A New School Year

I have been in St. Louis for a little over two weeks now and have been frantically preparing for the first day! I was hired at Eskridge High School, which is in the Wellston School District. This is different because I was expecting to be placed within St. Louis Public Schools which has very different expectations for its staff and students, however, I am excited about the opportunities Wellston presents for me. The town itself is located just outside of St. Louis, in St. Louis County. It faces significant challenges with a high poverty rate, high unemployment rate, and very little industry and public transportation for its residents. At my school 99% of our 180 students are on free/reduced lunch and every student eats breakfast at the school. That being said, there are many success stories from our students. We have an excellent basketball team that goes to state every year. The football team plays JV, there are usually no more than 20 players, however, last year they were undefeated against schools 10 times our size. 100% of graduates have been accepted to college over the last 2 years.

That being said, this will be a particularly challenging year in Wellston. The district was taken over by the state a few years ago, and according to its individualized plan if the school does not make significant progress this year all of the staff will be fired and they will have to start anew next year. This is looking more and more challenging because while the school has been making small steps toward progress, last year the district as a whole only had about 12% proficiency on their state exams. I am going to have to be very conscious of how I use my time in my classroom to ensure that I am maximizing it as much as possible.

I am going to be teaching Geometry, Algebra II and Analytical Geometry this year. Having to prepare for three classes will be a lot to handle, and I am trying to do as much planning as possible before school starts. I don't have enough textbooks for each student to have their own, so I will have to work around that during classtime and for homework. Additionally, students do not typically have their own calculators. There is one set of graphing calculators for the school, but this makes it difficult for students to practice using them in order to be comfortable enough with the calculators for testing.

The veteran teachers at my school have been extremely supportive so far. Our new teacher orientation was cancelled, so I have been receiving bits and pieces of advice at random intervals during this last week from them. The veteran teachers have told me that one of the biggest issues with the students at Wellston is that they have to trust you and they have to learn that you care about them, otherwise nothing will be accomplished in the classroom. As a stranger to the district this will require a lot of team-building and culture-building activities during my first week instead of a lot of content knowledge.

I will let you know how the first day goes, hope all is well at home!