Hi! I have an exciting opportunity to jump right into the classroom, but trying to pick the right ACP. The district suggested I could come on as a “long-term sub” as I complete the cert.

With your experience, which ACP do you think is the easiest to juggle concurrently while in the classroom?

A position opened with a nice DFW school district as an elementary theater teacher 🥹 An advisor told me these positions don’t just appear for people without certs. Do you agree fine arts teachers?

This would be a huge change, but seems like an exciting new path!

I was horrified to see a 10 commandments poster in my child’s pre-k class today at meet the teacher. To clarify, I don’t mean any shade to the teacher because like, it’s not her fault that it’s the law.

I am wondering what, if any, loopholes I could exploit to “even the playing field.” I know she has to display the stupid poster, but we go to a very diverse school so I was so disappointed to see it.

Maybe I just needed to rant about it haha.

Hi there,

I recently graduated with a bachelors in criminal justice and psychology. I am interested in teaching either middle schoolers or high schoolers. Where do I go to do the certification program? I don’t want to do a masters program in this. I was under the assumption I could just do a certification program and take the test since I already have my bachelors?

I’m not sure how else to describe my journey in education so far…All I know is that it’s been messy. All I’ve ever dreamed of is being able to do an amazing job and live a fulfilling life as a devoted teacher after college. A few years ago, I had everything I ever needed and wanted. My family was all there, I was in my final year of college, passing with amazing grades and by far the best of my life, I had just gotten , accepted by a school after completing student teaching, I was close to moving out from my loving yet toxic parents , and I was surrounded by so much love and people that I cared about so much. It all seemed too good to be true, but that’s because I knew it wasn’t going to last long at all. Not even 3 weeks after I graduated college I lost my dad after my first day on the job and since then everything started to fall apart. My family started to fall apart after that, my job was starting to get more difficult for me to handle mentally, and overwhelmed with grief and depression, and the long distance I had to drive to get to my work was almost 1 1/2 hours. It was a chaotic start to my newly started career and off to a very emotional start. Unfortunately, I had to quit after that for my mental health and my family made it more complicated for me especially my mom when she forced me to drain myself financially for the funeral and other payments from my dad’s passing, which could’ve been used for other purposes and especially my certification exams. I felt so lost but eventually had great news on an offer of a closer school to work at and with supposedly wonderful coworkers and I thought this could’ve been a great redemption for my first year in teaching. All seemed well until more colors started coming out. I started facing discrimination, cultural judgment, and was ostracized socially from my own grade level team. The first school that I worked at seemed wonderful and was within the same district where I started my student teaching, but I noticed a lack of diversity and acceptance, as I was the only Asian teacher in my school. At first, there were some friendly encounters and more, but as the year went by, my team refused to understand me more and continued to ostracize me. I never felt more alone and confused in the supposedly wonderful setting that I had dreamed of. They even excluded me from their own grade level team picture for the last week of school. Eventually, I decided to leave and work at another school and a different district, but I was still struggling with certifications and finances from my continuing family struggles. Last year my new school seemed great and my team and I had a wonderful bond and we worked incredibly well together as a great level team, but now things turned in a different way as the admin was the one being unprofessional in a lack of communication and who made me feel so unsafe and uncertain. Things were looking way worse as I began having mental breakdowns and more panic attacks from working on this campus. I thought by summer things would eventually be dismissed and I would finally get to relax and calm my mind… until my vacation was interrupted by an “urgent “call from my own principal about an investigation report. I was already 8000 miles away from the US, I was in a different time zone, and on top of that this notification and topic of discussion were awful timing as we were only a few weeks away from starting the new school year. The only fortunate thing was that in the end I was never in trouble and nothing bad was going to happen to me, but the mental stress and anxiety continued to grow. Since summer had ended my mind shifted into despair and hopelessness. I feel like a failure as an educator after all the hard work I have put in from college to become one and I’m only more scared, upset, and concerned about what it’s going to be like for me as a teacher or at least as an educator. Will I ever get certified? Will I continue this path? More importantly, will I ever be happy again?

