In High School, a teacher told me my calling was teaching. She told me she'd never seen someone so natural in front of classmates talking and teaching a subject. She said I taught a lesson as well as she could. Finally, my decision was made - I want to teach preschool. I spent the next two years obtaining my Associate of Science in Early Childhood Education. I was truly happy with what I was doing. I even loved my job as a preschool teacher.
With persuasion, from my parents, I went on to obtain my Bachelors in Elementary Education. I told myself I just did this to make my parents happy and I had no intentions of using my teaching degree. That first fall after graduating, I applied to a few schools to make my parents happy, but I never received any calls. For the next year I continued to be a preschool teacher. I loved it! In this year, I married the love of my life and we truly got pregnant on our honeymoon! 9 months to the day of our wedding, I gave birth to our beautiful daughter Marley. Once our beautiful daughter was born I didn't want to leave her. I quit my job and took a part time administrative assistant position at an electric company.
It was that time of year that school started back up. I was bored at work one day and went online to the FWCS job postings page (don't tell my previous employer I wasn't working that hard LOL). Even though it was the first week of school, there were about 20-30 teaching positions posted. Sitting there bored I applied for about 5-6 positions - I figured why not, last year I did it with no responses, and I can say I did it to appease my parents. LOL
I continued on with my work day like it was no big deal. Literally, within 10 minutes I had a principal from an elementary call me to set up an interview for the next day. I was shocked, set up my interview, and just sat there. Not even kidding, 5 minutes later, another principal called to set up another interview. I had two interviews the following day. I was totally shocked! The next two hours of work took forever! I just wanted to go home and share my news with my husband, and call my best friend over to help me cram all my education information into my head. It had been a year since I had looked at any of my college stuff! What had I done?
I was a hot mess the next day. I kept telling myself that there was no way they would hire me, I wouldn't know enough, and it would be good practice for the future. The first principal intimidated me. He took me into his office and made me stare at his school data board of test scores for like 5 minutes - I'm being totally serious here. I ended up doing better than I thought. All my curriculum, classroom management, data based lesson planning, etc all came back to me like riding a bicycle. I felt really good when I left there. I had about 3 hours to kill in between interviews. Things just kept stewing in my mind. I was so bad, I went to our mall and bought myself a whole new outfit for the next interview (I'm not kidding).
Finally, it was time. I pull up to the school and I'm walking in - a lady shouts out to me to ask if I'm the one applying for the new fourth grade position. She sneaks me into the school library, and gives me all these tips for my interview. After, she sneaks me back out and has me go to the main door. LOL I fell in love with this principal. I could tell she really supported her staff and had a passion for her job. I left her interview on cloud 9.
As soon as I got home, I had to have a beer. I was such a mess, I didn't even pick our daughter up from child care since I still had 2 more hours. LOL My husband, who is my rock, sat and listened to me tell all about my day. I had been home maybe 20-30 minutes and my phone rings. It was that last principal calling to tell me that she loved me and would love for me to come work for her. WTF! OMG! I literally was talking to her calmly while jumping up and down. My husband and I both knew I was going to take the job, but we decided to let her wait an hour or so before I called back. In the meantime, the first principal called me wanting to hire me as well! I started the day saying it would be good practice and ended it would two wonderful opportunities for me to choose from. I actually made the first principal tell me why I should come work for him. I completely threw him off with that one. They were two different schools and I wanted to know his thoughts. He tried selling me on the fact he pushes his teachers hard, and he mainstreams spec. ed. students into the classroom. I told him about my other job offer. He said he understood why I would want to work there - it being an intercity school and Title I. He said it wasn't fair for him to take me from those kids, but the same applied for his school. He said it was up to me ultimately.
In the end, I chose the second interview. I chose the Title I school, in a not so great location, with students that really needed me. Then I had the longest two weeks of my life waiting on HR to complete all my paperwork. BUT finally it was my first day, 3 weeks into the school year. I walked into the school like a deer in head lights. I only brought a note book and pencil with me. Little did I know, I needed to bring everything to set up my classroom. OOPS!!!! My new principal rocked! She let me go home and get what I needed. I was completely overwhelmed. The room was massive and I didn't think I could fill it up. I had 3 days to set up my room. With the help of my husband, mom, and best friend I pretty much got my room done. I like to call it the red room of pain - it has red cabinets and red carpet!
It was a long first year, but I survived! I even learned my first year. I had a very tough class. It felt like the two other fourth grade rooms took kids they wanted split up and gave them to me. It was a very challenging class for a first year. I think if I can handle them I can handle any class! I had students yelling at me, threatening other students, throwing desks, hitting furniture, running out of the room, refusing to get out of their seat, etc, but I survived! Not only did I survive, but I saw them grow and mature as well as learn. I saw growth in my students data. I was still effective with them with all the chaos of behaviors in our room. I'm happy to say I'm ready for my second year in this room!
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