The Job Search Part II

This is part two of a blog post about Jeff's job search and his new teaching job. See part one here.

   After subbing for the first three days of school, I had not received a sub job for a couple weeks.  I had settled into a routine, Erin would drop Nathan off at school in the morning, I'd sleep in and dink around until noon or shortly there after then I'd pick Nathan up and we'd hang out until Erin got home and I'd go work at Fred Meyer at night.  

   On just one of these days I happen to get a voicemail out of the blue in the middle of the morning.  The call was from Scott Parker the brand new principal of Fort Vancouver High School.  He had received my name from someone in HR at Vancouver Public Schools, the same district Erin works for and where I had my long-term sub position last year.  He had a possible job for me and wanted to know if I had time for an interview.  I happen to not work at Fred Meyer that night, and he wanted to meet me at the school at 5:30, there was a new program the school was starting and we would have the interview followed by a parent meeting at 6:00pm for this new program.  

   So the interview must have went ok, because after the parent meeting Scott offered me the job pending approval from HR.  It was a bit awkward being at a parent meeting for a program just starting that you potentially were going to be involved with, but not really knowing what was going on.  So, I did the best I could to answer any questions the parents had.  

   Turns out this was just the beginning of quite the roller coaster ride.  The job I was offered was a .6 FT equivalent position teaching in a credit recovery program that meets after school.  We currently have 35 juniors and seniors with plans to expand to 50-60 second semester.  We call it the Success Academy.  Our goal is have success where many of these students have not had success in the past.  All my students are credit deficient.  The program works much like a true standards based grading system should.  We only teach classes the students have already sat through and failed.  Because they have already sat through the classes we just work with them to prove proficiency.  Because of this they can earn more credits than in a traditional school setting.  

   Because this is a brand new program and because it didn't even start until a month had already past in the school year, we have had several growing pains.  But, we have a great team working for the students in the Success Academy.  I am there all three periods and am primarily responsible for the Social Studies portion of the curriculum.  We have a math teacher that teaches 7th period immediately after school, and we also have an English teacher who is there two of the three periods.  We have worked together in the attempt to team teach much of the SS/LA curriculum in order to combine subjects and make the most of our small amount of time.  We also have a fabulous Para-educator who helps us with just about everything.  

   Our structure has flexed and changed as we have gotten the program up and running.  You can imagine the challenges of a class with 35 students, most of whom are in the program because of bad choices, or terrible circumstances that have led them to be very far behind in their credits that this is the only hope they have to graduate on time.  In Social Studies alone I have students that need all or some combination of World Studies, WA St. History, and US History.  In English we have students who have failed up to all three freshman, sophomore and junior level English classes.  Oh and there are students who have not passed the HSPE (High School Proficiency Exam) and must take a class and collect evidence to prove they can graduate.  This does not include their Math or Science credits that they have to make up as well.  

   So as we have created this program we have found different and creative ways for students to learn the material, and show us that they are proficient in the state standards and have earned back their credits.  Luckily we also have access to a computer program called PLATO, which we use for Science and some Math in order for them to earn those credits back.  It took us a month just to figure things our and even now we are just beginning to get a real grasp on what we need to do to get these students through the program in order for them to graduate on time.  

   I have really enjoyed the challenge of it all.  Both from being able to create my own curriculum to being able to work with a team to really create something new that is having a real impact on students for the better, it has been a great experience.  With our population of students, many of whom are in the program due to behavior or attendance issues, as with any alternative education program there comes some additional challenges to deal with as well, but it has been great to be able to create a strong relationships with kids and to see many of them being successful where they hadn't been in the past.  

   The schedule also works great from a timing perspective.   Because it is an after school program I get to avoid arriving at school at the ungodly hour of 7:00am like most high school teachers.  (It still makes no sense to me why school starts so early, there is no way students are in the best frame of mind to learn at that time in the morning)  I get to awake around 7am, and hand out with Nathan for a couple hours before dropping him off at daycare anywhere between 9:30 and 10:30am.  I get to school with plenty of time before my first class, which starts, around 1:00pm.  I then have class until 5pm each day, (except on Fridays where there is no Success Academy) I then come home around 5:30 each day to a warm cooked meal from Erin, and have a couple more hours to spend with Nathan before he heads to bed.  

   Oh, that reminds me; shortly after I started in the success academy I was offered the opportunity to teach one Contemporary World Problems class.  This class is so much fun!  It is full of seniors, and I get to talk about current events.  It is AWESOME!  I try hard to attempt to get the students to think for themselves and for them to begin to develop a worldview about how the world works and why it works that way.  Sometimes just getting seniors to think about school for an hour is a challenge, so my goals are pretty high, but it is a ton of fun.  I am currently only guaranteed to teach it for first semester, but really hope I can teach it for the entire year.  

   To sum it all up, I am having a great time in my first full year teaching.  In some ways this job, has been a great fit for me.  It definitely is very good experience.  I get to learn all about teaching in an alternative program, with a very diverse population of students, I also get to work extensively on being able to individualize my lessons to the needs of each and every one of my students, and I get to teach every single Social Studies class offered at the High School level along with some English.  The good part is I have plenty of planning time to figure all this out.  I just hope I can do a good enough job and get enough students to graduate on time that they let me come back and do it all over again next year.  


You can check out my just completed school webpage here.