More to come about the last semeseter (because it has been an epic in my face learning experience).

For now, I wanted to share something I ran into last week. I’m in the midst of searching for math teaching jobs in the NYC area. If you know anything about New York right now (actually most states right now), you might know that we are having some pretty major budget issues. As a result, the city is talking about laying off close to 4700 teachers this spring. You might imagine how difficult it is to think about hiring new teachers in this environment (yes, even math teachers).

The process of paring down my commitments to specific mission and schools’ curriculum, community, staff environment, students, locations, classroom management cultures, views of mathematics, charter/traditional is frankly exhausting. Once and a while, I run into things like this and remember why I’m so excited to teach. Enjoy and remember why we do what we do:

If every one of our students went on to an Ivy League school and became millionaires, but did not have compassion, did not have the resilience to overcome obstacles, did not participate in their communities, were not good role models… we would have failed them. We work every day to give our students the opportunity to exhibit their character and to feel good about doing what’s right even when no one is looking. – from mission statement of Newark Collegiate Academy