This year I share a classroom with a nice teacher and we get along well. We met five minutes before the kids walked in the door, so we have sort of gotten to know each other “on the job”. The governor pulled a lot of funding last up year, the school’s had what is called a class size reduction program. One teacher to a fifteen to eighteen kids but since Milwaukee did not have enough classrooms for that program they doubled up and put two teachers in one class. So for the last six years I have had 15-18 kids and half a classroom. We put a wall down the middle of the room, but the school had no money for a wall, so I paid $600 and bought medal cabinets to make a wall. Then last year the school did not have enough kids so I had eighteen first graders in my own whole classroom, and this year it was suppose to be just me and thirty kids but at the very last minute they found extra money and put our ratio of 15 to 1 back. I did not take the cabinets home, I just pushed them against the wall…..teachers should not need to buy their own furniture! As my classroom was already set up, I decided to co teach. The thing is in the last two weeks I have been here setting up, I have had five teachers assigned to his room to co teach. I have cleaned out cabinets five times so they would have room and put the stuff back as soon as they went to another room……because in between I was told I’d have substitutes with me. Not portable either way I worked all summer getting really for 30 kids by myself again and even though I was sick all summer, I worked anyway.
wendy
Wendy is an award winning retired teacher of 28 years. She retired after getting injured by one of her students.