I got so caught up in trying to be on top of things, that I forgot how to have fun and how to be a good leader… so while I was making sure things were working in the background, I forgot to be a team player and alienated you, so while you thought I wasn’t working these last two months and choosing to put my work load on you, I was maintaining the machine in the background to make sure the machine survived till the end of the year. But what I forgot is that we are not a machine, we are a flexible team… I also started to view it as my own survival and not the team as a whole… in my mind, I became the team and my survival meant the team’s survival… unfortunately, toward the end of the year, I started trying to act like a real teacher and delegating to you guys more, which I know made you feel like I was just using you and pawning things off on you… the problem was that at first, I was just trying to be your friends, in hopes that I would belong to a group again, like I did when I worked for the middle school as a para… there they treated me like family and another teacher and not just a lowly para, but an integral part of the team. I started out wanting to treat each and everyone of you that way, so that while you may not get paid a lot and even though tqhe work is tough, you would feel valued and heard…I realized that that doesn’t always work out that way… and that if I were to ever be a good leader, I would have to start being more assertive and less accommodating to everyone’s needs in hopes of making everyone happy. I needed to learn to frankly just tell you gals to woman up and do your job without always questioning my every reasoning behind it because I was your supervisor… I remember at the beginning of the year trying the hard ass approach due to things already starting off to me catering to your gals’ every need and making my job ten times harder because now not only was I doing your job, but I was trying to play the role as the teacher as well (not very well mind you…) We were all more like a bunch of paras working together to figure it out, when what we really needed was for me to just be the teacher and less like a para… I got stuck in that role, I think, because that was what I was good at back then… I was great with the kids, but I didn’t really learn leadership skills and organization skills for paperwork as a student back in college because most of my classes focused on gen ed with some sped courses to get my certification. There were no classes on how to lead a team of five paras nor how to communicate with other educators and specialists… but enough about my excuses for lacking as a poor leader and teacher… back to the start of the year, when I tried being more assertive and less of another para when I told you I wasn’t here to make friends, but to do a job (once again, very poorly…) after a while, maybe like a day or two, it just didn’t feel like that's who I was or who I wanted to be as a leader… I wanted to be your friend as as well as your supervisor, just like the old days when I would hang out with the then middle school staff… toward the end of the year, I started having this me against everyone else attitude and unfortunately that sentiment leaked on over to you gals as well when I realized how hard it was to be a supervisor and a friend… I seemed to switch back over from being a doormat to an unreasonable hard ass again and thinking this time, this is how it must be… pretty lonely at the top, since after trying to fit in with the gen ed teachers and other sped teachers for more than a year and pretty much getting nowhere (of course, that devolved even more rapidly toward the end of the year due to my own mistakes). It seems that I took on too much as a new teacher fresh out of college and not really having a proper sped student teaching experience where I could learn these things… at first, everything seemed great… I think this is because a.) people were just relieved to have someone different and b.) I was really great at making it look like I knew what I was doing, when in reality, I had no clue… I love working with ES students, but an ES position like the one at the elementary, is not just for beginners, learning to get their feet wet… I’m sure over time I would have learned faster and gotten better at it… but, luckily for you gals, you won’t have to find out… I think being a good leader and a good teacher, besides experience, is the ability to be somewhere in between… open and empathetic to my paras’ plight and not necessarily a hard ass, but an assertive authority figure… I hope I will get there one day, because I feel like that’s how I live my personal life currently, always a doormat and every now and then an emotional bitch who can dish it, but can’t take it… I know that this year has been very difficult due to my many absences to health and family problems, making it more difficult for the team and for this I truly do apologize and have much gratitude and appreciation for all you did for me this year… every time I would go to an ES meeting, I couldn’t believe the para horror stories from the other ES teachers… I always left with the feeling that my paras never did that nor would they ever and that I could see why paras got a bad rap most of the time… but I always believed you gals are the best ES team and that each and every one of you cares for the students more than most paras and for that reason, I still believe this elementary is one of the best schools in the district because the students aren’t just a number and that the educators here have always cared about a students social/emotional well being before the academics, but never forgetting to help the students grow academically as well… I know you gals may not believe me, but I am going to miss you all… because while we had our ups and downs with each other, we had some really great times too and I will always look back at the memories we made together fondly… one last thing that I wanted to say (I know, it was a ridiculous amount of reading) was one thing that really hit home for me at one of the staff meetings, “Never forget your why…” it’s like a pirate ship that needs the wind to make it go… the wind beneath your sails is your why… why you get up every day to feel underappreciated, overworked, and underpaid… I encourage you all to find your why and to hold onto it as tightly as possible because it’s pretty easy to forget your why and to become engulfed in the negativity of others to where now you are now one of the negatives dragging others down and letting your own standards drop… as you can see I seemed to have lost my why somewhere along the way and am trying to get it back, even though it is too late for this year… also, it is fairly easy to have what is called compassion fatigue, which many educators get… so, please take care of yourselves along the way, so you don’t burn out and have a mental breakdown like so many of us do… and if you ever need anything, please don’t hesitate to call or text… now that I won’t be your supervisor anymore, we can now be friends… ;-p let’s try to enjoy ourselves and the kids these last two days!
