Tested

Today, I was tested.  And not for strep throat.  I was tested to see if what I said in my post last night was true; am I going to make an effort to not let stress consume me this semester and to give God complete control over my life? 

Yep.  Should've known within minutes after arriving back at school that the muscles in my neck would start to tense up and the wrinkle in my brow would seem to crease permanently.  After spending my second day of morning bus duty standing out in the 12 degree weather for 22 minutes (I was thinking positively the whole time, telling myself only 6 more days of morning bus duty to go!), we were finally able to go to our new classes.  I soon realized I am going to miss my classes from last semester more than I thought.  I will not go into detail about this though, because nothing good can come from my complaining.  If teachers could create their own rosters, we'd all be happy, eh?  The real kicker came today when we were told that our school is officially under "corrective action".  This is NOT good news. 

To explain this in the simplest terms, our school has been a target school because we did not meet the graduation benchmark a few years ago.  The community thinks this is because we are simply pathetic and can't get kids to graduate.  This is not the case.  Back in 2003 and 2004 (my graduating year, as well as Christopher's, was 2003) we had the highest graduation rate around.  Our rate was MUCH higher than the almighty DB and Science Hill.  Because of these fabulous rates, our benchmark was thus set higher to a nearly unattainable percentage.  Therefore, when we didn't meet that excrutiatingly high mark, we were scoffed at by the community and the state of Tennessee deemed us a target school.  This meant for the past few years, we've had to do extra work and make special adjustments to get more kids to graduate.  At first, we thought we had met the rate last year.  But then, the state decided to change its mind about a few things and now, as it turns out, we didn't make it, thus rendering us in a very frightening state of "corrective action".  This means that later this spring, the powers that be are going to come in, audit the school, and possibly make a clean sweep of anybody (teachers, administrators, etc) whom they feel are not effective.   This thought brings sheer worry, fright, and anxiety to my already frazzled mental state.  Not only am I not tenure (this is my tenure year), but I teach a class with a state-mandated end-of-course exam, which my students this past semester didn't do so well on.  Why didn't they do so well?  Is it all my fault because I am a terrible teacher?  No.  They didn't do so well because they could care less.

For those of you that are teachers, you feel my pain.  If you're not a teacher, please understand that for those of us that give state tests (some English teachers, some History teachers, some Science and some Algebra teachers), our jobs depend on how well our students do on these tests.  And for those teachers that don't have state mandated testes, their jobs depend our our students' test scores as well now!  That means that my test scores affect me AND my husband, who teaches PE and has no state test to give.  Please understand the position we are put in; a classroom filled with 35 teenagers.  They don't bring pens or pencils to class.  Some can drive but can barely spell the word "car".  Most would rather slice their toes off before even pretending to care about grammar, reading, and some stupid state test.  They miss school every other day.  Some have terrible home lives, and some have no home at all.  Several students find it extremely pleasurable to fill in pretty patterns on their test answer sheets without even looking at the test, knowing full well that we teachers are close to tears because of their actions.  I can work for hours on one lesson plan and put on the best show and sing and dance to keep their attention, but it doesn't matter.  They don't care. 

It is safe to say that today was stressful.  I cannot deny that the reality of what could happen to me or Christopher this spring is scary.  However, as Christopher said, I have no more control over my kids' scores from last semester.  Like I mentioned in my post last night, I have to learn to let go of the things I don't control.  What I CAN control right now are things like:
1.  my attitude
2.  my efforts to help students succeed this semester
3.  my self-discipline
4.  my happiness
5.  my prayer life and relationship with the One and only true Stress-Reliever

Friends, on behalf of all of us at Central, I ask for your prayers.  It is going to be yet another challenging semester, and it feels like there is an ever-present axe looming over our heads at every moment.  And, as I know so well, God provides; He always provides.