detailed assessment at the end, but no one knows for sure. Ohio hasn't released any "year 3" information yet! UGH!!!!

Friday Night

So, I was back to school Wednesday. Terrible idea, going back on the 2nd. Especially when your birthday is New Year's Eve and you have 15 people over and stay up until 4 am...

But anyway, living in a small town, weekends can be boring! So my roommate and I left our small town for a slightly larger town and spent the evening a Books-A-Million and the accompanying coffee shop. I got a great book about math and a watered down apple cider. Unfortunately, they closed at 10. The joys of small town life. So we went to Starbucks! Unfortunately, we had just had bad drinks so we didn't really want another. But we've got overpriced pastries! So in the end it wasn't all bad. Books and blogging. Good night. I also colored a picture and wrote a note on the back to send to my friend.

Want to know more about our coffee shop adventure? Check out dorothylynn.wordpress.com!