back track (or) post from 9.15.07

i thought i would just take a moment to update, yes at 6:35 am on a saturday morning, before i head out to philadelphia. i'm not going to lie..it's been a really rough week. and i think it's a combination of seeing teaching and the classroom as a great environment where things would go somewhat smoothly and being frustrated at how little 2nd graders can do...and also being so upset that nothing in my college career could ever prepare me for teaching. i don't think it can ever prepare anyone for their first year of teaching. i feel that people might feel really secure once they leave college with whatever prior experience working with children they have but it's really not the same. student teaching definitely is not the same because there's always that other person in the room, the real teacher, and you don't have to deal with anything related to the school. in my case, i feel like it's a little different, maybe...my school is/was one school of 12 in what is called the center city consortium...this consortium is under the archdiocese of washington...the consortium was created about 10 years ago to help about 8 schools stay open and it provided funding and support for those schools. about 5 years after the consortium began it's efforts with the original 8 schools, it added 8 more struggling schools. all catholic schools. now, the consortium was taking money from donors and some money from the archdiocese but having 16 schools to support is rather tough...so, 6 of those schools were taken out of the consortium recently and were either combined or became independent catholic schools. after that, the consortium found that they could still not support the remaining 12 schools. the consortium has been researching and conducting surveys of all 12 schools and has recently made some recommendations. the recommendations are that only 4 out of the 12 schools will stay open next year. essentially, one in each quadrant of DC. so, 8 schools have a couple options...1. they close. 2. they stay open as a charter school. or 3. the school's parish takes over the school and is required to support it on it's own (purely based on tuition and parishioner donation).

so....st. francis de sales, my school, was one "chosen for conversion to a charter school", is how it was put. this means a couple things since the decision has not been made yet. this means that st. francis can either close or stay open as a charter school or stay open as a catholic school but funded by the parish. our parish is not very strong, so the reality of that is still being worked out. our interim principal has decided that we will not close and we will not become a charter school. now let me explain that there are many charter schools around the area and still, parents and families chose to send their children to this catholic school.

there are so many layers to this...if my school was to become a charter school, it would also mean that only the students who LIVE IN DC would be able to attend...we have many students from Prince George's County in Maryland. the principal has decided that we are going to fight to stay open but i'm rather worried about that.

i'm also worried about my future as a volunteer. will i have a placement next year if 8 of the 12 schools our volunteers were placed in are closed? where will all the catholic school teachers go? will i have to move to another city? will i move back home? so many questions and we have no answers.



on top of the school drama, i've been having a hard time keeping up with my own schoolwork at trinity and i'm hoping to catch up this weekend. today we have some professional development in philadelphia so we're driving up there today and come back later this evening. and on top of all that...i've just been unable to hold my student's attention spans and have really been frustrated with how little we accomplish throughout the day...but next week, i think i'm going to try and figure out something that the students can do, more exciting and interesting.

alas...until next time..