RE: Interviewing For the Job: Survival In the World of Inner-City Teaching Part 2.1
Great article. I used to teach, just in regular schools in nice neighborhoods, and I don't think I'd ever want to do it again. Not only do you have to get up too early to be a teacher (and I'm decidedly NOT a morning person), but dealing with parents, controlling a whole class of kids of varying energy levels and cooperation levels, dealing with school admin, and county and state bureaucracy....it's too much of a hassle for too little pay. I enjoyed some of it, and had some great students and fellow teachers who I'm friends with to this day, 15 years later. But, teaching in an inner city school....man, that takes a special person. I was too timid to go to those schools even when I was subbing. Kudos to you, and hats off. You are made of strong stock to deal with that kind of environment.
I have always said the problem with teaching are the "paid professionals." Not the teachers or building administrators, all of the suits that interfere. Not a fan. I am not a morning type either but my students knew that and were very well behaved in the morning. Kids and parents were never a problem for me. I think inner-city teaching may be easier, I rarely had to deal with parents who blamed me when Johnny got a bad grade.
Thank you very much for your feedback.
Oh yeah, that was the worst part of dealing with parents in the schools where I taught. If a kid got a bad grade, the parent was always asking questions like, "Why didn't you tell me he was having trouble in this class?," or "Why didn't you tell me he wasn't turning in his homework?"
The thing was, I DID tell them those things, at parent/teacher conferences (man, I hated those), in notes I sent home that they were supposed to sign, and even in the graded papers themselves, where parents could clearly see their child wasn't making good grades. It seems what they wanted me to do was tell them EVERY time the kid made less than a C on an assignment or didn't turn something in, not just let them know a few times a grading period that there was an issue. With everything else a teacher has to do, there's just not time to handhold the parents, too.
I have heard those stories from my peers that taught in more affluent schools. So I may have had more discipline issues, but parents were usually on my side.
Having the parents on board would have made a huge difference for me. They just made a challenging job even harder, and took away a lot of the enjoyment I might have otherwise gotten from it. When the parents stayed out of things, which they hardly ever did, I had a lot more fun teaching. In a way, I guess, you're lucky.
I think that is very true. Once you get past year three things get much easier. The problem that time starts over for even experienced teachers. So 20 year vets are at year 1 when they walk into an inner-city classroom for the first time.