An old friend of mine is one of the principals at this school in my area, and they asked me if I wanted to work as a teacher aide for their high school campus. They offered $20/hr, full dental and vision, 80/20 medical. Just coming out of college, I thought this could be a good temporary position until I got something better lined up.
Red flag #1: job description was very vague. Said I would be helping teachers inside the classroom and supervising lunch, but it ended up being lots of hall monitoring and… substitute teaching??? We’ll get to that later.
Red flag #2: I got hired a week AFTER professional development before the start of the school year began. So any training I should’ve gotten? SIKE. Training is for nerds! You don’t have to know how to report behaviors to the office or take attendance or SUBSTITUTE 7 PERIODS OF SCHOOL.
Red flag #3: Turnover for this job was high. A seasoned teacher there told me they had about 90% new teachers working at the school. When I asked him why, he said that the school was failing both academically and behaviorally.
Red flag #4: the principals barely had any assigned duties the first two days before the start of classes (they could’ve trained me then? Oh well). So I ended up helping out the front desk workers (lovely ppl btw, they deserve a better school).
Red flag #5: I am not natively bilingual. I made this clear during my interview. The principal proceeds to tell all my coworkers that I AM bilingual. Just because I can translate basic phrases into/from Spanish does NOT mean I can hold a fluent conversation. And so of course, they are assigning me to Spanish-only students because I guess me being Latino = bilingual! Woohoo for micro aggressions!
Red flag #6: I was asked to sub for a whole day. Without being a trained teacher. I had no sub plans from admin until I had to email the classroom teacher, who was GRIEVING during their day off. I felt so terrible. And these students? Not an ounce of listening or learning was done that day. I got in trouble for sending so many kids to the office for playing videos on their phone in class, straight up ignoring my repeated instructions, and pretending to speak Spanish only so I could trip up translating.
That last day subbing (with NO sub pay, just the regular $20/hr USD) was what broke me. I sent a letter of resignation yesterday saying I will be resigning effective immediately. I plan to turn in my things tomorrow on Monday and leaving forever.
My desperation was used against me. But I won’t make that mistake again.