As a professional singer and actor, I have had a total of 33 jobs in 17 years. I have worked at least 3 jobs or more simultaneously in addition to performing over the years. Each week, I will discuss one of my former or current jobs. My twenty-sixth job was 3rd Grade teacher at Elm Community Charter School in Queens.
Getting the Job
I did not know if I was going to be rehired at Achievement First Crown Heights. I began applying for teaching jobs and finally got hired at Elm Community Charter School. Before the students arrived, I thoroughly enjoyed the two-week orientation training for all the teachers. I was super optimistic going into the school year.
The Experience
Initially, I really liked working at Elm, but I found out later that there were lots of issues at the school behind the scenes. The Elm teachers unionized a few years prior and the school was only four years old. There was quite a bit of tension between the teachers and the administration. There was a lawsuit that was pending with the NYC teacher’s union.
https://www.uft.org/news/news-stories/news-stories/queens-charter-votes-join-uft
Multiple teachers resigned during orientation and several more teachers resigned between September 2021 and December of 2021. The turnover was so quick that it was difficult for the administration to replace the teachers that left. Secondly, my students were put under so much pressure to excel. Some students would cry in the middle of their tests due to anxiety.
Grading System
When the teachers put in the grades, only two assessments were included in the student’s final math grade. This made no sense because the students had several exit tickets and homework assignments that could have been included in their final grade. Some of the parents were upset about their child’s grades. I agreed with the parents because two assessments is not a true reflection of the student’s progress over the entire grading period.
I brought this up to the assistant principal in our grading meeting after parent-teacher conferences. Her response was that the students were going to be judged by their test scores in life. I got frustrated and left the meeting. This was not my proudest moment, but it happened. I apologized later, but I felt bad for one of my students because of his grade. His grade was not a true reflection of his progress in my math class and I thought his grade was completely unfair.
Quitting
Lastly, my co-teacher was expecting a baby. She was going on maternity leave in January. I taught guided reading, math, math stories and my co-teacher taught guided reading, ELA, humanities, social emotional learning, and closed reading. I was struggling to teach my own subjects so adding on more in the spring semester felt overwhelming to me.
Since teachers were quitting left and right, I knew that I was going to end up teaching all seven subjects by myself. In November 2021, I began applying for the NYS Public School system. I got accepted into the teacher pool and was chosen to teach fifth grade at P.S. 202 Ernest S. Jenkins. When I was hired at the public school, I gave my resignation to Elm Community Charter School.