It is a time of great uncertainty for me personally. I was laid off and am waiting with baited breath for an email from the District Principal of Human Resources to send me an email with my teaching assignment for 2013-2014. I am now, in a way, feeling unconnected. Some of my connections to colleagues have been severed but perhaps by investigating my own online presence and trying to unlearn and learn new ways of thinking and learning with ITC I can create other connections that can help support me in this time.
Joining what I call ‘Team Layoff’ means many things to me:
1. I have to leave the school I have been at for the last 6 years (I have been laid off before and have been reassigned to the same school, where there have always been a position available for me. I am afraid that there are no positions at the school this year however.) As someone who does not handle new situations or people that well, this is taking me hugely out of my comfort zone. I have made many connections which may be severed as a result (the professional ones at any rate).
2. Any curricular projects and collaborations that I am involved in are now on hold or abandoned as I do not know to what level or subject area I will be assigned.
3. The planning for next year part of my brain is spinning its wheels. I am using Evernote to keep track of ideas for my classroom but they cover all grade 6-8 subjects and are not focused or terribly coherent. Thankfully this course can occupy some of my thoughts, and the ‘when I a library of my own’ thoughts can be given free rein.
4.The school is losing 9 teachers to layoffs. This has made planning for the coming school year difficult. Even planning first week ‘back to school’ activities suffered as ‘Team Layoff’ could not speak for the new staff members who would be occupying their positions in September.
In light of these circumstances I have decided to examine some strategies for teachers to manage when connections are cut. I am looking into ‘teacher resilience’ and how creating a PLN can help teachers with the current environment of change and uncertainty in which we find ourselves.
So far using the search term ‘teacher resilience’ I have found a number of articles linking resilience to teacher retention here is a taste of what I have found so far:
“Teachers resilience: A necessary condition for effectiveness”
“Building Teacher Resilience”
“How Teachers can build Emotional Resilience”
Many of the articles and sites come from Australia where they seem to have a high number of new teachers leaving the profession. I am still trying to find out if there is any network of laid off teachers in BC or my Disrict to provide support. there are mentoring opportunities for new teachers, but this will be great for me AFTER I have a new teaching assignment, not much good to me at the moment.
I’m also looking into Twitter. So far I have created #LIBE477. and looked at #edchat and #cdnedchat.