Did you make a difference today?

What defines success? What makes us valuable? How do we measure our productivity? Having been a teacher for four years, I have measured success by educating a classroom of students for a year and seeing progress. I felt like I was making a valuable contribution to society and knew I had done my job. I could show the improved test results for all my hard work. My time was booked (and overbooked) to the minute, and I always had 10 things to do. I had a very definite schedule to stick to and knew exactly what was expected of me. Being busy meant I had lots of important things to do and what I did mattered to someone.

Not anymore. I am the RtI specialist for the school. A new position for the school and for the district. The person that will be supervising me has not yet been hired. My principal says we're still working through exactly what my job will be. In theory I will help screen primary kids, match interventions with kids below grade level in reading, support the teacher in implementation, analyze data, and help make instructional and programming decisions from there.

That's all well and good, but what do I do today? I don't have a set schedule. I won't be working with kids directly for any length of time. I haven't even met 3/4 of the teachers I'll be supporting, so it's not like we're discussing kids that need support yet.

So how do I know if I'm doing my job? I don't have any clear measure of success. I'm so used to having every minute of my day scheduled, so being able to plan a meeting for any time of day I want, or going to a training without having to write sub plans feels like cheating. Am I really accomplishing anything?

I know that as the school year goes on, I'm guaranteed to feel overwhelmed. I've already had many people tell me to watch out because teachers think I'm here to save them. What they don't know is I'm feeling as clueless as they are, just about different things.

So I continue to report to work every day and sit at my desk and act productive. I've been working on creating a chart detailing the reading interventions we have available so we can quickly refer to it when designing a program for a kid. Is it needed? Who knows. Will my work actually contribute to students' learning and success? I don't know and don't know if I'll ever know.

But, here's the thing: other than not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing, I somehow love my job. I look forward to seeing the people on my team in the morning. I like learning about interventions and how to implement them. I like my little office and the rose-scented lotion I keep at my desk. So maybe that's the success I should be celebrating right now. I am ripe for helping others because I'm in such a good mental place myself. And that's the first step.

The knitter

My current job is to help teachers transition through the changes in the special education laws and to support students who are below grade level. From what I've seen at this school, everyone works pretty hard. People stay late, everyone participates in school activities, in general people just look busy. That is, except the knitter.

Since I came to the school mid-year, I work on a section of a long strip of desks occupied by myself, two other teacher's assistants, and a Title One (poor school support) teacher. The knitter is the Title I teacher who sits next to me. She's a rounder woman in her late 50's with an expression that makes you want to offer her some stool softener. Officially, her posted schedule looks very full and busy. To the untrained eye, it would appear that she works with multitudes of students with a few prep times blocked in. Um hmm. Well, in reality her times with groups are quite often cut short because "it's a good stopping point" or the student seems "a little off task and unproductive". And her prep times? Her teaching includes setting students up on the computer or teaching from a very perscriptive program. There is no preparation needed.

So my desk neighbor spends her days knitting. She puts on her reading glasses, pulls out her latest project, and knits. She's finished an entire sweater this week. No joke. One day, her supervisor was here and asked the knitter to look over something he was writing. As she sat there knitting, she told him it was her break time, and she doesn't let other people make her work during that time; it would never make a difference to anyone anyway. The supervisor just sat there with the most flabbergasted look on her face.

So as kids fall further and further behind in school (and come to me for help), she knits. She knits scarves, gloves, sweaters, hats and who knows what else. Maybe her knitting will eventually make it to one of the kids she should be helping. Maybe in some homeless shelter an undereducated guy who used to go to this school will be given a hand-knit hat and be kept warm. He'll probably be thankful to have it, never knowing the irony.