A Teacher's Aide Journal: The Beginning

I've taught in high schools for eleven years and now I am not a teacher but a teacher aide.  I often wondered about what makes good schools good and bad schools bad.  I've seen distinctive differences in them and before I decided to conclude whether the school district where I now work is good or bad, I thought it wise to journal my experience.  Here is what I experienced.

I arrived and punched the time clock at 7:30 a.m. and joined the other Teacher’s Aides in the hallway outside of the main office.  They were waiting for instructions and talking about their summer vacation when I joined them.  I stood for a while until I noticed that no instructions would be given soon; so, I left them to place my duffel-bag that I often carry with me in the teacher’s lounge.  When I returned, Mr. Ross had been given a small group of papers, each bearing the name of a teacher’s aide with working assignments.  He passed the assignments out to those aides whose names were on the papers.  Now, Mr. Ross is often full of jokes, so as he passed out the papers, he took on a slight air of a condescending aristocrat.  It was obvious that he was making fun of the administrator who gave the papers to him.  I was the last one called and when I read the paper, I saw that I was assigned to work in the book room.

Being assigned to the book room meant nothing, as there was no book room attendant hired for the position over the summer.  The door was locked and no one was around to give further instructions to me.  This dilemma held true for everyone else and so we all retreated to the teacher’s lounge until those persons who we were to assist arrived.   It was not until 9:00 a.m. that we were able to do work.  Until then, I entertained myself by looking up baseball statistics of minor league players while my colleagues were busy in conversation behind me.  The teacher’s lounge was a spacious room with two long tables, one smaller round one, a surplus of chairs around each of the tables, eight computers – only three of them were working – two six foot sofas, a copy machine, two bathrooms, a microwave, and two soda machines.  There are four windows in the room. One was opened so that the sound of the lawn mowers were heard easily and this caused my colleagues to talk loudly around the table -  so loudly that I could not filter them out and was pulled into listening to what they said.

At the risk of sounding condescending and arrogant, I do not generally find the conversations of my colleagues interesting and do not often participate in them.  I sometimes view their conversations as juvenile in nature and they rarely seem to show a higher level view point.  Sometimes they echo information that is the simple opinion of other people or hearsay, and they present this information as if it is factual.  There were three men aside from me as teacher’s aides: Mr. Ross, Mr. Horne, and Mr. Thompson.  The other seven were women: Yarbrough, Bailey, Taylor, Hernandez, Jenkins, and Dobbs. 

Mrs. Dobbs was married over the summer vacation and her name was changed to Dorsey, but since we already had a Dorsey – who did not report to work that morning – most people continued to call her Ms. Dobbs.  She did not even bother to change her email or computer log in which are both based on names.  They talked a bit about Ms. Dobbs’ wedding and then moved on to speaking about the last meeting we had together before the previous school year ended.  Mrs. Johnson – the department chair of the Special Services department -  had a bit of a conflict with Ms. Rush who told Mrs. Johnson that if she felt uncomfortable about the way some people treated her,  she should first look within to see the problem. What was strange about that meeting was that I expected it to be upbeat with flowered comments and promises about the future.  Ironically, it was just the opposite.  Mrs. Johnson complained to us about how we distract her secretary when we stop and talk to her.  She spoke about how disappointed she was with the aides not being where they were supposed to be and that on many occasions she had to go look for them.  There was one comment made during that meeting by Ms. Dorsey, who recalled a moment when she went to the bathroom to “take a dump” and she suspected that Mrs. Johnson followed her to the bathroom to be certain that she was honest about using it.  Mrs. Johnson also mentioned that there were times when we were in group conversations or in conversations with her secretary and the conversations came to an abrupt end when she entered the room.  She said that she felt disrespected when she asked someone to carry out a task and they did not stop whatever they were doing to do what she asked.  She said that she wanted things to be different in the next school year and that she was going to be more ready to document what she thought was insubordinate behavior.  I had only been in the department for 6 weeks when this conversation took place, so obviously it had nothing to do with me.  It was, at least, entertaining.  At some point during the back and forward bickering I tuned it all out, took out my cell phone, and started to play chess. 

