Re: Jerry

[BriantheTeacher]

And yes - I'm "bringing my own"...about to celebrate our ten year anniversary and are looking forward to a legal civil union in Hawaii, something we'll never see in Georgia.

Oh...and should I bring my own grits as well?

[Carey]

Congrats on a decade! (CU here also is good for insurance coverage...)

There is a SPED connection on punaweb - & I have subbed. even for middle SPED... with all of the students, who you are from is much more than how you live...

and I am not kidding about getting the hang of pidgin, the students will dish it out in buckets.... not expecting you to understand them... if you do, then they usually are pau with it... if you don't, then they will dish it heavier...

[BriantheTeacher]

Yes, I hadn't thought much about that yet, I guess - but I should know as much Pidgin as I can. Summer project!

I currently teach EBD-LD resource in a school where 90% of the students speak Spanish...I've done a pretty good job of knowing/demonstrating enough Spanish to keep them guessing as to how much I actually know (or don't.)

I've worked in schools in inner-city Atlanta (African American) Johns Creek, Georgia (Asian), my current school, and schools in Ethiopia...I have yet in my teaching experiences to teach students who are anything like me, as a white guy from South Georgia. Looking forward to the next interesting experience..in SPED, its always interesting!

[csgray]

Brian,
You will want to check out the charter schools, they hire directly, unlike the DOE schools, but unlike most mainland charter schools we are under the same contract with the same pay and benefits as the DOE schools. We do work really hard though, because we are underfunded at almost half the rate of DOE schools we all do a lot of extra duty. Even more than all teachers do. I haven't worked less than a 50 hour week in 6 years, it helps to love what you do.

Being outdoorsy will help with a lot of the kids, most of our kids hunt and fish, even the girls, and being able to tell stories about how my mid western HS had almost nobody there the first day of hunting season and about working my neighbors' cattle on horseback, plus bragging on the quality of the salmon fishing and crabbing in Oregon, really bought me some credibility. Many of these kids know nothing of the mainland except Las Vegas, LA, and TV, so they really like knowing about rural life styles there.

My experience trying to navigate the hiring process in the DOE is the one situation here where I really feel like I was discriminated against because of my race (or at least origins). With a name like mine, and an Oregon teaching license, they knew I wasn't "local" and 3 different times I was sent a postcard with an appointment date for the interview with an administrator, that is the vital first step to being hired, with a date that was the day after the date the principal was given. A good way to piss off the person who you want to hire you is to not show up for your appointment. Each time the lady at the DOE gave me a new date, and each time it was still not the same date the principal got. I just gave up on the DOE after that and have worked at two different charter schools.

Most but not all of the charter schools are full inclusion, which means our sped kids and our TAG kids all learn in the same classroom with the teacher and EAs busting their butts to differentiate instruction. I teach middle school social studies, art, Health and an Elective called Hands on Thinking in a classroom with reading levels anywhere from 2nd grade to post college in the same room, studying the same material. We don't have much of the middle though, unless they are FOB from the mainland, the middle of the road kids go to their neighborhood school.

Hopes this helps.

Carol

[JerryCarr]

quote:

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Originally posted by BriantheTeacher

Oh...and should I bring my own grits as well?

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They sell grits at WalMart and sometimes at KTA. Stock up when you see them because occasionally they run out for a week or two at at time. Actually, I could say that about a lot of mainland grocery items, and not just regional stuff. They run out of mac & cheese sometimes at the Hilo WalMart!

[missydog1]

My grandson is in special ed on the west side. It is a DOE school and not mixed with non-SPED. His teacher's name is as English as it gets, and he is a transplant by his mainland accent. So they do hire, but I don't know how long he has been here or if he had a hard time. The school is a good mix of ethnicities in terms of faculty.

Pidgin is mostly learned by listening to it spoken. It's not hard to understand the lingo, per se, but when it is really fast and thick accent it can be hard to follow. Similar to any "foreign" language, you can learn the words, but distinguishing the words when a native speaker is flying through them is a whole other deal.