I only lasted 4 because I was older than most 1st year teachers because I'd substituted and gone to graduate school for a semester. Substituting helps you see which schools have good administrators, office staff, teachers, and other strengths. To be a substitute, you usually don't have to be certified to teach in TX (although I was). I definitely was not certified to teach every subject to every grade level 6th-12th.
I'd been an English major and loved literature. But because I was certified in secondary education, I hadn't learned how to teach reading at all. Of course my first assignment was teaching life skills reading to 9th graders who were reading at a remedial (anywhere from 3rd to 8th grade). This through me for a loop.
By the third week of school, I'd learned that we would be doing a lot of reading exercises where they used reference materials like a phone book or an encyclopedia. Of course there was a leveled SRA resource curriculum that was supposed to help, but it was pretty dated. By the end of the 3rd week, I though I might survive the semester. Then on Friday, I got word that due to enrollment changes, I would be starting at middle school on the opposite side of the metroplex.
That's when the real adventure began.
