How’s work?

Work hasn’t been amazing, thank you for asking.
Last week I had two of my lessons observed. One was observed by the head of the English department and one was observed by my unit leader, my boss so to speak. The first lesson went pretty poorly due to a number of circumstances, some of which were out of my hands, others I could have been better about. The second lesson observed went a lot better. It wasn’t an amazing lesson by any means, but I think it was a decent lesson. My unit leader seemed to think differently. Yesterday I was called into the office for my job review. I expected to get some constructive feedback, some points I should work on and then be given a contract for another year to prove myself. That’s the sort of attitude I entered the office with.

Unfortunately, my unit leader wasn’t impressed enough by my growth over the past year to offer me a new contract. This kind of caught me off guard and I was really shocked. Let’s make one thing clear. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m still a beginning teacher and there’s so much I can improve in. But I was of the opinion that I’d grown quite a bit in my first year. I still struggle with class management to a degree, and some of my lessons aren’t amazing, but I feel like I’m doing my job well. I submit everything in time, my students are getting decent grades and I don’t think my students dislike me or think I’m a bad teacher. One of the student feedback surveys I recently got back was overwhelmingly positive, so I was kind of expecting I was doing well enough.

Of course my unit leader gave me good feedback. It’s not like the things he brought up weren’t valid. There’s a bit of lost time during my lessons due to not differentiating enough between students of different levels. On top of that I need to wait longer for the classroom to get completely quiet instead of mostly quiet. I have a tendency to accept a certain level of whispering before picking the lesson back up. I need to get comfortable with pausing my lesson for a full minute or two until everyone is on board. That’s difficult for an experienced teacher and definitely for me. I also need to improve my general class management so I notice more of the things happening around me and I can react faster to things that shouldn’t happen. 

To make a long story short, I asked my boss if I could get another shot to prove myself which is a terrifying prospect. At least I’m being given that chance, and next week he will come back to observe another one of my lessons where I have to show off my best. It’ll be a lesson where my students are doing their presentations which will be a difficult lesson, so I hope it goes well. I invited him to my first year class. They’re relatively well behaved compared to some of my other classes and I feel like I have the best control over this class. If I can’t convince my boss with this lesson then I guess it’s back to looking for a new job for me. Even writing that last sentence puts a hole in my stomach, it’s a horrifying thought. I like my job and I was so happy I managed to get it with relative ease. We even talked at a meeting yesterday about celebrating a successful year with all the new colleagues and all I could think about was the impending doom of losing this job.

So yeah, if my blog becomes a little bit chaotic and irregular in the next few weeks, I do apologize in advance. As much as I think it’s good for me and the blog to keep to my schedule, sometimes I do need to prioritize other things in life. I have some posts prepared so maybe there won’t be a big difference, but I do hope you understand. Your reading this brings me a lot of joy which is why I’ve been doing this for so many years and I plan to keep writing for as long as I have fingers and a keyboard. Thanks for reading!

Future Nick here. I talked with the head of the English department today. She wasn’t as negative about my lesson as I expected. Of course she had feedback, if I felt like the lesson didn’t go well, there’s no chance she would think it was amazing, but she saw a lot of good things too. I was really happy to hear that. We also brainstormed some ideas to make my next lesson that is observed by the unit leader better which I really appreciated. Talking about this with several other coworkers has made me feel a lot better about myself. Sometimes I wonder if I’m not too easy on myself and I just suck at things, but I think I’m a little bit more validated by their support. I’m doing something right if my coworkers are this supportive and tell me that what they’ve observed of me is professional and full of good effort. I wonder what made my unit leader so negative in comparison. I suppose I’ll ask him when we evaluate the next lesson. Either way, I hope I get to keep this job, it’s nice and I’m finally getting used to it.