You've given it 4 years. No job is the right job for
everybody and your job wouldn't be the right job for me. We
Need smaller class sizes - it baffles me that my union keeps
asking for more money and more health insurance (hello
everybody has co-pays these days...)
When what we all need and I want is smaller class sizes. My
school used to have less than 20 kids in a class - now we're
to 25. No big deal most say but it's a HUGE deal. These 6
extra kids completely change the dynamics of the room - we're
no longer small and everybody feels it.

Control and connection with kids is impossible to have in
larger class sizes - you contend all day but you never
achieve the environment in which teaching and learning can
occur. With spec. ed, inner city or any other extra added
chalenge, you need ever smaller class sizes to make it work.

Find such a school if you can.The co-teaching is ridiculous -
yet another perhaps well-intentioned innovation, it's a mess.
You discipline all day to what avail? Only to return the next
day and do it again because the kids feel no connection to
the school community. They know somewhere deep inside that if
society really cared about them, it wouldn't be doing school
the way it's doing it.
Cramming them into a room together and saying good luck.
And yes, being short etc. etc. doesn't help.
It's not your karma - but spec. ed teachers are in fair
demand in normal times and they say those more normal times
are returning to us.
Polish your resume - good luck.

> This is my fourth year teaching, second year at middle
> school. I am a special ed teacher-co-teaching 4 classes
> and 1 self contained class. ALl the teachers say this
> group of kids this year is really tough, but I am feeling
> really inadequate this year, stressed and tired of
> discipling all day (except my self-contained 6 kids). I am
> a young, short, white female and the majority of students
> are african american middle schoolers. The boys are just
> rude, the girls have too much attitude and I am just tired
> of "baby-sitting' all day. Sorry for the negative post,
> but I am really thinking about changing careers, and at the
> same time I am working on finishing my master's degree in
> special education.... for what?
>
> Maybe I can become a supervisor someday if I stick through
> the next few years....
>

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