Required Blog: The Things I Am Not

I don't think I'm a good teacher. This is why I'm leaving the profession with no guarantee of coming back to it. I really love my kids and I hope they all do well, but they all won't. And it's really hard for me to face that. With certain students, it's easier for me to be realistic and see that if they make it out of high school it will be a blessing. But with most of my students, I see this great potential, and all it does is weaken me. Before I go any farther on this tangent of sorts, let me get to the point. There are three integral things that a good teacher needs to be good at (which I am bad at): reaching all your students intellectually, classroom management, and balancing how much you care about your students/caring in a helpful manner.
I most definitely don't get my meaning across to my students all the time. There are kids in class that just stare at me because they don't know what I'm talking about, they're perpetually confused. There are those that sometimes understand me and other times are just dazed. Then there are those that understand me so well, they don't listen. I have a girl in my last period that comes in to class and never opens her binder unless I have given specific instructions to the class to write something down. She doesn't look at her notes, she wasn't even giving in homework for half of 3rd term (which was a big change for her from 1st semester). And the thing is she didn't need to. She's a really smart student that would get an 80 test grade on a bad day. I never pushed her, and a number of other students, far or hard enough. With the students that I know don't understand what I'm saying, I never gave them the extra time they needed with me, usually because I either didn't have the extra time or forgot to go to them. I never gave them the worksheets I wanted to give them to work on at home to build foundational skills they needed for my class. And then I have a select few that say, "Oh yeah, that makes sense, I gotchu'" but don't really have it at all because whatever they just "got" has registered in their brains as something completely different from what was intended. "Differentiated Instruction" is most definitely not my middle name. I have always felt so pressed for time that I haven't spent much time this year doing what's really necessary (a.k.a "alright kids, let's talk about nouns"). I have a co-teacher that has been saying all year, "These kids are in the *th dang grade; if they don't get subject-verb agreement by now, well, we'll just have to move on. That's ridiculous, they're in the *th dang grade." And for the most part I'd listen to her, and that kills me. I was told by an administrator to do whatever this teacher did, and I followed orders and watched my students eyes glaze over with bewilderment as I would just "move on." The last obstacle that's made it hard for me to reach my students is the way I talk. I'm not from Mississippi so I speak differently from them. I thought I spoke quickly sometimes. I was wrong. I speak quickly most of the time and speak really quickly sometimes. So about half the time, my students haven't even been hearing me. To top it off, their attention spans are even shorter than mine (which is kind of a feat) and I talk too much. I do a lot more lecturing and guided practice than their used to, I think. Yup. Haven't been getting through to them AT ALL.
A good teacher HAS to be able to control the classroom. Without control, no real learning can take place. That's another sore spot for me. I've gotten much better this year than I was last year with rules & consequences, but I still suck. If there is a disruption, there are usually two things I try to do: get it to stop as quickly as possible, or make an example of the offenders so others don't test me. The first option is where my inconsistency comes in. I sometimes just shush the class if someone made a joke that was funny and got the whole class giggling; I can easily end up giving three sets of warning to people (because the first two people that got the warning aren't the ones that made the noise the second time, who aren't the ones that made it the third time) and then give a class-wide warning just so I can get to copy assignments. The problem with this is that there have already been 4 class disruptions just for me to get to the actual consequences. Another issue: I'll say, "copy assignment" or "detention" and forget to write the name(s) on the board or to tell the student(s) to come to me on the way out to get the detention slip. Another issue: I don't want to give all the consequences I'm supposed to. Students have their own secret issues that they're dealing with that affect classroom performance. Some students have family issues, some have relationship issues that they *let* affect their schoolwork. I don't want to give a consequence to someone that's just having this one bad day, but if I don't I begin to look weak(er) to other students that need to see me in control. Another issue: Some strongly believe that any and everyone must earn their respect, so they didn't respect me when I first got to the school, didn't respect me when I gave them consequences for talking or chewing gum (two things they're allowed to do in most other classes) and definitely still don't respect me (once I found a partially eaten chicken nugget on my desk at the end of my last period (long story); students flip my lights on the way out of the room, erase names from my board when their coming in and I'm talking to other students, and have stolen transparencies and paperclips). These students have been and are likely to always be discipline issues in my classroom, no matter how many copy assignments, detentions and referrals I give them.
Now, let's say I want to stop and make an example of a misbehaving student. It takes time from class to give someone a detention or a write up in the middle of class. So even if I do want to make an example of someone I usually don't because I'd rather teach 27 than write up 1.
The last thing a good teacher should do well is determine how best to help his/her students, when to help them, and when not to help them. I think that I've been so busy seeing the potential in my students that I may have jeopardized how well they'll do in my class. I have given my students so many ways to pull their grade up: as much extra credit work as they want (if they ask for it), retests, they can make up missed exams basically all term. In some way, they've seen every test in my class twice all term, whether it was because I went over the first test and gave them a very similar retest, or from giving them a quiz and putting most of that same quiz on the test. Do I still have a bunch of students failing? Yes. Did I still get a bunch of students messing up the same questions on the test or being tricked by the same errors, despite seeing the questions and the errors twice? Yes. I'm almost positive that I have students that think they'll be able to make it all up 4th term, make up 3 terms of failing grades with one term of passing grades. And they're going to be really disappointed when they realize it's not true. Maybe if I had not given them so many chances to pull their grade up they would've put more pressure on themselves to get it right the first time. Maybe.
Now, I've come down pretty hard on myself. I think there are some things I've done well. I think there are a number of factors to consider before I can really say "I'm a bad teacher and here's why." I have large classes this year (my smallest is 23 and then they spike), I teach 161 kids, my administration tend to look at class averages which get skewed by class clown sillies that don't do anything and have 12% averages. I'm the only English teacher with no honors classes to make me look good (my co-teacher, who's been teaching a lot longer than I, has been having the same problems with her regular students that I've been having and our students scored about the same on a state practice test). And I'm sure there are a couple other things I'm forgetting. But had I found a way to get those three, larger skills down, I'm pretty sure all the other issues I've had wouldn't be so big.