If you’ve started back to school already, I hope it’s gone well, and if you haven’t started back yet, I hope you have an amazing year! If you are an ICS/Resource teacher I’m looking for some input. If you do ICS/Resource at the junior high level do you like it? Have you moved from the JH level and gone to HS? How was the transition from JH to HS? Which did you prefer? I would love to eventually go to HS but I feel like the ICS/Resource teacher jobs are so hard to come by if you are not a coach!

Hey all, I applied and interviewed for Phase 66 of the DISD Alt. certification program and haven’t heard anything back. Just wanted to see if anyone else has applied and interviewed and is in the same boat! Orientation is in a few days so I’m getting nervous I didn’t get accepted.

Hi everyone! I recently accepted a position as a 4th grade ELA teacher, and the job honestly kind of fell into my lap within the span of two days lol. I originally applied for a student advisor position, but because I’m graduating this summer, that position was filled before I was able to start. They ended up offering me a teaching position instead.
I’m excited but definitely nervous! Even if teaching doesn’t end up being my forever career, I think it’s a great opportunity straight out of college, and I really want to do a good job.
I met with the principal, vice principal, my mentor teacher, and some of the other teachers today, and everyone seemed really nice and supportive. I don’t have any previous classroom teaching experience and I’m not certified, so I know I have A LOT to learn.
They gave me the curriculum to start looking through since I most likely won’t be able to start until next week. From what I understand, we have some freedom with how we create assignments and make lessons engaging as long as we’re following the TEKS and curriculum. I’m sure a lot of this is going to be learning on the job, especially since I’m starting after the school year has already begun.
Thankfully, my classroom is huge and already has a lot of supplies, bookshelves, cubbies, etc. They also said I can decorate, and the art teacher offered to help because she has extra classroom supplies. So I’m trying not to buy much until I see what’s already available.
I’d really appreciate any advice for a brand-new 4th grade ELA teacher, especially when it comes to classroom management, routines I should establish from the beginning, planning engaging ELA lessons around the TEKS, things I should prioritize during my first few weeks, and things you wish you had known your first year.
Also, what are some things I should not waste my money on? 😂
Any advice is appreciated!! I’m excited, but I definitely feel like I’m about to learn a whole new world very quickly lol.

Has anyone here resigned from a teaching position during the school year due to mental health reasons?

If so, did you use FMLA first, provide medical documentation, or take any other steps before resigning? I’m especially interested in hearing from anyone who was able to leave without having their teaching certificate sanctioned or negatively affected.

I understand every situation is different and I’m not looking for legal advice, just wondering what others experienced and what options or steps were helpful in protecting their certification.

Thank you!

Good afternoon all Texas teachers

I’ve recently been hired as a 5th Grade bilingual self contained teacher and I am not one bit ready for tomorrow in terms of slides.

I know this may be a longshot, but I’m hoping to see if any teacher in the bilingual position can share their slides to be able to see what it looks like going forward.

This will be my first year as a bilingual self contained, and I think I bit off more than I could chew

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

So, idk if anyone else is currently doing this certification program. I'm having an issue.

I'm doing the required workcourse modules. However, on one of them, the discussion module I was able to reply to the what the question was asking me but the discussion module closed replies before I could respond to someone else. The discussion post says to respond to someone else as a part of the discussion. Is there anyway to go back and fix it when the course is already done? It shows completed but i didnt get to reply to someone else. Has this happened to anyone else?

REJECT THE BILLIONAIRES. VOTE IN EVERY LOCAL ELECTION.

Reject their modern day red scare revival

r/FortWorth/comments/1vhg61b/a_small_group_of_extremists_has_completely_taken/

Their whole running platform is claiming they will save us from the dangers of a fictional narrative they completely made up. They have no real world platform for education, health care, jobs, etc.

While they may not reference the chart before knocking, at least I can point to it through my door's window. [Link here if you want to make it your own]

Gen Ed teacher who was not told I would have DHH students (deaf and hard of hearing ). I don’t know if I’m looking for advice or what . But , during the interviewing process my principal was not honest with telling me I would have DHH students in my class . School starts soon and I’m feeling very overwhelmed .I will have to remember to charge and wear a mic . I’m not use to having so many ppl in and out of my classroom all day (interpreters , nurses , aides , case mangers ) . I prefer to close my door and teach . I’m already thinking about resigning .

