I Never Wanted to Leave | I Had to Resign

i have always been a believer that everything in life happens for a reason and that still holds true for this case um i have thought about how to record this video so many different times and i feel like i i just need to sit down and do it so if you are brand new to my channel hi my name is bridget spacman um i was a former multi-age teacher oh that kind of stings a little bit um and in this video i'm going to kind of share why i resigned because that's most likely why you clicked on this video um i feel as though i have had this going on since the beginning of march and it is july it's the beginning of july so this has been happening for a very very long time i've been a roller coaster of emotions and so if you've been watching my videos for a little bit you might have seen you know some things that just didn't quite make sense um and all of it's gonna be explained in this video so hopefully you know grab your coffee grab your tea whatever it might be find a little cozy spot put in your ear pods and let's just chat for a little bit about why i resigned as a multi-age teacher in central pennsylvania before i kind of share my like future plans with everyone i want to explain everything that happened because i'm going to be very honest with you i never wanted to resign i didn't want to leave my position i genuinely loved my school i loved my partners i loved the teachers i loved the district um and i just always felt like this was it this is where i was meant to be i was going to stay there forever and ever and ever and never really leave and do anything else because i i really really loved and i believed in what i was doing so um if you are previous followers then you know that i have recently gotten my master's degree with capella university now this is nothing to do with capella university this is not anything to do about the program itself it has nothing to do with my master's degree the validity of my master's degree none of that this has everything to do with protocols and process and not taking care of the people who work their tail feathers off for you um and just kind of working outside of the books for once that is what this is all about okay so i got my master's degree at the end of february 2022 and um i decided that i was going to go ahead and get the process done for getting my next pay scale so in the state of pennsylvania or at least the schools that i kind of work with um you basically are encouraged to get your master's degree because you're about three click three classes away after you get your tier two certification so there's two different tiers the first tier um to have your certificate for the state of pa is like a bachelor's degree and you have to have so many years of experience and then after that that only lasts for like five or six years and then you have to get a tier two or level two cert and this level two cert it lasts forever after this but you have to have 24 credit hours to be able to meet that requirement so at the same time schools are like well you know we'll pay you the master's degree if you go the extra three classes and you get a bigger pay jump and i will tell you it is a significant pay jump where i live um we're talking like ten to fifteen thousand dollars pay difference every year when it comes to moving from your bachelor's to your master's so it's a huge significant increase and so i say significant i mean to me it's huge but to others it might not be that way but to me it is so i decided that at the beginning of march all right i'm gonna go ahead and get all of it done that way it's not on my plate i know for a fact that i'm not gonna be able to get my pay increase until like august september because that's just the way they work they'll send you out a new contract you sign it that kind of thing so i just figured it would be nice to get it all done i sent in um all the paperwork that i needed and i had been in communications with like hr and i said you know what do i need and i sent it all in to them and i get an email back saying or you know can you call me and this is like an assistant to our hr lady and so i called her and she's like we have a problem and i said okay and she said you violated contract essentially and i said well how did i violate contract apparently i was supposed to be filling out a form that required me to get approval for each of my classes even though it's not i'm not asking for reimbursement so kind of backing up to this piece another element of you know part of what some schools will do around here is that because you do have to get so many classes to get your next level of your certification they will pay for a percentage of your class so my now old district paid like 90 of it and you have to complete reimbursement forms now i know this because before i started capella i had taken three other classes at a different university um to start that process and then you know i joined capella capella was completely paid for it was a sponsorship um and so basically i was enrolled like i was on scholarship so i didn't have to pay a single thing and so obviously when most people consider that form in my school they consider it a reimbursement form now it doesn't have a name on it there's no title on it that says reimbursement form but there's also no title on it that says approval form and so it was never communicated that i needed to go through approval now am i i'm definitely going to say that i was at fault i should have asked but then it always goes back to but you don't know what to ask when you just like you don't know the questions right if you are not really sure you don't really know the right questions to be asking and that was basically what was happening in this case so i talked to her and she's like you violated contract you know you might not end up getting your pay increase because you didn't get approval and then she tells me that i can go ahead and fill out the forms and then i can send it in and we'll see now this was communicated by like my superintendent so i had sent in the forms um and you know it went like silent for like a month i heard nothing so i went through all the hoops and obviously there's way more to this story than i feel like i'm sharing with you guys if i ended up sharing every single little detail we'd be here a good two or three hours so there were more things that happened but it went silent for a good month and then i remember being sick and i remember contacting and asking like what's going on where are we at with this process and you can imagine that i've been a hot mess for the entire month of march because they're telling me i violated contract they're telling me that i should have done the things that i had no idea that i needed to do nor did anyone else by the way i just want to point that out too the majority of people i