I'm currently teaching special education (life skills) in an inner city high school. It's my first year at this school. My direct supervisor is an assistant principal and the principal is someone I see very rarely. I had an issue with one of my students developing bed sores and was placed on a PIP at around Christmas time. I worked very hard at improving what I was asked to improve. The improvements included pushing academics. I started doing that and I started seeing a lot of behaviors in my students (including leaving the classroom and walking outside). The assistant principal and I had discussed this and we agreed that this is why this is happening. I started getting sick from all of the stress and joint problems that I already have started to get worse. I was also given a lesson plan format that was approximately 30 pages long and I have only 2 assistants and at least one of them is out on jobsites a majority of the day. Back a couple of months ago, one of the administrators (idk who) had let one of my parents know some confidential information about me and the parent became confrontational with me. I documented the conversation stating that I had no idea where they got the info from. After this conversation with the parent, my assistant principal told me to join the union and brought the union rep into a conversation with the 2 of us. When I was informed of the nonrenewal, I was told that they were concerned about me and my health and the safety of the students. My class is now also combined with another teacher's class and we are still fighting the same behaviors. The principal does not have a special education background and does not understand that this is normal. When I was told this by the principal, she said that I'd basically be an aide in the classroom. However the assistant principal treats this like an equal partnership and also assigned me to create a sensory room for the Life Skills program. The AP and the P do not get along and the AP is either transferring or got non renewed herself. I'm very confused about the whole situation because no one is on the same page. The AP even helped me look for jobs. Does anyone have any insight into this???
Pretty much...there were some misunderstandings in my observations as well. Like I had my small groups and based the staff members I put in those groups based on their strengths. I worked with the two nonverbal students. I was doing a communication lesson with 2 of the nonverbal students and the one shut the sound off of his device (which is very hard to use) and I don't know how to turn it back on, so I just read what was join the screen. This student was flying through the lesson and didn't need as much attention as the other student I was working with. I was told I was ignoring this student while paying too much attention to the other. I tried explaining this to the AP, but she changed nothing...
Don't feel too bad. This "non-renewal" stuff has been a growing trend for some time now....especially with the younger administrators. While I was taking classes to get my principal's certificate, we had professors telling us, "You HAVE to find something wrong when you do your teacher evaluations. If you don't, it won't be long before the superintendent starts asking, "If everything is fine the staff, what do we need YOU for then?" Even our last governor was pushing for teacher firings, "How can we have 99% of the teachers in our state rated "satisfactory" when our math and reading scores are (whatever the number was)%?"
My advice is to make sure your principal's name shows up absolutely nowhere in future applications. Use your AP as your administrator. Talk to your Union and AP to find out exactly what you are legally required to tell other districts. If you put the AP as your reference, whatever she tells districts will really be all that is told... the district HR department can only verify dates of employment.
