Mostly a lurker but looking forward to posting on this board!
I'm going on year 14 of teaching music. This year I'll be teaching general music to students in DK-5 in two buildings. I teach in the metro Detroit area.
I started teaching in 2012-13 after a career change. I subbed for a couple months after student teaching, then taught Title I Math part time for the following 2 1/2 years. Last year I landed my first FT teaching grade 3 at a school in an urban district. My kiddos are mostly ELs and come from immigrant families. I love my job, love my kids more than that, and will be looping up to 4th with them this year.
Post by chriskit81 on Jul 26, 2017 16:43:28 GMT -5
Jumping in...I am not actually a teacher. I am the Outreach Coordinator for our local YMCA and have been working closely with an elementary school in our community. 81.8% of our students receive free breakfast and lunch. The school is in the center of the housing authority development, so nearly all of our students are low income. With my program, we offer an afterschool club during the year, focusing on reinforcing and enhancing what the kids are learning in the classroom as well as providing physical activity, science experiments, art projects, team building, reading, and serving them dinner. During the summer, we offer achievement gap programming through Explorer's Club, focusing mostly on reading and writing. We also go to a nature preserve once a week for activities and on Friday we go to the YMCA to swim. We serve breakfast and lunch at this program.
I wanted to get involved in this board because it is important to me to work closely with teachers to make sure that we are acting as a supplement to what they are teaching rather than trying to teach ourselves. I have a great rapport with our teachers, but I thought this may be a great place to ask questions and gain insight from the classroom point-of-view.
I'm working on a Stuff the Bus drive to establish a school supply closet at the school. One of my summer program staff members is a Kindergarten teacher at the school and told me that NONE of her students were able to bring school supplies last year. I want to make sure the teachers have what they need for these students without having to dip into their own pockets as much as possible. Right now, our summer program is on hold due to terrible flooding in the neighborhood, so I've been bringing breakfast and lunch, bottled water, bleach and cleaning supplies, etc. to the families. I hope we can resume next week.
I'm about to start my 8th year teaching middle school science. This will be my third year at my current school (in a suburb of Portland, OR) after 5 years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I finally got a job and feel like I can join this thread! I've been out of teaching for 7+ years, subbing for about a year and a half, and will be working this year as a middle school aide, doing in-class support and small groups in English and math (my licensure is 7-12 English). I was late getting started in the hiring process this year and didn't land a classroom position, but I'm working in my dream district. They have a long record of hiring teachers from within (the principal even mentioned the likelihood in my initial interview), so I'm excited and feel like it's a good situation for this year.