talked to in that school whether it was administration other teachers had no idea that i needed to be filling out that form just for a scholarship and i will be honest too i even read that like our our contract like our teacher contract i read it front back side to side had so many other people look at it and nowhere in that contract could i find that i violated anything so a month goes by i contact them and they're like yep let's set up a meeting like a phone meeting so i set up a phone meeting which was like for two weeks from that contact that email contact and then it comes to the two weeks it's during my special time so i'm a nervous wreck the entire time because i don't you know i don't know what they're gonna tell me and um i remember going back into my classroom you know putting a sign on my door making that phone call and the assistant's like she's not in her office um she's still meeting with the superintendent can i you know have her call you back and so i said yep that's fine and so i hung up i waited for like 20 minutes and then i'm like okay i am gonna have to go pick up my kiss in like five or ten minutes like i need to call again so i called back and it was like oh sorry caught up with something else you know she had other things we're gonna have to you know reschedule and so i told her i said you know i'm starting class i'm not gonna have her be able to call me back now like i don't know what else to do so she ends up sending me the hr lady sends me an email later on that evening apologizing for what happened and then um telling me if we could reschedule now the reschedule was for another week so i was gonna have to wait another week for an answer for something i just wanted a little bit of information because i'm just a nervous wreck i feel like i'm gonna i'm not gonna be able to stay where i am and it's a hot mess so um i sent her an email back and i was very very polite i said absolutely i'm happy to do this you know next date during the same time i was like however i have been a nervous wreck um through about the whole situation is there anything you can tell me before like going into this long weekend um i think it was like our spring break or something like that so we had like four days off and she tells me she sends me an email back telling me that um i don't understand the gravity of the situation nor do i understand what all goes into being able to give her an answer i just bawled i felt like i had and i'm gonna try really hard not to cry right now i felt like i had given so much of myself in the past like six years that i had been with this school i worked i never complained about the hours that i worked i felt like i went above and beyond in every area and i was super positive supportive i did the things that everybody asked me to do without complaining like some people do and here i am getting a master's degree in which they don't have to pay for like they never had to pay for it you know i got a complete scholarship so it saved the district money in the long run and they're telling me that i don't understand the gravity okay so after that time i kind of looked at my husband and i said i feel like i need to start looking and i think it was that day that i started applying uh to other school districts in my area so um i waited the week and i talked to her and i took notes because y'all let me tell you i couldn't get a word in i couldn't get a word in um basically that phone call went uh with her talking for about three minutes straight telling me um that i violated contract uh that she doesn't have to look at it until september that i am at the bottom of her priority right now that she has other things to do because of the end of the school year and that you know she now has to do all this other work and that basically she didn't even give me an answer then and then she tells me you know that i violated and then i should have gone to administration or hr about it um and that she doesn't know you know she doesn't care that the the the school that i went to is accredited nor the fact that the state of pennsylvania accepted it for my level two certification she goes it doesn't matter because they have a certain process and that i should have noticed that on that form there was a sentence on there that said for approval only i've only ever known it as an approval like as a reimbursement form and then um i mean it was just a bunch of other things and so at the end of it she says do you have any other questions and i just kind of remember shaking my head and just saying no i think you pretty much just covered it all i said there's nothing else that i have at this time and i was done i hung that phone up i bawled my eyes out again and i was done i had talked to my administration about it i had gone to other people about it um and i felt like no one was there to help give me an answer and so when they didn't want to give me my answer i told them then i have no other choice than to start looking because if i can't have an answer right now who's to say that in september if i was to stay that you guys wouldn't come back to me and say nope we're not gonna approve it and so here i'm gonna be a master in education and i'm gonna not have the pay that i deserve and i have worked hard and i'm gonna be bitter and i'm gonna be angry and i'm gonna be miserable why should i stay why should i say for a maybe why should i stay for we think you're gonna get it i think it's not good enough it's not i'm better than that and if they can't recognize that i am better than that then i needed to leave so i went through the entire process um i interviewed at a couple different places so i think i had like two for sure interviews i had one that called like right when i had gotten the position that i'm about to tell you about um and i [Music] you know didn't get one of the positions which is fine i think you know again goes back to the beginning of i think everything in life happens for a reason and i got a position as a fourth grade ela and social studies teacher um in the district that my mother-in-law lives in so it's very close i mean technically i doubled my drive from my previous school and by double i mean like i work like 12 minutes away it's like a 12 minute drive for me um so it went from like a six minute to a 12 minute drive but it's a beautiful school it's a great district it's actually the district that my husband graduated from which is kind of cute and yeah so that's currently my situation so i wanted to show you guys um where all my stuff is i feel as though right at the very end i told myself okay i am not going to come back i'm not going to come back over the summer so i made the choice of and i didn't have a job yet at that moment but i made the choice of packing up my classroom i said i'm gonna be done it's gonna be packed because i'm gonna find another job