craptacular

Well, this has pretty much been the worst week ever. I can’t go into too many details because they aren’t mine to share, but work has just been insane, and much to my relief, we’ve decided to close my GED classes early. They were supposed to go through December 12, but we’re going to shut them down the week before Thanksgiving instead. We just didn’t have the numbers to sustain them, and they were starting to drive me completely insane. I had maybe 6 students yesterday, who were literally all working on different things. It’s just impossible to teach a class where one person’s doing long division, one’s doing algebra, one’s on percents, one’s working on multiplication, one is on fractions, and one is taking a writing test.

And some of them will sit there and work and work and work on something until they’ve frustrated themselves to death without ever asking for help, and others will do a row of problems and then just sit there until I come over and check them (even though the answers are in the back of the book) and tell them to do the next row. And many of them just give me this blank stare that seems to say, “Well? Teach me something…if you think you can.”

I’m just done with it. It was really good in the beginning when I was actually teaching. All my students were learning the same thing at the same pace, and then they either stopped coming or needed more practice on one thing, and they started falling behind. And then we had a 2nd and a 3rd registration, and the class just became this insane 8-ring circus, and it wasn’t working for anyone. So we’re going to take a step back and reevaluate the program, which has next to nothing to do with my teaching, so I don’t feel bad about what I’ve been doing all semester. I’m just relieved that it’s ending. And never starting again.

Next semester, I’m sticking with what I am called and trained and passionate about doing. I’m going to continue teaching the ESL classes I’ve been teaching, and I’m going to work on developing curriculum for that program. I’m also going to teach a few classes for Wake Tech’s new ESL certificate program (for people who want to teach ESL), but I don’t know if that’s starting in the spring or the summer as that decision has not been made yet as far as I know.

So anyhoe…sigh of relief. A weight has been lifted. In two weeks, I’ll no longer be a GED teacher. Halle-freakin-luiah (did you like that infix? I love infixes).

test Filed under GED, ESL |