Grading my teaching

These are my grades for myself, based on my own expectations for myself - not comparing myself to other teachers, nor with how I coped with obstacles. Just what I did, regardless of what else was around me.

Year 1: C- (D- in the first semester, B- in the second when I figured out what in the hell I was doing.)

Year 2: A- (I rocked this year. I wrote the 9th grade curriculum, I finally got right the mixture of toughness and empathy that I tried in my first year, my lessons were a lot more effective the second time around. I'm close with a lot of the kids graduating right now - especially Bobby, but also Ebony, Cedrick, D'Andre, Josh, and Demetria - because of it.)

Year 3: B (Had a pretty bad year personally, with the eye surgeries and lawsuit. However, I still think I did pretty well teaching considering my student load doubled from 75 to 150. This was also the first year I held a second job while teaching, and I'm sure that's affected things a bit.)

Year 4: B- (My student load was 170, and I struggled with the new prep of 11th grade. But I think I did a pretty great job with 9th grade Honors, challenging them and myself throughout the year.)

Year 5: C+ (Student load of 166. My worst year since my first. Floating from classroom to classroom has ripped apart a lot of my effectiveness. I still haven't learned the coping or organization strategies needed for it. I have to run down to the copy machine all the time during class because copies have absconded away. My drills - which I always wrote on the board, so I can't when I'm floating, especially with no working overheads - are ineffective and thus my lessons always seem to get off to a bad start. Visual things that I always used to keep myself organized - a homework chart, the word of the day poster, classroom stars - are not there anymore, and my teaching has suffered. In addition, I also don't really think I got close to kids like I have in other years. I feel like I'm just sort of there, assigning work. A lot of the kids I feel closest to this year are my most troubled students, and I don't know if anything I've done is going to keep them at the school. I guess there's still some time to end strong and push myself into the B range. I've started my long process of writing letters to all my students to give to them when they leave after their final, somethign I haen't done in a couple of years, since class load blew open.)