and i said and if they come back to me you know at the beginning of june and they say hey we want we're gonna give it to you we're gonna have you stay it's like official official then i'll stay you know but right now i feel like this is in some way this is god's way of saying you know what bridget it's time for you to move on it's time for you to go somewhere else and that's what i'm doing so it's a new chapter guys let's go and take a look at all my stuff so this is my mother-in-law's cottage it's just um a little one-bedroom there's like a loft area upstairs uh and she has an attached garage here so in that garage they were very kind and they let me keep all my stuff there so let's go in and take a look so here is my classroom so this is the garage area and this is my room at the moment i don't know if everything is going to end up going into my new classroom i will tell you that i have seen my new classroom um it's really really sweet it has like a like a light bluish grayish color on one wall it's like a creamy color in another wall it is a newer school so it's not as old as my previous school so it has more of kind of the muted just kind of calm and calming tones which i'm very very excited about um i went and took a little tour of that school i took a tour of my classroom it is officially official i was board approved while i was on vacation in houston um and yeah so new chapter and i'm excited to be able to take you guys on this journey i will tell you that there are a lot of things that are very different that i have never experienced um as we're going into like this new district i have a picture like i have an idea of what my schedule is like um i have a team partner who teaches math and science so i'm ela in social studies and um yeah it's just gonna be a little bit different which i'm excited about like i i i'm finally allowing myself to be excited about it even though i'm still heartbroken and i will be honest like i told my families i sent an email out to them before i put my resignation in um just letting them know that i was leaving and you know to contact me through facebook or instagram or whatever it is so that i can watch their kids grow up and i'm heartbroken at the sense that i'm not doing a multi-age like i genuinely believe in multi-age i believe in what we were doing and um it breaks my heart but you know at the end of the day it's really hard when you don't feel as though people care about you like you have to care about your people and i felt like they were more concerned about the people who were leaving than they were concerned about keeping the people who wanted to stay and i think that's part of like the whole system it's part of the whole process and having to follow all these stupid rules like it's just dumb that they had to wait until september and so it is what it is it is what it is um but yeah so i will be sharing some content i'm gonna do an empty um classroom tour of my classroom before i start throwing all my stuff in it and um i'm gonna be changing a couple things like i don't know if i'm gonna be able to keep the stage just because it's really really big but my father-in-law said that he might be able to chop it in half to make it a little bit smaller because my room is not super huge so that's it that's kind of my story of why i had to resign um never wanted to i will sincerely miss the families and the people at that school but they know they can always contact me i am literally a phone call away if they need me and i'm just looking forward to this new this new adventure so i'm gonna be taking you guys along with me as i'm getting used to a different place um it is going to be very interesting i've never taught ela in social studies so that's going to be a new one now i've taught them individually as fourth grade i've taught fourth grade before um but being a ela and social studies teacher i've never done that so if you are an ela social studies teacher i would love some advice input how are you doing it how are you putting in you know incorporating all of the different elements you have to incorporate i have an idea of my schedule but we have specials at different times every single day so we run on a six day cycle which i'm i'm used to cycle days but every day there is a um a different special time and so it'll be very interesting as i start to kind of curate our schedule and what that's going to look like in order to kind of meet all the needs of our kids so we will see ah i'm excited nervous excited all the things if you have any questions for me um leave them down in the comment section below i am curious because i was talking with michelle from pocketful of primary and she had mentioned that a lot of people will ask her about demo lessons so i've done now three demo lessons in my career of teaching um the first one when i got my job at the previous school that i've been at um i did a second demo lesson which honestly didn't go well on i don't think i was feeling the best um during that time and it just again everything happens for a reason i think it worked out for the best because i have a position that i'm in now so i did a second demo lesson and then i did a third one for the position that i'm currently have and they were all a little bit different so i'm curious would you be interested in a um kind of a walk through with maybe some of my best tips for how to you know do a demo lesson um for wherever you are i think this is something that's becoming more of a common practice with a lot of schools which i find very interesting um but i've done three of them every single one was a little bit different but i enjoyed the process of kind of learning about it all and if you have just kind of general questions of you know me leaving me looking for another job while also teaching in the same kind of area because i'm very close to where i haven't moved i'm very close to where i was um drop those down in the comments i'll be answering some of those and then maybe i'll even compile a video for that but that is it the cat is out of the bag guys i feel like i've been keeping this from you for a very very long time and let's kind of look at this as a new adventure together here so thank you guys so much for watching this video i hope that you enjoyed kind of hearing the process of all of this and the story behind why i had to resign and i will catch you all next time bye

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 163,230

Keywords: teacher tips, The Lettered Classroom, first year teacher, classroom organization, a day in the life of a teacher, elementary teacher, middle school teacher, education, how to teach, new teacher, teacher youtuber, teacher vlog, classroom ideas, upper elementary teacher, teacher life, I resigned

Id: 5LkPFq9GbcA

Length: 23min 47sec (1427 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 03 2022