As I enter the end of one year and look forward to the next, it dawned on me that I haven’t had time to update my resume in four years due to my crazy busy schedule. I decided to simplify the resume by using some AI to clarify what I have been doing. I also cleaned it up a bit because, well, AI doesn’t know me or what I do on a day-to-day basis. I did not use the job description because, as most of you know, in education, our job descriptions typically represent the minimum requirements of our roles. Every time I think I am done, I remember I have several other things I do that are “assigned” by the principal or district administration. I am sure I will add more to that resume at a later date, but it will do for now.
I have been working for over half of my life, and even as I contemplate what retirement from education will look like, I am certain that education will play a role in my next endeavor. Retirement is such an ugly word in my mind. It looks like doing nothing, and well, I can’t do nothing. My husband agrees, and as we think about traveling more, I still see myself as a teacher or administrator of something educational. I will ALWAYS be a librarian at heart and feel that literacy is where I need to focus on if working with children of a young age.
My original plan was to work until 70, but I think I want more freedom at a younger age to teach with freedom from school politics and district strangleholds that limit what children learn and how they learn. We spend too much time accumulating seat time without addressing how it is working. Making students stay after school for tutoring to make up for absences is punishment, and many of those kids do not attend after school. Then we look at final grades and attendance. If we have an “A-B” student, we will probably not hold them back due to a lack of seat time. My question is, how can they be an A-B student when they have missed 1/4 to 1/3 or more school days? If they are that smart, promote them so they are challenged. If the material is too easy, challenge them in the classroom.
Often, students claim to be bored when they do not know how to learn. Let’s take some of that seat time and teach them how to learn. AVID is a great tool, but not if every student isn’t included in the program across the school. We need to teach students via heavy literacy-based education in elementary school with AVID tools. It is very difficult to catch students in middle and high school if they have been floundering in elementary school. Anecdotally, a student came to middle school from a school outside of the current state. He had finished PK-5th grades, and the diagnostics from his previous district placed him at severely below to below in all reading, writing, and math. He went to sixth grade and only attended for 31 days. There was no notification of a Child Find referral, meeting, or determination. HOW IS THIS CHILD GOING TO MAKE IT TO HIGH SCHOOL?
I know, I am off topic. You see where I am going? I need to use my why. This is why I updated my resume. Not because it is old and out of date, but because I need to re-engage my why. I entered education because I received a less-than-great public education, and a girl who was in my older brother’s graduating class couldn’t read. She graduated. Her parents were upset because the schools she attended for 12 years did not teach her to read. We won’t even discuss the parents’ roles in this because we have our own responsibility to make sure students read at level before promoting them.
So, updated resume. Contemplating my future role in education. Hating how technology has been used in education, but that is a whole other post!
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