2 weeks...

That's it. Just 2 more weeks until Spring Break. I feel like I'll be home free after that. This has probably been one of the most challenging years of my life. I'm more than ready for a break.
As a random thought, I just realized that my students will be taking the 1st half of their state test TWO DAYS after we get back from Spring Break. That's ridiculous. I'm pretty worried about this.
After that, we'll have 1 month to get ready for the 2nd half and then it's out of my hands. We're going to read a book, hopefully one that I can find a movie to, and finish out the year.
I've come to realize that teaching is not for me. Not for right now. I'm not where I need to be personally to manage the work load, the stress, and it seems that I am less able to give up on students than many of the teachers I've come across in the schools that I've worked with. I can't tell you how frustrating it has been to find out from a teacher in my school that he or she didn't bother to push the students. This person said to my face, "They could barely identify adverbs, so what was the point?" What's the point?? The point is YOU GOTTA GET THEM TO IDENTIFY ADVERBS!! So that by the time they get to my class, the students aren't asking me the same questions over and over ("What's an adverb?) or giving the wrong answer when I ask it ("What does an adverb modify?" "A NOUN!!" "...No...") or just looking at me with blank stares. The point it for them to know the basics before they get into my class where they have to know collective nouns (are we talking about the whole or individuals in the group? It matters...), and participial phrases and many other unnecessarily named sentence structures. How in the WORLD are my students going to do well in my class, because I'm going to push them, if you don't start teaching them what push looks like?
I'm also frustrated when students confirm that their previous English teachers didn't teach them. A student of mine was the last person to leave the room at the end of the day. I told her, somewhat jokingly, that her group didn't know how to do group work (in fact, most of the class didn't) because I saw a lot of copying of answers and very little conversation. She said her old teacher didn't teacher didn't teach them how to do group work. She then told me a story of how once, she never took a test in this teacher's class, but brought in 20 boxes of tissue, so she got a 100 test grade (bonus points for supplies). I was quietly fuming.

I've been plagued with guilt all year because I haven't been able to help my students. And these types of situations are a big part of the reason.