Sept. 2009: Hardest thing about the second year

This topic gives me pause; I'm really not sure. I will give a list of things that are different, then hopefully be led to a conclusion as to what's hardest.

For one, I am less wrapped-up in parent contact than I was last year. Literally, last year I was plagued with needing to call parents. The task haunted my mind; I couldn't even sit in a pew on Sunday morning without being pelted with a list of students' names who called for action on my part. Parent contact made me restless and irritable till I did it. This year, I address it straightaway, during planning instead of at home, and have made far less calls than last year. HOWEVER, I am apprehensive because this lessened anxiety has also meant that I have made less (a-hem...that is, zero) positive parent calls. I foresee this reduction in parent contact as potentially very bad, since I am now in a state-tested subject area. I will need to be super-vigilant to call parents on the cusp of midterms to report their child's failing status. Euch, even writing about parent contact gets me down. This is a part of the job that I still do not like, but I fully recognize its essentialness.

Other things that are different: now I am no longer a newbie. I have new responsibilities, to mentor the new first-years at my school. I have resources I can share, tips to pass along that could help them as they helped me. I find myself still so wrapped up in my own classes and so starved of time, though, that I feel I am failing in providing all the help I could to the first-years. Sorry, first years! I am trying... Yes, I think this is probably toughest about being a second-year teacher - you take on a new supportive role for other co-workers; you no longer only receive help, but are needed to provide it, too. I am now no longer a consumer of help and a beneficiary only; I am equipped to share, benefit, improve, ameliorate and edify those around me. May I not buckle and prove to be a coward in this new facet of my job!

Well, my 11th grade English teacher was right after all. She always said, "good writing is that which leads you to new discoveries and perspectives and realizations AS you are in the process of writing it." And so it was just now- I became cognizant of a part of my vocation that deserves more conscious attention from me. It is good to be a conscious worker! (Marx might smile upon that conclusion...my "species-being" and my connectedness to my labor is alive and well here in Jackson.)