New school year...already got the blues

Wow...My school as been in session for just about 2 weeks, and it's sad to say that already that beginning of the year optimism is about gone. You know, teachers tend to be the 'glass half full type' - at least until about Thanksgiving or Christmas when we've just about lost our minds and are wondering WHEN we're going to start seeing the gains in our students! But this year I think it has fled very early in my building.

It could be the fact that for the first time, our school has not made AYP - that great and powerful standard by which all students (but really teachers and schools) are measured. (Though it actually has little to no impact on the actual children and their families, which are generally where the learning issues start - but I digress). But I don't think that's really what's bringing us all down. It could be that in a manic effort to somehow prevent another year of not making our AYP goal, our principal has instituted a rule of turning in a (somewhat) detailed plan of how our daily lessons will be geared toward our school focus. And yes, there are a number of staff that feel that this is madness and don't like the extra work. (Ok, so everyone pretty well feels that to one degree or another!) It is a kick in the face to be asked to turn in lesson plans because that implies that what we've been doing - the lessons and curriculum that we've been REQUIRED by the district to do - isn't right. But really, more and more schools in my district have started requiring teachers to turn in lesson plans, so it's not like we didn't see this coming to some extent.

I think the main cause for the pessimistic attitude is that we're all starting to feel that no matter what we do, and how hard we try as teachers - we can't win. We worked our butts off last year...and it wasn't good enough. Now, our lesson plans aren't good enough. It's beginning to feel like there's no right answer. And let's face it, there isn't one. If there was a magic formula for how to pour knowledge and skills into a child's head, it would have been bottled years ago and surreptitiously placed in their lunchtime boxes of milk!