 In retrospect, it is obvious why Ms. Rush felt free to tell the department chair, Mrs. Johnson to look within herself if people had a problem with her.  There was a rumor on that first day we returned to work that she would not be coming back, as she had a job in the next town to the east of us.  They moved from that conversation to speak of others who would not return – Mr. Ortiz who was a certified teacher in Mexico but for some reason was never able to get certified here.  They veered from that conversation to talk about the Color Purple characters which somehow led them to disclose their concerns regarding the dearth of teacher’s aides, especially since at least two people were gone and not replaced.  They were concerned that there would not be enough aides to work in the classrooms, what with Mrs. Johnson’s plans to have multiple aides working as one-on-one student supporters.   That led to a brief discussion of how Ms. Hernandez did not want to work individually with a student having Autism.  Somehow at the end of the last school year Ms. Hernandez was told that she would be assigned to work one-on-one with a Hispanic student whose parents requested that the assistant be a native Spanish speaker.  Ms. Hernandez thought that she should get extra pay for such an assignment because she was singled out.  She was determined not to accept the position and said that she would fight Mrs. Johnson and get union support.

Personally I thought this was uncalled for.  I’m sure that Ms. Hernandez informed the administration in some way by a check mark on the application or verbally that she was a Spanish speaking candidate for the job.  At that point, such information increases ones chance of getting hired and now she suggests that it is unfair for her to work with a student who speaks Spanish just because she is the only one of the aides who can do that job.  Her attitude seemed very petty to me and I thought it was a terrible way to begin the year – she was obviously disgruntled. 

When 9:00 came, I went to the book room to find three NJROTC students already there with assignments to pull books for registered students at the request of the Attendant.  The Librarian was also there, but she had a condition that would not allow her to lift heavy objects or scan bar codes into the computer.  She wanted to teach me how to do it and to perform the task under her code, but the Attendant said she would face disciplinary actions if she allowed me to use her code.  There were four other aides assigned to the book room with me.  They took on the task of placing bar code labels on the inside cover of the new books that were shipped to the school.  These were the new Algebra books; 90 of them with four people setting the labels inside.  I thought four people were enough so I did not help and instead, I waited for instructions to do something else.  There were fewer books than usual because most of the math books were now online.  I learned that the Chemistry books that Special Ed students use in cross categorical/ contained classes were honors Chemistry books.   I was told that the regular Chemistry book would not be used because it was said to be too hard for the children, and that book was also online.  When the labeling was finished, I moved a pile of Algebra books to the other side of the room and then sat down to look through the old honors Chemistry book.  It was at that time that Mr. LaSorda, the assistant principal came and told us that there was help needed in the cafeteria too.  I volunteered and went to the table where two counselors and the registrar were seated.  I was assigned the task of filing the paperwork they gave me. One of the ladies, Mrs. Roberts who I thought was a counselor, showed me her hands and the stitches in them. On her right hand, the stitches were in the palm.  She mentioned that the stitches were the result of working hard and taking few breaks.  I later learned that Ms. Roberts was not a counselor, but a secretary for the counselors.   I mentioned that she may have had a worker’s compensation case.  She did not agree except to say that her husband thought she should not come to work that day, and that she could only blame herself for the injuries due to her frequent refusal to take breaks and use a wrist brace that her doctor prescribed. 

I imagine that in some ways one might think that it is admirable for Mrs. Roberts to accept the idea that her injuries were the result of her own negligence.  I do not agree.  First of all there had to have been something wrong with her wrist before she went to the doctor and was given a brace.  Secondly, she does not consider the reason why she did not take her breaks as required by the support staff contract.  If she did not take her breaks, it seems to me that she felt overwhelmed with work.  I am sure she had some kind of supervisor who should have insisted that she take her breaks and not work through them.  I was astonished at the attitude that the injuries received at work doing the job she was hired to do were her responsibility.  Even if it was, those injuries occurred at work and she owes it to herself to take care of those injuries.  Furthermore, the job owes her just the same.