I Am Your Plan Break: My 37 years as a Public School "Specials" Teacher

The One Where I Was A Hot Commodity 1986-1987: Argonia Public Schools K-12 Library, 9-12 Speech/Theatre *As I begin my Blog chronicling  my 37 years as a Specials Teacher you will  occasionally notice my use of they/them/their when referring  to some of my colleagues that I had negative relationships with. Some of you that know me personally will know who I am talking about, others will not. My story is mine to tell, not theirs. I do not wish to identify them by name.  Last Day at JC Penney Summer 1986 I quit my job at JC Penney so I could begin my Library Media Specialist certification classes at WSU in the summer of 1986. If I paid for my classes up front, the school board would reimburse me my tuition at the end of the semester. I did not have the money to pay for the classes so I asked the school board if they would pay for them up front. They agreed to do so. I was thankful for that because I did not want to take out any more student loans. The Library classes w...

THE ONE WHERE I THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER GO INTO TEACHING 1985-1986 Student Teaching & Substitute Teaching Fall 1985 BA, University of Oklahoma 1985    When it came time for me to do my student teaching, I knew that I wanted to be placed with Marianne Stitch at Noble High School. She was well known as being the BEST Speech/Theatre Teacher in the area. I will never forget my first meeting of the staff at Noble High School. I got up and introduced myself and let the staff know that I was going to be student teaching Speech/Theatre under Marianne Stitch. No said anything and there were confused looks around the room. Finally Katheryn Hartney spoke up and said that she was Marianne's replacement and no one told her that she would be having a student teacher. No one had bothered to tell me that Mrs. Stich had moved on to another school district. I didn't know what to do and really did not have a choice at that late date to move to another school. I liked working under Kathery...