Some thoughts about your experience here please...

...is what contact teacher asked me to do the other day. "We have a meeting and we want to know how everything is going with you." I'm curious to why I am not invited to the meeting.

Nevertheless, last night I wrote out a few thoughts. I stared at a dingy piece of paper wanting to dump all my honesty off my shoulders and onto the relief of the cowering little paper in front of me. Instead, I grudgingly penned out the words, "Positives" and "Negatives", making bulleted points underneath each.

I put the Positives first as one should always do in this situation.

I wrote:

1) Having the same classes three times a week is conducive to teaching a unit smoothly and without interruption.

****What I really wanted to say,"Having the same classes three times a week means that I have to plan more and that I have to deal with the same indifferent, narcissistic, snotty 8th graders three times more than I want to."

2) The tape player, cassettes, and classroom that you've given me have provided an effective teaching environment.

****What I really wanted to say, "But why in God's name did you give me an overhead projector when after one observation, one teacher said that it took too long to check the homework? She believed that it would be better for the students to copy the homework answers off of the transparencies to save time. Isn't part of learning having them read and hear their own mistakes out loud? She also said that she'd come back and give me some transparencies and observe another lesson. Still hasn't happened. I also thought I'd get more chairs so that the 2nd graders aren't sitting on each other's laps causing even more chaos than normal.

My dingy paper probably would have winced under this much strain.

3) My colleagues have been helpful.

It pains me a little that I wrote that.

****What I really wanted to say: "Yes, SOME of my colleagues have been helpful, asking if I need anything. But mostly, they seem a little off. My contact teacher only talks to me if she needs to. For example: when I was ill, I felt as though I was asking for too much of a favor for her to take me to the doctor, but when she needs something like grades...she's knocking down my door. When I said, 'I don't know how to grade these kids. They don't understand anything I say and when they take a test, they cheat.' She responds, 'I just need some grades." So, I pull some numbers out of the sky and next to these kids' names. 'I hope they're ok,' I say. On her way out the door, 'It doesn't matter, thanks."

I said hello to her the other day and it took several moments for her to recognize that I was saying hello to her. Overall, I feel a tad uncomfortable around most of my colleagues (meaning the English speaking ones). I feel like they don't know what to do with me. The person I like most at the school is the older Hungarian man who opens the door for me everyday. We can't really communicate, but he says hello to me every morning and I to him.

Whew! Two paragraphs for that one. Need I go onto the negatives? That might just be a little redundant.