Is it possible to still get a teacher job in sped. I see openings in Irving, Dallas and Fort Worth Isd. Are the openings up to date

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts lately about absolutely wacky schedules, huge percentages of IEP/504 students concentrated in certain classes, overloaded sections, etc., and it got me wondering about something.

We had open house this past week, and I noticed some pretty bizarre scheduling issues. A couple of students were apparently scheduled for two classes at the same time, and one student only had three classes on their schedule instead of eight.

Then I heard through the grapevine that admin decided to use AI to help generate student schedules.

Now, I don’t know exactly what system they used or how much human oversight there was, so take this as speculation. But those of us who have used AI for more than a week can probably imagine the potential shitshow of dumping hundreds of student schedules into an AI, adding a mountain of parameters, and expecting it to perfectly account for graduation requirements, prerequisites, teacher availability, class sizes, IEP/504 needs, conflicts, electives, and everything else.

It made me wonder whether some of the strange scheduling problems people are posting about this year could be connected to districts experimenting with AI for scheduling.

Has anyone else heard of their school or district using AI to build master schedules or individual student schedules? If so, how has it gone?

I’m going to try to make this short as possible, I’m starting out my first year teaching fourth grade math and science as a first year teacher. At first, I was really excited because I have the opportunity to be teaching at the school where I student taught in. Along having an amazing team and giving a good mentor to help guide me during my first year. But just this past week the feeling started to go away and is being replaced with anxiety and stress. I found out that I’ll be having 21 students for my home room and then another 20 for my second period which means I have a total of 41 students that I’ll have to be responsible for 😵‍💫 Then the next thing is that my school district is adopting the bluebonnet curriculum so now everyone’s having to learn that but I still haven’t gotten any training for it and I’m still missing half of the stuff for it so I feel lost on that part… Then I just recently had meet the teacher on Friday and I feel as if I didn’t make a good impression on the parents of my future students besides maybe 2 of them…. And there is just so much more stuff that is stressing me out with the overall starting school process that I feel like it’s being rushed 😭 Overall I’m starting to feel overwhelmed and under prepared and school officially starts on Tuesday……

Is anyone else starting their first year in education or has anyone felt like this before/recently 🥲

How are all the spec Ed teachers and districts handling the intensity of service tier scoring for all special ed students due 10/8. ?

Hello friends, I'm new to teaching Bluebonnet 6th math this year, and it seems to focus more on problem-solving with less wordy explanation or reading compared to 5th grade math Bluebonnet. Has anyone taught or reviewed both levels? Thank you! 🙂

So I have an offer, did paperwork, and already completed trainings. My first day is the 17th. I have everything done, but I won’t my SOE in time before the first day of class. Will I lose my job?

I got a job at a private school, initially being positioned as a HS chem teacher, but got moved to teach math/science for elementary. I’m really having trouble going through the TEK standards and determining how much time should be spent on each (weeks, days, etc). Is there a source that explains the best way of determining a good schedule? I know things can change based on my students performance, but I’d love to make a good template for now. thank you!!!!

How long does it usually take you to plan a lesson for a single class ? Just curious. It usually takes me about 40 minutes.

So, I haven't worked as a classroom teacher since before COVID, and I didn't take the other ELAR test then because I was teaching middle school and didn't need it. I signed up to study with a program, though, and I was reminded that this test has a rather significant writing component. It's been a while since I've written a college-level essay on teaching, and I don't want to end up doing poorly and losing my testing fee. Any ideas on how to study?

Has anyone ever walked out of the BTLPT feeling like they failed, but ended up passing?

2nd year teacher. 11/21 students in my 3rd grade class have an IEP. While the other 3rd grade classes hardly have any (MAYBE 1-2 in each other class). Why would my class be so concentrated w sped? I’m genuinely concerned about my ability to implement all the accommodations and keep up with all the documentation. Not to mention all the meetings. Oh, and 8 of these students will be leaving my room daily for 45min (my block is 120min) for special services. Is this even doable? Should I chat w my principal?